Grays Ferry Leads Philly Data Center Moratorium Push — SkimNews
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- Shawmar Pitts, managing co-director of Philly Thrive, is leading the "No Data Centers in Philly" campaign; Philadelphia officials have identified two potential sites, one of which sits in Pitts' Grays Ferry neighborhood next to a former oil refinery.
- Sonya Sanders, Philly Thrive board president, told the Monday rally she believes emissions from the now-defunct Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery—which processed up to 335,000 barrels of crude oil daily before a 2019 explosion—caused her husband's 2020 death from a rare bone cancer.
- BloombergNEF projects that by 2035, U.S. data centers will consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined, nearly double the firm's estimate from just nine months ago, according to the source.
- Additional data center demand is expected to generate an extra 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution daily—about 12% of current U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—per the article's reported figures.
- City moratoriums on data center construction have been approved in Denver, Indianapolis, Asheville, Charlotte, and Reno, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order temporarily blocking new large-project permits, stating projects "should only be built in places that want them."
- Clean Air Council attorney Annie Fox warned at the rally that Pennsylvania data centers typically include hundreds of diesel engines that regulators expect to be used during heat waves rather than drawing from an overstressed electrical grid.
- More than 100 people attended the campaign kickoff rally at Philadelphia's City Hall, chanting loudly enough that council members inside could hear them.
Why it matters: The BloombergNEF projection—nearly doubling its estimate in just nine months—shows AI infrastructure expansion is outpacing even industry forecasts, and communities like Grays Ferry that already absorbed decades of refinery pollution now face a second wave of fossil-fuel-intensive industry with no formal proposals yet to reject.
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