SpaceX delays removal of xAI unpermitted gas turbines

SpaceX says it will take until July 2027 to remove unpermitted gas turbines that have been powering xAI’s Colossus data centers near Memphis, according to TechCrunch. The company says it is transitioning to a permanent natural-gas power plant sized at 1.2 gigawatts. The turbines in question sit just over the Tennessee border in Mississippi.

The dispute is less about whether the data centers need power than about how quickly large private compute projects are being stood up compared with the permitting systems meant to govern local air quality. TechCrunch reports that xAI has been operating 69 gas turbines for months, and that the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center have sued over the use of turbines that lacked permits. SpaceX argues it can run them without permits because they remain on the trailers they were shipped on; TechCrunch notes federal rules require permits for turbines of this size and use regardless of whether they are trailer-mounted.

The planned replacement is not a small retrofit. Permit documents cited by TechCrunch describe a new plant consisting of 41 gas turbines, each in the tens of megawatts, and the company’s IPO filing said it planned to buy $2.8 billion worth of gas turbines for data centers over the next three years. The economics are straightforward: the faster a data center comes online, the sooner the compute can be sold, while the costs of added pollution are borne by the surrounding area. TechCrunch adds that the region is among the most polluted in the US, and that the turbines xAI has been running have the potential to emit more than 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides per year.

The legal posture also signals how “AI infrastructure” is being treated as a special category. TechCrunch reports that the US Department of Justice sided with SpaceX in the NAACP lawsuit last month, describing the turbines as a matter of “national, economic, and energy security.” That framing turns a local permitting question into a national-interest argument, even as the solution on offer is simply more gas generation—just with paperwork and a different configuration.

SpaceX says the unpermitted turbines will not all be gone until July 2027. In the meantime, the Colossus data centers keep running on temporary machines that, according to the lawsuit, were never supposed to be the long-term plan.