Oracle says it will cut Project Jupiter emissions after New Mexico org seeks to toss permit case

With a hearing still pending for an air quality permit for the Project Jupiter data center in southern New Mexico, Oracle Corporation on Thursday announced plans to cut emissions from the data center’s proposed power source by 35%, citing feedback it’s received from NMED and the public.

Under the newly announced plans, the power source’s annual greenhouse gas emissions would drop from about 8.8 million tons per year to 5.7 million, the company noted in a news release.

“NMED’s staff asked hard technical questions, and they pushed us to address the concerns raised by the public,” Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president and head of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said in a statement. “We have been fully cooperating with the agency to answer every question and provide all the information it requested. We studied the issues raised in the public record and came back with refinements that do even more to protect New Mexico’s air and climate.”

The corporation’s announcement followed a request from environmental advocates on Wednesday that the hearing officer presiding over the pending air quality permit toss the case after newly released documents raised questions about the project’s potential pollution levels.

The New Mexico Environment Department earlier this month published thousands of pages of documents as part of the administrative record in the pending air quality permit case. The application from Project Jupiter’s developers seeks permission to power the data center with a fuel cell system that would rely on a yet-to-be-built natural gas pipeline.

Source NM previously reported that the developer’s initial application showed the fuel cell system could emit as many greenhouse gases as New Mexico’s largest cities combined.

However, Project Jupiter opponent Mariel Nanasi, an attorney who leads the Santa Fe-based clean energy advocacy organization New Energy Economy, on Wednesday filed a motion asking the hearing officer presiding over the matter to toss the application based on new details found in the lengthy administrative record.

Contested New Mexico hearing officer for Project Jupiter air quality permit hearing recuses himself

Namely, emails between the New Mexico Environment Department and attorneys representing Project Jupiter’s developers show that recent modeling indicated the potential for a much higher concentration of pollutants in the proposed fuel cell system’s emissions.

In one of the emails, an NMED attorney wrote that the finding “calls into question whether the original use of assumptions is a defensible and conservative approach.”

To critics like Nanasi, that question ought to “stop this proceeding in its tracks.”

“The agency charged with determining whether this massive facility complies with New Mexico’s air-quality laws has itself questioned whether the assumptions underlying the original pollution modeling are defensible,” Nanasi said in a Wednesday statement. “The Air Quality Bureau cannot simply proceed toward a hearing as though nothing material has changed.”

Retired federal judge James Browning, the newly appointed hearing officer presiding over the air quality permit case, at a Thursday meeting said he intends to hold an Oct. 26 hearing regarding Nanasi’s motion to dismiss.