In March, a developer working on a Meta data center in El Paso applied to power the site with a gas-burning plant large enough to supply electricity to 300,000 homes.

Typically, approving a big power plant might require public hearings and months of detailed vetting. But Texas environmental regulators signed off in just 20 days.

They approved another project in three days. And an even larger data center power plant, also gas-burning, won approval in just two days.

All without public notice.

“They’re going to fire up those turbines,” said Cynthia Crouse, who lives about a mile from the planned Meta data center and power plant in an upscale development with panoramic views of the desert. “I thought I’d bought my dream home, that I’d be looking out on the dark sky, hearing the coyotes call. Then I woke up to the biggest nightmare I’ve ever had.”

In the debate over data centers that is roiling the country, water use and noise are often cited as objections by neighbors and environmentalists. Less mentioned has been the pollution from the scores of gas-burning plants that will power these data centers.

When the El Paso facility’s power plant is complete, it could emit as much planet-warming carbon dioxide in a year as 360,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles over the same period.

With encouragement from the Trump administration, data center developers are building their own power plants, instead of plugging into an electric grid. Nationwide, at least 82 gas-burning power plants are being built or have been proposed to power data centers, according to the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonpartisan research organization. Most were announced or granted permits within the past 18 months.

​If built as planned, the gas burning plants — scattered across states including Texas, Ohio and Wyoming — could release as much planet-warming pollution in a year as roughly half of all the passenger vehicles in the United States, according to estimates based on permits, regulatory filings and other data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project.

They would also produce harmful pollutants including particulate matter, formaldehyde and smog-forming nitrogen oxides that can contribute to heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, strokes and other ailments in people living nearby.

Texas has been particularly aggressive in approving power plants to meet the needs of the data center boom, granting permits under a fast-track system that involves little public scrutiny or oversight. The state accounts for 39 of the 82 planned gas-burning plants.

For data centers, the motivation to build their own power plants is simple. It can take years to connect to an electric grid. And data centers face growing pressure to generate their own power so they don’t tap into local grids and drive up electricity prices. Hunger for gas power among data-center owners is so great, Elon Musk this spring bought a company that specializes in rapid-deployment gas and diesel turbines.

It’s a strategy endorsed by the president. “I’m telling them they can build their own plant,” President Trump said in February during his State of the Union address. “They’re going to produce their own electricity.”

And last month he doubled down. Speaking at the White House, Mr. Trump said that rapidly building more fossil-fuel-burning power plants was essential to America’s A.I. race with China, and that environmental protections should be rolled back because of that. “They build a lot of electric,” he said. “They don’t do environmental impact statements. They just say, ‘You want electric? We’ll build it.’”

“And they don’t use too many windmills,” Mr. Trump added, reflecting his well-documented disdain for wind power. In fact, China leads the world in wind energy and is responsible for more than half of total capacity.

The gas-burning plants being designed to power American data centers “carry significant environmental footprints,” said Jen Duggan, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “Yet they’re fast-tracking them.” In Texas in particular, “weak air pollution control permits that don’t protect public health are a systemic problem,” she said.

With its abundant reserves of natural gas, Texas stands to benefit greatly from new power plants built to serve data centers. But even in fossil-fuel-friendly Texas, a backlash about the pace is building and the governor has called for a ban on projects in rural areas.

Victoria Cann, a spokeswoman for the Texas environmental regulator, said the plants receiving permits had been found “to be protective of human health and the environment” and didn’t require public notice.

Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said the company was “committed to offsetting 100 percent of our electricity use in El Paso with clean and renewable energy,” and that Meta “will not pass those costs on to Texans.”

It’s not the first time a new industry has arisen, demanding ever more energy. And because things are moving quickly, uncertainties remain. Some projects have hit snags, throwing into question whether they will be built as planned, said Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, a company that tracks data-center energy infrastructure. In addition, he said, companies might not release as much pollution as permits allow because data centers don’t always run at full capacity.

