At an AI and fossil gasoline lovefest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania final week, President Donald Trump — flanked by cabinet members and executives from main tech and power giants like Google and ExxonMobil — stated that “a very powerful man of the day” was Environmental Safety Company head Lee Zeldin. “He’s gonna get you a allow for the biggest electrical producing plant on this planet in a couple of week, would you say?” Trump stated to chuckles within the viewers. Later that week, the Trump administration exempted coal-fired energy crops, services that make chemical compounds for semiconductor manufacturing, and certain other industrial sites from Biden-era air pollution regulations.
If Trump has his approach, the following technology of information facilities will run dirtier than the final. It isn’t sufficient to kill renewables and pave the way in which for extra coal and fuel crops to energy energy-hungry AI information facilities. Trump can be obsessive about tossing out environmental protections.
“It prices way more to do issues environmentally clear,” Trump claimed in an interview with Joe Rogan in October 2024. Upon his appointment to move the EPA (or, relatively, run it into the ground), Zeldin stated that he can be centered on “unleash[ing] US power dominance” and “mak[ing] America the AI capital of the world.” The EPA introduced thousands of layoffs on on July 18th, gutting its research and development arm.
“It prices way more to do issues environmentally clear.”
On the Pennsylvania Power and Innovation Summit, Trump attempted to take credit for private investments totaling round $36 billion for information heart initiatives and $56 million for brand spanking new power infrastructure. The ceremony itself was largely pomp and circumstance, but it surely’s telling that the Trump administration says it needs to make Pennsylvania a brand new hub for AI information facilities. It’s a swing state that Republicans are keen to maneuver into their column, but it surely’s additionally a major coal and gas producer. Sitting atop a serious fuel reserve, fracking in Pennsylvania (in addition to Texas) helped usher within the “shale revolution” within the 2000s that made the US the world’s main fuel producer.
That was supposed to begin altering beneath former President Joe Biden’s path. He set a goal for the US to get all its electrical energy from carbon pollution-free sources by 2035. And in 2022, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was stuffed with tax incentives to make it cheaper to construct out new photo voltaic and wind farms, in addition to different carbon-free power sources. If it had stayed intact, the legislation was expected to scale back US greenhouse fuel emissions by round 40 p.c this decade.
The legislation got here at a vital time for tech firms, which have been increasing information facilities because the AI arms race picked up steam. Electrical energy demand within the US is rising for the primary time in additional than a decade, thanks largely to energy-hungry data centers. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and different tech giants all have their very own local weather targets, pledging to shrink their carbon footprints by supporting renewable power initiatives.
However Trump is making it more durable to construct these initiatives within the US. Republicans voted to wind down Biden-era tax incentives for photo voltaic and wind power within the big spending bill they handed this month. The invoice will probably lower electrical energy technology capability in 2035 by 340 GW, in line with one analysis, with the overwhelming majority of losses coming from photo voltaic and wind farms that may now not get constructed.
All these new information facilities nonetheless have to get their electrical energy from someplace. “They gained’t be powered by wind,” Trump stated in the course of the summit, repeating deceptive speaking factors about renewable power which have turn into a cornerstone of new climate denial. He signed an executive order in April, directing the Commerce, Power, and Inside Departments to review “the place coal-powered infrastructure is obtainable and appropriate for supporting AI information facilities.” Trump, backed by fossil fuel donors, campaigned on a promise to “drill, child, drill” — a slogan that he doubled down on once more on the occasion. He additionally referenced the Homer Metropolis Producing Station, an old coal plant that’s reopening as a gas plant that will power a new data center.
The deals introduced on the summit embody Enbridge investing $1 billion to increase its fuel pipelines into Pennsylvania and Equinor spending $1.6 billion to “enhance pure fuel manufacturing at Equinor’s Pennsylvania services and discover alternatives to hyperlink fuel to versatile energy technology for information facilities.”
“They gained’t be powered by wind.”
Information facilities are a “primary driver” for a growth in new fuel pipelines and energy crops within the Southeast, in line with a January report from the Institute for Power Economics and Monetary Evaluation (IEEFA). The Southeast is dwelling to “data center alley,” a hub in Virginia by which round 70 p.c of the world’s web visitors flows by. Even when AI fashions become more efficient over time, the quantity of electrical energy they’re at the moment projected to demand might lock communities throughout the US into extended reliance on fossil fuels as utilities construct out new fuel infrastructure.
Zeldin’s job now could be primarily to take away any regulatory hurdles which may decelerate that development. From his first day in workplace, “it was clear that EPA would have a serious hand in allowing reform to chop down boundaries which have acted as a roadblock so we will bolster the expansion of AI,” as Zeldin wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week. “An organization trying to construct an industrial facility or an influence plant ought to be capable of construct what it will possibly earlier than acquiring an emissions allow,” he added. And after moving to roll back pollution regulations for power plants, the Trump administration is now reportedly engaged on a rule that might undo the 2009 “endangerment finding” that permits the EPA to control greenhouse fuel emissions beneath the Clear Air Act.
Zeldin additionally writes that in the case of Clear Air Act permits for polluters it considers “minor emitters,” the EPA will solely meet “minimal necessities for public participation.” An AI Action Plan that the White Home dropped on July twenty third proposes creating new categorical exclusions for information center-related initiatives from the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act (NEPA), a sunshine legislation that mandates enter from native communities on main federal initiatives. The plan directs businesses to establish federal lands for the “large-scale improvement” of information facilities and energy technology.
There are different components at play that would derail Trump’s fossil-fueled agenda, together with a backlog for gas turbines in high demand. Photo voltaic and wind farms are nonetheless typically sooner to construct and a more affordable source of new electricity than coal or gas, and we might see some builders rush to finish initiatives earlier than Biden-era tax credit totally disappear. One early brilliant spot for renewables was the truth that information facilities used to coach AI are theoretically simpler to construct near far-flung wind and photo voltaic initiatives. Not like different information facilities, they don’t have to be constructed close to inhabitants facilities to scale back latency. They might additionally theoretically time their operations to match the ebb and movement of electrical energy technology when the solar shines and winds blow.
However up to now, issues are shaping up in another way in the true world. “It’s only a race to get linked as rapidly as doable,” says Nathalie Limandibhratha, senior affiliate US energy at BloombergNEF.
Information heart builders are additionally involved that in the event that they construct services particularly to coach AI nearer to renewable power, they might be left with stranded property down the street. They’d relatively maintain constructing information facilities near inhabitants facilities the place they will repurpose the ability for different makes use of if wanted. Additionally they get extra bang for his or her buck operating 24/7, so information facilities are leaning towards around-the-clock electrical energy technology from fuel and nuclear energy (and nuclear power has extra bipartisan help than different sources of carbon-free power).
“There’s no query proper now that AI is driving larger fossil gasoline use in the US and actually setting us again when it comes to local weather change,” says Cathy Kunkel, an power guide at IEEFA. Tech giants Google and Amazon made bulletins coinciding with the Pennsylvania summit committing to buying hydropower and nuclear energy, respectively. However their most up-to-date sustainability reports present that their greenhouse fuel air pollution remains to be rising, taking them additional away from their local weather targets of reaching internet zero emissions.
“If [tech companies] needed to fulfill their sustainability targets, they might accomplish that,” Kunkel says. “They’re getting a free cross, clearly, from the Trump administration.”