Oracle touts Project Jupiter benefits during tour as wrangling over power continues

The post Oracle touts Project Jupiter benefits during tour as wrangling over power continues appeared first on Searchlight New Mexico.

SANTA TERESA — More than 4,000 workers labor at Project Jupiter’s site near the U.S.-Mexico border to construct gray buildings that will house computing systems.

The hyperscale data center’s closed-loop cooling system was on display this week as executives of developers Oracle and STACK Infrastructure provided the first official media tour of the massive project.

The event came Tuesday as Oracle touted its projected state economic impact of $13 billion, nearly three times the previous estimate of $4.7 billion.

During a presentation to Doña Ana County commissioners, the tech conglomerate also announced a $1 million investment in flood recovery and — controversially — a plan to offset El Paso Electric customers’ utility costs as Project Jupiter developers work to strike a deal with the utility for backup power.

But even as the data center buildings near completion, they remain without power. A proposed natural gas fuel cell plant to power the sprawling complex still lacks a state air quality permit. The state also has delayed a natural gas pipeline to supply the fuel, first rejecting a proposal to build the pipeline on state trust land and then calling for a new federal review that includes the environmental impacts.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in an Oct. 5 filing its review was inadequate. A dozen states have pushed backed against New Mexico, urging federal regulators to fast-track approval of the pipeline.

As part of Tuesday’s tour, Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, pointed out a microgrid site that was empty apart from a truck with eight tanks from Bloom Energy, the company brought in to power the plant. The tanks represent “just a sample” of the 7,000 fuel cells Oracle will need to power the data center, according to Thiagarajan’s estimates.

Construction hasn’t yet started at the microgrid as the developers wait for state regulators’ decision on the air quality permit.

Permit hearing delayed

A weeklong public hearing in Sunland Park on the proposed permit, initially scheduled in September, will now start Dec. 7, New Mexico Environment Department hearing officer James O. Browning said Thursday at a scheduling conference.

It’s possible the hearing will be further postponed, Browning acknowledged; however, he said, “We need to get something on the calendar.”

The delay renders moot a previously set deadline of Nov. 23 for the Environment Department to issue a decision on the permit application.

The permit proceeding has faced numerous delays as critics pushed back against the plan for a natural gas fuel cell plant. The New Mexico Supreme Court temporarily paused the process Aug. 23 after environmental advocates claimed a lack of due process during the proceeding and the former hearing officer resigned. Justices lifted the stay less than a month later.

Browning, a retired senior U.S. district judge, on Thursday brought back a discovery process — albeit circumscribed — in which opposing parties exchange evidence in a case.

The decision follows the disclosure of emails from the Environment Department to Project Jupiter attorneys this month noting new modeling requested by agency staff showed higher concentrations of pollutants than emissions modeling the developers had submitted earlier this year.

Santa Fe-based environmental advocacy group New Energy Economy filed a motion Wednesday seeking dismissal of Project Jupiter’s air quality permit application without prejudice — meaning the developers could reapply — arguing the application is “administratively incomplete.” The motion also noted the modeling discrepancy: Pollutant concentrations doubled with the updated modeling, according to the Environment Department.

A hearing on the motion is scheduled Oct. 26.

New Energy Economy’s filing “raised sufficiently serious issues,” Browning said Thursday, adding “it would not be good for this proceeding if I just said there’s no discovery. … I don’t think that helps the process.”

‘Show us the modeling’

In the wake of the Environment Department’s questions about emissions estimates, Oracle and Yucca Growth Infrastructure, the company developing the microgrid, announced Thursday additional changes to the design, which they said would cut emissions by about 35%. This is shaping up to be their fourth application to the state agency in the past 11 months.

“NMED’s staff asked hard technical questions, and they pushed us to address the concerns raised by the public,” Thiagarajan said in a statement. “We’re proud of the low-emissions solution that Bloom Energy fuel cells bring to Project Jupiter and are excited we were able to commit to even lower emissions than we originally expected.”

Bloom has faced scrutiny. An investor lawsuit filed in July claimed the company had concealed its reliance on Chinese scandium, and a report by news organization Hunterbrook questioned whether enough of the rare mineral exists for a project as large as Project Jupiter.

Thiaragian sidestepped a question about the criticism, instead describing the fuel cells as modular “mini islands” of power and saying Bloom continues to work closely with regulators on the air quality permit.

Officials for Bloom did not respond to The New Mexican’s request for comment.

Even with a 35% decrease in emissions, the facility would put out more greenhouse gases than Albuquerque, said Colin Cox, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. And new emissions modeling means environmental experts would have to start over on their lengthy analysis, he added.

The Environment Department and the parties in the case had yet to see the new design’s details.

“The public should not be asked to accept a 35% cleaner Project Jupiter on faith,” New Energy Economy Executive Director Mariel Nanasi said in a statement. “Show us the modeling. Show us the assumptions. Show us the data. Give independent experts sufficient time to analyze them. Then the Hearing Officer and the public can determine what Project Jupiter will actually put into New Mexico’s air.”

Cox said the 35% emissions reduction is “hardly an improvement.”

