Giant Data Center In New Mexico Will Be Powered By Fuel Cells

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Santa Teresa, New Mexico, is in the extreme southeastern corner of the state, not far from El Paso, Texas, and Cuidad Juárez in Mexico. Most readers have probably never heard of it, but today it is ground zero in the fight between local residents and the owners of a massive data center designed to feed the insatiable appetite of artificial intelligence for computing power.

Apart from concerns that AI will supplant the human brain and take over the world, people are concerned all these data centers will suck up every available electron, which will cause their utility bills to go up as the suppliers of electricity race to build more generating stations. Recently, the wise leaders of the state of Utah gave their blessing to a new data center that will use twice as much electricity as the whole rest of the state combined — because nothing must be allowed to slow the advance of AI.

Last fall, construction began on the Project Jupiter data center in Santa Teresa. Developed by BorderPlex Digital Assets, the complex will be powered by a self-contained power system that is separate from the grid that supplies electricity to the public. It is being built for Oracle, which will use it to host artificial intelligence infrastructure for OpenAI.

Oracle is owned by Larry Ellison, whose son David is the CEO of Paramount. David recently engineered the takeover of Warner Brothers, thanks in part to the fact that his father has shoveled lots of cash to the sitting president’s campaign activities.

Local Opposition Grows

According to Oil & Gas Watch, Project Jupiter is getting lots of blow back from the local community because of its large carbon footprint and its demand for water in an area that already suffers from scarce water resources. In response, the developer and Oracle announced in April that Project Jupiter will utilize fuel cells to make the electricity needed to power the data center instead of gas turbines and diesel generators.

Apparently the locals were supposed to bow down and thank the owners of the project for sparing them all the pollution those generators would have caused, but the people of Santa Teresa are not that easily fooled. Fuel cells convert methane into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen.

According to the company’s announcement, the fuel cells generate electricity without combustion, so they will significantly reduce the project’s carbon dioxide emissions and use of water. The developers also claim the cells will reduce nitrogen oxide air pollution emissions by approximately 92 percent, compared to the original gas-fired power plant proposal. However, the fuel cells will emit about 10.1 million tons of greenhouse gases a year compared to about 14 million tons from the methane and diesel powered generators. The developer also claims the facility will now “use a negligible amount of water,” although precise information on how that would happen was not provided.

Colin Cox, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Oil & Gas Watch that while the fuel cell proposal is an improvement, it is still a climate disaster. “Ten million tons per year is more than the greenhouse gas emissions from Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Santa Fe — New Mexico’s three biggest cities — combined. That absolutely trashes our state’s climate progress and makes a joke out of climate goals,” he said.

Cox criticized Project Jupiter for its failure to communicate with the local population in a transparent manner. “We get little bits of information here and there from various public filings,” he said. “When we finally found out how much of our water the first power plant was going to use, people were rightly outraged. Now they say this power plant will use less. What does that mean, and why aren’t they sharing that information?”

It appears the developers tried to minimize the fact that proposed power systems would have required nearly one million gallons of water per day. The fuel cell proposal reduces that to just 20,000 gallons a day, but even that will strain the resources of the local water utility.

Cox said there are also questions about the fuel cell technology, which has never been deployed at anything close to the scale being proposed. “Another big question is why are they so committed to methane?” Cox asked. “We have amazing solar resources here. They claim they will build some solar eventually, but the only applications they have filed so far are 100 percent fossil fuels.”

Skullduggery In The State House

He added that while New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act mandates increasing amounts of renewables to be used in commercial power generation, the state legislature recently created a loophole allowing the construction of independent power systems (“microgrids”) that are exempt from the renewable requirements. Cox is skeptical. “Did they know these so-called microgrids would be larger than the entire Public Service of New Mexico power grid and would generate enough electricity to power every household in the state twice over?” Cox askede. “And that’s just…..for Project Jupiter.”

