AI's power plants are going up next door — before the neighbours hear about it

Climate & Energy 3 min 78 sources

Dozens of large gas plants built to feed a single data center are skipping the hearings and studies that normally apply, a Reuters review finds.

Key takeaways

At least 57 large gas plants are being built across the US to power single data centers, often skipping the hearings and studies that normally apply.
They sidestep the rules by being "off-grid" — serving one private customer, not the public — which developers say exempts them; some used shell companies and secrecy deals to stay quiet.
The plants burn gas, releasing soot and smog-forming pollution near homes, while a separate $5 billion gas plant in South Carolina shows the same AI-driven demand moving through the slower public process.

A daycare owner in Middleton Township, Ohio, watched cranes replace her view of farmland over the past year. Then came something she was never told about: a large natural gas power plant going up across the street, built to feed Meta’s new data center. “I’m living next to a threat,” Breanne Kidd told Reuters [1].

Her plant is not unusual. A Reuters review of regulatory filings, published Tuesday, found at least 57 off-grid gas plants proposed or under construction in the US to serve individual data centers — together totalling 73,000 megawatts, enough for tens of millions of homes [1]. More than a dozen won approval in under a year. Two already run, including one outside Memphis serving xAI and one in Ashburn, Virginia.

Why these plants skip the usual checks

A normal power plant takes years to approve. It needs environmental studies, air-quality permits, and public hearings where neighbours can object. The reason for those steps is simple: a plant’s pollution and noise land on everyone nearby, not just the owner.

The new plants sidestep most of that by being off-grid — built to serve one private customer rather than feed the public grid [1]. Developers argue that private supply exempts them from rules written for public utilities. Ohio passed a law last year letting certain plants win approval in as little as 45 days, with no public hearing [1]. The Apollo plant feeding Meta was cleared on February 3, under three months after plans were filed; the draft air permit wasn’t public until March — after construction had started [1].

Some developers went further to stay quiet: non-disclosure agreements with local governments, shell companies on the paperwork, redacted documents [1]. Apollo’s filings listed its customer as a subsidiary, “Liames LLC,” not Meta [1].

What’s burning, and why it matters to a lung

Most of these plants run on natural gas. Burning gas releases nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter — soot small enough to lodge deep in the lungs, linked to asthma and heart disease — plus the carbon dioxide that warms the planet [1]. A Harvard researcher called the off-grid build-out “one of the largest under-examined air-quality risks in the country” [1].

The political wind is behind speed. The Trump administration, citing competition with China, wants faster permitting for AI infrastructure. The EPA and states including Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and Utah have moved to accelerate approvals [1]. Supporters say the plants are essential to build AI without raising ordinary households’ electricity bills — because the data center pays for its own power rather than drawing from the shared grid [1].

The same pressure, the slower way

The rush isn’t only off-grid. In South Carolina, regulators on Friday approved a $5 billion, 2,180-megawatt gas plant for Dominion Energy and Santee Cooper — built on a retired coal site, driven by the same surging demand [2]. That one went through the normal process. The Sierra Club opposed it, partly because regulators set no cap on costs that ratepayers will carry for years before the plant produces a watt [2]. Its price estimate has already doubled from $2.5 billion to $5 billion as equipment markets tighten [2].

The contrast is the story: when the public process runs, neighbours and consumer groups at least get to argue. When a plant is private and fast-tracked, that argument never happens.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

The hearing exists so the people who pay for it can speak

A rule that only the public follows isn't a weak rule — it's a door that quietly lets some walk around the room where the cost gets decided.

A view, then cranes

Breanne Kidd used to watch the sun come up over farmland. Now she watches a gas plant rise across the street, built to feed a data center she was never asked about. She didn’t object because no one held a meeting where she could. The plant was approved in under three months. Her first real notice was the construction itself.

This is not a story about gas, or even about AI. It’s about a quiet substitution: the same plant, built two different ways. One way invites the neighbours into a room. The other doesn’t. Today’s news is what happens when builders are allowed to choose the second way.

What the slow process is actually for

A normal power plant takes years to approve. From the outside, that looks like waste — paperwork, hearings, environmental studies, delay. It’s tempting to read all of it as friction someone should cut.

But look at what each step does. The environmental study asks: what does this plant put into the air people breathe? The hearing asks: who lives near it, and do they accept the trade? The cost review asks: who pays, and for how long? Every one of those steps exists because a power plant’s effects don’t stay with its owner. The soot lands on the daycare across the street. The bill lands on a stranger’s account. The slow process is slow because it’s gathering the people the plant will touch and giving them a seat.

The delay isn’t the cost of the process. The delay is the process — it’s the time it takes to find everyone the decision reaches and let them weigh in.

The loophole isn’t a smaller rule. It’s a different room.

The off-grid plant doesn’t break the rules. It steps out of the room where the rules apply.

The argument is clever and almost convincing: this plant serves one private customer, not the public grid, so the public-utility rules shouldn’t bind it. On paper that sounds fair — why should a private deal answer to public process? But the soot doesn’t know the customer is private. The lungs across the street belong to the public whether or not the meter does. The plant kept every effect that made the hearing necessary, and shed only the hearing.

So Ohio’s law lets some plants win approval in 45 days with no hearing at all. A draft air permit goes public after construction starts. Paperwork lists a shell company instead of Meta. None of this is lying, exactly. It’s a careful arrangement so that the people who would have spoken never learn there was a meeting.

Why everyone reaches for the side door

It’s easy to read this as villainy, and harder — truer — to see it as ordinary incentive. The tech company wants power fast; AI’s appetite is real and the race feels urgent. The state wants the jobs and the tax base. The administration wants to beat China. Each actor, on its own, is doing something reasonable. The side door is open, the front door is slow, and no single person decided to cut the neighbours out. They just each took the faster path, and the neighbours fell out of the picture as a side effect.

That’s the part worth holding onto. The harm here doesn’t need a villain. It only needs a rule that binds the public process and a private path that escapes it — and a lot of people with good reasons to take the path.

The slow door is still a door

Look at the other plant in today’s news. South Carolina just approved a $5 billion gas plant through the full public process. It is not a happy story — its cost already doubled, and a consumer group warned that households will pay for years before it makes any power. But notice what the slow process gave them: the Sierra Club got to stand up and say so, on the record, in front of the regulators. The objection is in the order. Someone who pays the bill got to argue about the bill.

That’s the whole difference. Not that the public process produces better plants — it approved an expensive one. It’s that the people who carry the cost were in the room when it was decided.

Who’s in the room when it’s your turn

The pattern reaches past power plants. Every system has a slow front door — a hearing, a review, a vote, a comment period — and the slowness is almost always the sound of more people being let in. And every system has a side door for whoever can argue they’re a special case, a private matter, an exemption. The argument for the side door always sounds like efficiency. It usually is efficiency, for the person walking through it.

You are rarely the one with the key to the side door. Far more often you’re Breanne Kidd — across the street, finding out from the cranes. The humbling thing to sit with is how much gets decided in rooms you didn’t know were meeting, by people each doing something sensible, with the cost quietly assigned to whoever wasn’t there to object. Seeing that doesn’t tell you the plant is wrong. It tells you to notice who’s missing from the room before you trust that the decision was whole.

03 · Lab · your turn

The Two Doors

Rehearse choosing the fast private path versus the slow public one, and watch who drops out of the room while the cost stays put.

04 · Hope · carry this

A reporter found the rooms that were emptied, and now they aren't secret anymore. Sunlight on a quiet process is how the missing seats get filled back in.