Consumer/Enviro Groups Unveil Plans to Block Moore Administration Effort to Build a Dirty-Energy Data Center in Charles County
Groups urged Moore to instead support current House/Senate legislative efforts to protect Marylanders from data center pollution
Watch recording of press conference on Instagram HERE.
ANNAPOLIS, MD — Environmental and consumer protection advocates gathered in Annapolis today, vowing to “fight with all we’ve got” to stop the Moore Administration’s plan to facilitate the construction of a massive new gas plant to power proposed data centers in Charles County, Maryland. The groups encouraged the Governor to avoid a “race to the bottom” on data centers and instead support House and Senate legislators trying to craft environmental safeguards against data center pollution right now in Annapolis.
Recent media reports confirm the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) has committed to facilitating efforts by the private cryptocurrency company TeraWulf to build a 1 gigawatt gas plant in Charles County to power large data centers along the Potomac River. The plant would require a new 20-mile-long gas pipeline to provide fuel and, once operational, would generate over three million tons of CO2 per year, a huge setback for the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.
“Governor Moore is a friend of the environment, so he has clearly been grossly misinformed on this issue,” said Mike Tidwell, Executive Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) Action Fund. “Building this massive gas plant is wrong for consumers and the climate. We will fight it with everything we’ve got – mass rallies, lawsuits, constant press conferences – until we stop it. The Governor should instead join legislators in requiring data centers to bring ONLY clean energy to their work.”
“Governor Moore’s pledge to ‘expedite’ environmental reviews and assistance in securing 20 miles of right of ways for new natural gas pipelines for TeraWulf’s planned fossil fuel data center is an outrage,” said Tyson Slocum, Energy Director at Public Citizen. “TeraWulf’s data center boondoggle threatens the communities in Charles County and would be one of the largest new fossil fuel expansion projects in the entire region. The Governor and the state of Maryland cannot circumvent the laws to accommodate TeraWulf’s unneeded and hazardous data center debacle. Instead of cutting backroom deals with cryptominers like TeraWulf, Gov. Moore should pledge to meet with local Charles County residents to work on a sustainable investment path for Morgantown Power.”
“The MDE just authorized a permit for 99 diesel generators in Frederick. They each have to be tested once a month, and that’s just for the first set of data centers in Frederick County.” Senator Karen Lewis Young (District 3, Frederick County). “So I agree with the proponents here. If we are going to build data centers — [and] we really need to do them unless we’re all going to give up our electronic devices — we need to do it in a responsible manner. They need to generate their own energy on-site. It needs to be clean energy. We need to understand the environmental impacts and the energy requirements of data centers before we keep expanding. That study won’t be available until next year. So we do need to slow down before we see those results.”
Tina Wilson, President of the Port Tobacco River Conservancy (based in Charles County), said, “The expedited approval of the Terawulf site sets a dangerous precedent for Charles County. My neighbors and I are calling for a return to a collaborative process where the facts — not just the Governor’s timeline — drive the decision-making. We deserve a future that prioritizes our water, our power grid, and our community’s long-term health over the rapid development of dirty data centers. Charles County is not a laboratory for unchecked data center expansion.”
“Our elected leaders two years ago said that they were committed to responsible data center development. We do not have responsible data center development right now,” said
Josh Tulkin, Director, Maryland Sierra Club. ”What we need is action, accountability. We need to bring this entire negotiation into the public light, and we need to stop counting data center income on one side while ignoring ratepayer costs on the other side, as if these are two completely separate ledgers, because right now our health is being harmed and Maryland ratepayers are paying for unregulated, unrestrained data center growth.”
“Ratepayers are paying billions of dollars to subsidize the biggest, wealthiest companies in the world, in the history of the world. This is a case of Grandma subsidizing Amazon,“ Said Jamie DeMarco, DeMarco Advocates.”While we strongly oppose the TeraWulf project and we’ll do everything in our power to stop that project from happening, we thank Governor Moore for all he has done and call on him to stop the expedited permitting process of the TeraWulf project. We also call on the legislature to take real action this year to put in the incentive for data center developers to actually bring their own energy and bring clean energy.”
Watch the livestream on Instagram HERE.
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