A new report models emissions from different on-site methane generation power scenarios to show potential impacts on the people of Utah and residents of multiple downwind states.
Canadian businessman and television personality “Mr. Wonderful” (aka Kevin O’Leary) and his businesses have proposed the Stratos data center in Box Elder County, Utah, near Salt Lake City, that will be one of the largest data centers in the world, requiring as much as 9 gigawatts (GW) of on-site power from burning methane gas. The Box Elder County Commission approved the project in May—under highly contentious circumstances and under a highly unusual arrangement within a project area created by Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority.
A new report prepared by EmPower Analytics Group for NRDC estimates that the air pollution, health harms, and economic damages from the proposed Stratos data center would be substantial: “[a]t the potential 9 GW full build-out, air pollution from Stratos’s methane-gas power generation is estimated to cause approximately 5–45 additional premature deaths and $75–$690 million in health-related economic damages every year.” The report also discusses additional health harms that extend beyond premature deaths and include new asthma cases, nonfatal heart attacks, hospital visits, and lost work and school days.
These ranges reflect scenarios that model the health harms and economic damage caused by air pollution from two possible methane-gas primary power generating technologies: modern combined-cycle combustion turbines and methane gas–fired reciprocating internal combustion engines (RICE). 5) —about 30 times smaller than the width of an average human hair.
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