“This new application doesn’t fix the fundamental problem with what they’re proposing with the power plant … that it’s going to make climate change worse; it’s going to make New Mexico drier; it’s going to pollute the air with toxins,” he said.

‘Residents deserve respect’

Meanwhile, Doña Ana County residents have reiterated concerns over the project’s environmental effects, sunk costs, delays and lack of transparency.

“I’ve taken in my head to referring to Project Jupiter as Project Whack-a-Mole. It is like a game of Whack-a-Mole, which is every time that an issue gets raised with regard to Project Jupiter, they pop up with a new theory or a new strategy or a new energy source,” state Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, said at a legislative meeting earlier this month at New Mexico State University.

Oracle on Tuesday proposed to provide up to $55 million annually in direct credits to El Paso Electric customers for up to three years as part of an energy services agreement with the utility for emergency backup power, the company said in a news release. Oracle would pay El Paso Electric $100 million over 10 years.

But as El Paso Electric rates are set to surge — which the utility said in June is needed in part to meet growing demand from big electric users like data centers — county commissioners and the public questioned why Oracle would need to partner with the utility in the first place.

Commission Chair Manny Sanchez said working with El Paso Electric would require an amendment to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds the county approved, with a condition preventing Project Jupiter from impacting utility customers’ rates. The plan has been for a separate, on-site power source for the data center.

“With the announcement, it feels like it’s very much a cart before the horse,” Sanchez said.

Oracle executives emphasized Project Jupiter was not the cause of the utility’s rate increase.

Other commissioners had sharper words for Oracle executives, who had failed to give them advance notice of the El Paso Electric collaboration.

“You see the people behind you. They’ve been asking for transparency for well over a year, and we’re still having the same issue. It’s not appreciated,” Commissioner Susana Chaparro said. “My residents deserve respect. They deserve honesty, and I’ve mentioned this time after time after time. And you’re not rising to the occasion, and I don’t understand why.”

Thiagarajan told commissioners Oracle wanted to work with the community on the rate credit proposal.

“Our intent was that we were doing something nice,” Thiagarajan said. “Obviously, that was incorrect. So we take that back. We want to work with you. You tell us how you want to do the [El Paso Electric] thing. … I would never do anything that this county is not happy with.”

During Tuesday’s tour, Thiagarajan said Oracle would not necessarily back out of the El Paso Electric agreement but rather would work with the county to “hear their feedback.”

El Paso Electric seemed receptive to the plan: “We welcome the opportunity to facilitate Oracle’s credit to further affordability for our customers,” President and CEO Kelly Tomblin said in a statement.

“Growth and investment in New Mexico has always been an EPE priority, and we support the effort Oracle is making to ensure that this growth benefits our residential and small commercial customers,” added Tomblin, who is retiring next month.

Criticism and applause

Tuesday’s County Commission meeting was muted compared to previous meetings, when data center dissenters came in the dozens, chanting and holding signs.

Those who returned were fatigued.

“I nonetheless think it’s worth repeating myself because, like many of y’all’s constituents, I’m just not sure if you’re listening,” said Thea De Armond, an NMSU professor. “A similar fast-tracked process in Arizona, border wall construction, destroyed a sacred geoglyph thousands of years older than the Egyptian pyramids. So, I’m concerned about that.”

She added, “I’m also concerned about the history that is yet to be, the future that y’all are creating — a future where we will have sacrificed the well-being of New Mexicans, their water, their air, their peace and quiet, to enrich Larry Ellison,” she said, referring to Oracle’s chairman, chief technology officer and cofounder.”

Others continued to laud Project Jupiter’s economic impact.

Raul Retana, who grew up in Anthony, “would never have considered moving back here … unless there were projects like this going on. I’m very for growth. I’m very for prosperity.”

Retana, a business agent at Local 16, an affiliate of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, added: “I have real love for this place, for these people, for the culture out here.”

New hiring campaign

Oracle hopes to recruit more Doña Ana County workers like Retana. It announced a renewed advertising campaign Tuesday.

Oracle previously disclosed it had given $3.44 million — the largest promotional push in New Mexico — to the national Republican political consulting and advertising firm BrabenderCox, as it sought to influence the New Mexico Environment Department to approve the air quality permit.

“You’re going to see advertising here in Doña Ana County instructing people who want to learn more about opportunities at the site to be able to go take action and be able to reach out to us,” said Jake Oster, who leads Oracle’s community relations and sustainability policy. “You’re going to see billboards on roadways, digital ads, social media posts … reaching Las Cruces, Sunland Park, Anthony, Chaparral and Santa Teresa.”

Oracle reported more than 600 of the 4,000 construction workers at the site hail from Doña Ana County.

But an increased investment in a local hiring pipeline will not sway the data center’s harshest critics, who are calling for an outright ban on such projects.

“We keep selling out our communities for these industries that honestly don’t care about us as New Mexicans,” state Rep. Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces, said at a legislative meeting Oct. 6 at NMSU. “We should be sending a message that data centers do not belong in the state. That they should not be continuing.”

Julia Gentin is a reporter for The Las Cruces New Mexican, The Santa Fe New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico through a partnership with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. She covers the Southern New Mexico region. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.

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