Still, the current trajectory has few historical comparisons. “There’s no doubt that this is going to have a huge environmental impact,” Mr. Thomas said. The gas plants being built exclusively to power data centers, he said, “could result in tens of millions of tons of emissions that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.”

Historic rollbacks

While on the campaign trail in Wisconsin in 2024, Mr. Trump said: “I’m an environmentalist. I want clean air and clean water.” Four months later as president, he began a weakening of environmental protections rooted in laws that date back more than a half-century.

The risk is an increase in air pollution, including the greenhouse gases warming the world as well as pollutants that affect the health of people living nearby.

The administration has emphasized “energy dominance” by promoting oil, natural gas and coal over renewable power like solar and wind. Days after returning to office in 2025, Mr. Trump issued an executive order “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” designed to make it faster to build data centers and easier to operate them.

The Environmental Protection Agency is making it easier for data centers to run certain kinds of emergency generators that burn highly polluting diesel fuel. It has proposed a sweeping rule change that would let developers start building data centers and power plants before their air pollution permits are approved. And it has exempted gas plants that supply data centers from federal limits on pollution that causes acid rain.

The Trump administration has also waded into a major legal fight over data center pollution, defending Elon Musk’s A.I. company against accusations that it is illegally running dozens of gas-burning turbines in Mississippi.

To encourage construction, the Trump administration has created a temporary reprieve from the strictest pollution controls for portable generators that can be installed quickly. Smaller generators often lack advanced emission controls and use simpler designs that pollute more than standard gas turbines.

Texas is where much of the action is.

To speed up approvals, Texas regulators are also allowing developers to break up a large power project into smaller phases, which means each approval faces less rigorous rules.

Last month, several environmental groups including the Environmental Integrity Project formally gave notice that they intended to sue over the practice. They sent a required legal notice to two data center developers, the E.P.A. and Texas alleging that the developers sought to bypass stricter pollution rules by seeking four fast-tracked permits for two power plants that will ultimately have 151 diesel-burning generators.

Compared to natural gas, diesel when burned produces more nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and sulfur oxide as well as more particulate matter.

Of the 39 new gas plants being built in Texas to power data centers, 15 have been fast-tracked under similar procedures. The state’s rules allow smaller facilities to sometimes qualify for reduced pollution controls or monitoring. Smaller power plants can also avoid public-comment periods, which means residents don’t have an opportunity to weigh in or ask questions.

Since the start of last year, the average turnaround time for these less-rigorous permits for gas-burning plants linked to data centers was 18 days. In comparison, companies applying for full air permits, the category that commonly applies to more traditional power plants in the state, can expect to wait 285 days, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental regulator.

The full permit requires, among other things, detailed engineering reviews, an examination of the potential for new air pollution and a public notice period.

“These numbers are alarming,” said Daniel E. Walters, a professor of energy law at the Texas A&M University School of Law. “There’s just no feasible way to do a meaningful review of a permit application in so few days,” he said.

The fact that Texas is allowing large projects to be approved in smaller phases creates a legal loophole, said Thomas O. McGarity, an administrative and environmental law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, by ignoring the cumulative environmental effects. “They’re building many of these units and putting them together,” he said.

In West Texas, an immense data campus named Poolside AI is designed to ultimately require two gigawatts of electricity, enough to power a city of 1.5 million households. Poolside plans to seek approval for its power generation not all at once, but in eight phases. Its first phase received approval in just three days.

Poolside didn’t respond to a request for comment.

At the Meta project outside El Paso, Meta aims to power its one-gigawatt data center in several phases. The first 366 megawatts would come from a power plant made up of more than 800 small gas-burning generators bolted to concrete pads. The plant was approved in 20 days.

The data-center industry has taken note of Texas’s openness to plants like these.

