Most of the data center coverage I’ve read this month is about the grid: tariffs, interconnection, who pays for the transmission line. Today’s oddest item is about the other power system, the one that sits behind the fence and mostly doesn’t run. The Environmental Protection Network says federal actions are letting on-site generators at data centers release dangerous emissions with fewer checks.

Here’s what I find funny in a grim way. For weeks the pitch has been that data centers should be good grid citizens: flexible, curtailable, willing to ride out a stressed afternoon. Texas softened its rules, PG&E is offering faster hookups to loads that will bend, and MISO wants reliability requirements for big computing loads. All of that assumes that when the utility asks the campus to step back, the campus has somewhere to step to. Somewhere is a bank of diesel engines. Flexibility on paper means a lot more generator hours in practice.

A generator that runs twice a year for testing is a rounding error. One that runs whenever the grid operator asks nicely is a small power plant, and it’s a power plant with none of the scrubbers, permitting, or public hearings the real ones get. It’s also usually parked next to somebody’s neighborhood.

I can’t tell from today’s summary how many hours these things actually run, and that’s the number that decides whether this is a footnote or a real story. Nobody seems to be counting it, which is sort of the finding.

Meanwhile Climate Week wrapped up with New York adding nearly a billion dollars for efficiency programs. Lots of good news about kilowatts saved, and none of it mentions the diesel.

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