EPA lets data center power plants bypass key pollution laws, and crypto miners could benefit too

If you build a power plant but don’t connect it to the grid, the EPA now says certain federal pollution rules don’t apply to you. That’s the gist of a memo issued on July 16 by EPA Assistant Administrator Aaron Szabo, and it could quietly reshape how data centers, and potentially crypto mining operations, get their electricity. The clarification centers on what the agency calls “islanded” power generation facilities. These are self-contained plants that serve a single private consumer, like a data center, without ever touching the public utility grid. According to the EPA, these facilities fall outside the scope of the Acid Rain Program under the Clean Air Act. What the Acid Rain Program actually does The Acid Rain Program, or ARP, has been around since the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. It caps emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from large electric generating units connected to the grid. The EPA’s legal reasoning here is surprisingly straightforward. The ARP’s definitions, drawn from the 1990 DOE Form 860, specifically cover generators that sell electricity “primarily for use by the public.” If your power plant exists solely to feed a single private...