At a seminar in March by ALL4, an environmental consulting firm, specialists portrayed Texas as a premier place to build data centers with on-site power plants even if they emit smog-producing nitrogen oxide, or NOx. Smog is a persistent problem in parts of Texas.

“You might be thinking, ‘How on earth am I supposed to build a data center here?’” said Andrew Hebert, a managing consultant at the firm, during a webinar at the event. “Engines and turbines produce a lot of NOx.”

“It can be done in Texas,” he told the group.

A spokeswoman for ALL4, Stacy Shelp, said the group consistently counseled effective emission controls and early, transparent communication with communities.

Approval in just 20 days

On an expanse of land within El Paso’s city limits, Meta is moving at lightning speed to build a $14 billion data center. The local utility, El Paso Electric, had previously said Meta would aim to use solar power. Instead, the developer’s plan calls for gas-burning generators.

El Paso frequently receives an F grade from the American Lung Association for its high number of unhealthy smog days.

The swift approval of the air permit has angered many local residents, as has an 80 percent break on property taxes that El Paso gave Meta for building there. The tax break will last 35 years.

At a City Council hearing in May, people waited for hours to voice their opposition. Among them was Michael Ramirez, who had dashed to City Hall during a break as a cook at Mamacita’s, a Mexican restaurant downtown.

“When something important is taking place,” he said to the city councilors, “tell us.”

Still, the data center has its supporters.

“If El Paso stops welcoming major investments,” Ricardo Rivero, a member of a union representing electrical workers, said at a follow-up hearing, “we risk slowing the growth that has created opportunities for workers like me.”

Meta said the project is expected to employ more than 4,000 construction workers during the project’s peak. However, local organizers have pointed out that such jobs are temporary. After the data center opens, there will be about 300 permanent positions, Meta said.

That’s also a point of debate in Vista Del Norte, the neighborhood on Meta’s doorstep. “There’s no good-paying jobs in El Paso,” said Winston Colon, a veteran who lives there, speaking at a neighborhood association meeting. A data center was progress, he said. “What do we want? Another Walmart?”

“Can’t get groceries at a data center,” another person at the hearing replied.

In response to the backlash, the city said it would not pursue additional large data centers. Many residents demanded that the contract with Meta be canceled, but in June the El Paso City Council rejected a motion to do that.

The gas plant could potentially emit more than 1.5 million tons of greenhouse gases a year if operated at full capacity, the Environmental Integrity Project estimates. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions from nearly four typical natural-gas-burning power plants, according to E.P.A. data.

Stacey Yip, a Meta spokeswoman, said the El Paso project was “supporting thousands of construction and hundreds of operational jobs, generating millions in local tax revenue, and supporting the digital infrastructure that El Paso businesses and families rely on every day.”

Meta referred questions about the generators to the company providing them. That company, Enchanted Rock, said its generators were designed to provide “flexible, rapidly deployable power” and met stringent emissions standards.

In a statement, El Paso Electric, the local utility, said it was committed to renewable energy but that “renewable generation alone cannot provide the continuous power required at this time.”

Rising emissions nationwide

The plans nationwide to build dozens of new gas-burning power plants come as U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which had been declining for two years, are rising again.

Technology companies, including Amazon and Google, that had pledged to reduce their emissions are instead reporting an increase tied to data centers.

The Trump administration has said it is leaving environmental oversight to local communities. The E.P.A. has also been telling power plants that are not connected to the grid that they are exempt from federal limits on pollutants like nitrogen oxide that cause smog and acid rain.

Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, has made A.I. a top priority, meeting with Republican lawmakers to discuss data centers and energy deregulation. “From day one,” he said on Fox News last year, the E.P.A. has worked “to cut down barriers that have acted as a roadblock so we can bolster the growth of A.I., and make America the A.I. capital of the world.”

And at a forum in June, he said the federal government would get out of the way of local decisions on issuing permits for new data centers. “Communities know what works best for them,” Mr. Zeldin said.

Design by Mira Rojanasakul.