In her announcement last February, New Mexico governor Lujan Grisham said Project Jupiter would spur economic development in southern New Mexico and grow vital infrastructure systems to support global trade along the international border. “By securing digital infrastructure today, New Mexico is investing in its economy to build a more prosperous tomorrow,” she said. That is always the excuse government officials throw out there to quiet the naysayers. Development is good and more development is always better.

When Doña Ana County commissioners approved an unprecedented $165 billion industrial revenue bond to help finance the mammoth data center last year, they were led to believe the microgrid would initially produce 700 to 900 megawatts of power, eventually ranging up to one gigawatt. However by the end of the year, air permit applications revealed that up to 2.8 gigawatts of electricity would be generated.

The air quality permit application for Project Jupiter received more than 7,000 comments, causing several state lawmakers to request a public hearing and the state to push back the final decision on the air permit applications for the gas-fired power plants. That led to a pause in the construction on a proposed 17 mile long, $60 million pipeline to supply methane to the data center. The company withdrew the two air permit applications for the gas plants in April and substituted an application for the fuel cell facility instead.

Air Quality Concerns

Kacey Hovden, a staff attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, said the air in the area around Project Jupiter already fails to meet federal air quality standards. “When you look at the larger picture in southern New Mexico, and the legacy of environmental injustice and pollution, Sunland Park and Santa Teresa communities already bear the adverse health implications from extractive and polluting industries. Project Jupiter is exactly the same, and only serves to compound the unjust harm residents are already enduring,” she said.

Hoyden claimed the developers are employing strategies used by data center developers across the nation by repackaging their proposals in greenwashing terminology while relying on fossil fuels and technologies that will irreparably damage the environment and harm public health.

“The developers’ decision to use fuel cells, rather than natural gas turbines, merely creates a different host of environmental issues regarding hazardous waste disposal, while also still emitting extremely high amounts of toxic air pollutants,” Hovden said. “And no matter what technology the developers claim they will use to power the massive data center campus, Project Jupiter will still need an enormous amount of water that New Mexico just does not have.”

Why Not Renewables?

Mariel Nanasi is the executive director of New Energy Economy in Santa Fe. She said New Mexico has  abundant solar and wind resources. Today, wind and solar combined with battery storage are the least expensive source of electricity supplies. “The business case for renewable energy couldn’t be more clear. It insulates from commodity price volatility and supply disruptions, like Trump’s war on Iran, that have repeatedly driven fossil fuel costs sharply upward.”

She added that legislators need to stop treating data centers as inevitable and start regulating them as enormous industrial energy and water users. New Mexico should require 100 percent renewable power plus storage, proof that no costs are shifted to ratepayers, binding water protections, stringent air quality requirements that account for cumulative impacts, and oversight of large private microgrids over 20 MW. “The burden should be on the developer to prove the project is good for New Mexicans, not on communities to prove they should not be sacrificed,” she added.

The AI Craze

AI is bigger than The Beatles, the Hula Hoop, and The Twist combined. It is arguably the most significant trend in America today. All the bloviating and chest thumping about renewables ruining the character of rural communities suddenly evaporates when the subject turns to data centers.

According to a story in the New York Times today, Anthropic and OpenAI have each created SuperPACs to funnel money to candidates who promise to support their vision of what future AI regulations should be. Anthropic prefers somewhat more restrictive rules that at least attempt to guard user privacy while OpenAI prefers federal regulations that override state laws designed to protect citizens from exploitation.

Some may savor the delicious irony of how a government that came to power promising to protect state’s rights and end so-called “government overreach” is now fully on board with shoving the federal fist down the throats of the states. If you wrote that in a story, people would swear it was fiction, but it is not. “Do as we say, not as we do” is now an integral part of the MAGA charade.

If you are unclear why we need all these data centers, be in no doubt that government oversight over where you go, who you associate with, what you write online, and what your political affiliation is comprise the main items on the AI agenda. To make that happen, states are spending taxpayer money to speed the process along. Perhaps soon the Constitution will be amended to read, “We the tech companies of the United States, in order to form a more perfect environment for our constant enrichment, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States. ” Sleep tight, America.