California Agency Urged to Protect Public Health, Environment From Data Center Diesel Generators

“We’re asking Bay Area officials to make people’s health and our environment a priority and hold data centers accountable for their pollution. This billion-dollar industry shouldn’t be allowed to exploit outdated regulations and pollute our neighborhoods while raking in massive profits,” said Meya Saenz Zagar, an Oakland-based campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The regulations for diesel generators are ridiculously out of date. They never anticipated this flood of industrial behemoths belching toxic air pollution, but that’s now our reality.”

The Bay Area’s diesel generator rules are decades old, predating the surge of data centers, which can have up to 50 generators at a single site. The generators are supposed to be used only for emergency backup power, but under current rules data center operators determine what qualifies as an “emergency” and self-report use and emissions. The lax reporting requirements make it nearly impossible to know how often these generators are being used.

Today’s petition calls on regulators to require data centers to submit additional information detailing diesel backup generator operations and emissions so residents know how much pollution is being released in their neighborhoods. The petition also recommends closing permitting loopholes to limit the data center industry’s reliance on diesel backup generators, which are one of the dirtiest ways to generate power.

“The Bay Area has some of the worst air quality in the country with some areas having baseline fine particle pollution at 140% of the level allowed by the EPA. The explosion of these train engine-level industrial pollution emitters in our neighborhoods, next to schools, parks and places of worship is undoubtedly having a real effect on the health of our communities,” said Masheika Allgood, founder of AllAI Consulting. “This is exactly the type of cumulative pollution our laws were intended to protect us from. But the laws weren’t built for our current reality, and they’re failing us. Bay Area residents have a right to breathable air. To live our lives and raise our children in an environment that is supportive of human life. Bay Area residents have the right to a future. Proper measurement and assessment of the pollutants emanating from the thousands of data center diesel generators in our communities is the first step towards securing that future.”

Bay Area data centers are often clustered in low-income neighborhoods already overburdened with pollution, including near schools and community centers. Diesel pollution emitted from these generators is linked to cancer and heart and lung disease. In one area in Santa Clara, 73 data centers operate across nine square miles.

“San Jose is racing to become the data center capital of the West Coast, signing a deal with PG&E, securing binding commitments for power delivery and leveraging the incoming 2,000 megawatts of new transmission capacity for what it calls a historic buildout,” said Ellina Yin from Dreaming Collaborative. “Cities are now chasing economic benefits and promised returns that sound more like a venture capital pitch than responsible public policy. The regulatory frameworks governing these projects were written for a different era and a different scale, and they should be updated with the same urgency that tech companies bring to updating their terms and conditions,”

Today’s petition also seeks regulation of data centers as a single source of air pollution, instead of the current practice of permitting each generator one by one, which masks the true extent of the harms to public health and the environment.

“We’re proud to stand with Bay Area communities working to protect their families from harmful pollution linked to data centers. This is just another example of how tech corporations are exploiting regulatory systems in ways that deepen environmental inequities, particularly through the widespread use of diesel backup generators,” said Danny Cendejas, a campaign specialist at MediaJustice. “The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has a critical opportunity to bring greater transparency and accountability to these practices. Too often, rules designed for essential services like hospitals are being stretched beyond their intent, putting frontline communities at risk. We urge the district to take decisive action to ensure its regulations truly safeguard public health and protect the communities most affected.”

The petition asks the air quality district to set a clean energy standard for data center back-up generators. It also recommends that these dirty, noisy energy sources be replaced with clean, zero-emission technologies like battery storage.


The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.8 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/california-agency-urged-to-protect-public-health-environment-from-data-center-diesel-generators-2026-04-22/