Kyger Creek Station in Ohio emitted 3,736 tons of sulfur dioxide in 2024. The plant was scheduled to retire. Instead, the Department of Energy ordered it kept open, citing AI data center demand. The EPA's own modeling estimates it causes 43 deaths per year. Those 43 people are not concentrated in the zip codes where AI infrastructure investors live.

This is the part the press releases skip. When Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Reuters in September 2025 that fueling AI data centers is a major driver for keeping existing coal capacity running, he was describing a policy decision, not a weather event. The DOE has now ordered 5 coal plants past their planned retirement dates and approved $175 million in February 2026 for upgrades to 7 more via public-private partnerships. The Federal Power Act's emergency authority, written for grid crises, is being stretched to cover the electricity appetite of server farms whose operators have standing net-zero commitments on their investor relations pages.

\h2>The Promise Was Never the Expensive Part

Senators Whitehouse, Heinrich, and Van Hollen launched a probe this month into 8 AI firms, including Meta, OpenAI, and xAI, over 12 planned gas-powered data centers. Their letter to these companies notes that some of these plants are 10 times larger than the average US gas plant, and that the lifetime CO2 from the full pipeline of planned projects reaches 12.1 billion tons, roughly double a full year of current US emissions. Pacifico Energy's GW Ranch alone is permitted for 30 million tons of greenhouse gases annually.

Tech firms will argue, with some fairness, that they cannot unilaterally build the grid; they depend on what regulators permit and utilities offer. That tension is real. But the same firms lobbying against data center emissions regulations while publishing net-zero pledges are not passive participants in this outcome. They chose these projects. They signed these permits.

The Senate responses are due March 27. What the senators almost certainly will not receive: any disclosure linking these projects to projected mortality. A Harvard researcher, Michael Cork, released analysis this past week showing that Vantage's data center in Virginia generates soot emissions tied to tens of millions of dollars in annual health costs across Virginia, DC, and Maryland. His argument is that quantifying that health burden is essential before policymakers decide how to authorize digital infrastructure. Nobody in the permitting process is currently required to do that math.

Who the Emergency Was Declared For

The DOE's emergency framing deserves scrutiny on its own terms. The 5 coal plants it ordered open are all more than 50 years old and require costly repairs to stay viable. The $97 million in upgrades flowing to Cardinal Plant in Ohio, including $34 million in direct DOE funding, is not grid maintenance. It is a public subsidy for the energy costs of some of the most profitable companies in the world. North Carolina ratepayers are already seeing electricity costs rise as data centers multiply. They did not consent to cross-subsidize AI inference.

The question worth holding is not whether AI needs power. It does, and the demand is real. The question is why the default answer to that demand keeps landing on infrastructure whose external costs fall on people with no seat at the negotiation table. Solar, wind, nuclear, and battery storage exist. They were not the choice made here.

Congress should tie any federal energy authorization for data center construction to mandatory health-impact disclosure, modeled on environmental impact statements, with third-party verification. Until the 43 annual deaths from Kyger Creek show up somewhere in a data center's cost structure, the accounting is simply incomplete.