The Trump administration has exempted power plants that primarily serve data centers from the Clean Air Act's Acid Rain Program, freeing them from limits on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency argues these "islanded" plants, which supply electricity directly to data centres rather than the public, do not count as utilities and therefore fall outside the programme's remit, a decision it has described as a "commonsense" approach to regulation supporting US AI competitiveness.

Nearly 60 such power plants are already operating or under construction across the country, many fast-tracked by the government, and Bloomberg has forecast that data centres could account for a fifth of US energy consumption within roughly eight years. Acid rain precursors are known to strip nutrients from soil, poison waterways, damage vegetation and erode stonework, while also worsening respiratory and cardiac conditions in humans, according to the EPA's own guidance. The move follows a pattern of the administration prioritising AI infrastructure over environmental concerns, including its recent backing of Elon Musk's xAI in a pollution dispute with the NAACP, and comments from President Trump urging communities to accept data centres rather than resist them.