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 vitality giants like Google and ExxonMobil — stated that “an important 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 vegetation, 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 subsequent technology of knowledge facilities will run dirtier than the final. It isn’t sufficient to kill renewables and pave the way in which for extra coal and gasoline vegetation to energy energy-hungry AI knowledge facilities. Trump can also be obsessive about tossing out environmental protections.
“It prices far more to do issues environmentally clear,” Trump claimed in an interview with Joe Rogan in October 2024. Upon his appointment to go the EPA (or, somewhat, run it into the ground), Zeldin stated that he can be targeted on “unleash[ing] US vitality 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 far more to do issues environmentally clear.”
On the Pennsylvania Vitality and Innovation Summit, Trump attempted to take credit for private investments totaling round $36 billion for knowledge middle tasks and $56 million for brand new vitality infrastructure. The ceremony itself was largely pomp and circumstance, however it’s telling that the Trump administration says it needs to make Pennsylvania a brand new hub for AI knowledge facilities. It’s a swing state that Republicans are keen to maneuver into their column, however it’s additionally a major coal and gas producer. Sitting atop a serious gasoline 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 gasoline producer.
That was supposed to start out altering beneath former President Joe Biden’s course. 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 filled with tax incentives to make it cheaper to construct out new photo voltaic and wind farms, in addition to different carbon-free vitality sources. If it had stayed intact, the regulation was expected to scale back US greenhouse gasoline emissions by round 40 p.c this decade.
The regulation got here at a vital time for tech corporations, which had been increasing knowledge 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 objectives, pledging to shrink their carbon footprints by supporting renewable vitality tasks.
However Trump is making it tougher to construct these tasks within the US. Republicans voted to wind down Biden-era tax incentives for photo voltaic and wind vitality within the big spending bill they handed this month. The invoice will probably lower electrical energy technology capability in 2035 by 340 GW, based on one analysis, with the overwhelming majority of losses coming from photo voltaic and wind farms that can now not get constructed.
All these new knowledge facilities nonetheless must get their electrical energy from someplace. “They received’t be powered by wind,” Trump stated through the summit, repeating deceptive speaking factors about renewable vitality which have turn out to be a cornerstone of new climate denial. He signed an executive order in April, directing the Commerce, Vitality, and Inside Departments to review “the place coal-powered infrastructure is out there and appropriate for supporting AI knowledge 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 embrace Enbridge investing $1 billion to increase its gasoline pipelines into Pennsylvania and Equinor spending $1.6 billion to “enhance pure gasoline manufacturing at Equinor’s Pennsylvania services and discover alternatives to hyperlink gasoline to versatile energy technology for knowledge facilities.”
“They received’t be powered by wind.”
Knowledge facilities are a “principal driver” for a growth in new gasoline pipelines and energy vegetation within the Southeast, based on a January report from the Institute for Vitality Economics and Monetary Evaluation (IEEFA). The Southeast is house 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 present projected to demand might lock communities throughout the US into extended reliance on fossil fuels as utilities construct out new gasoline infrastructure.
Zeldin’s job now could be primarily to take away any regulatory hurdles which may decelerate that progress. From his first day in workplace, “it was clear that EPA would have a serious hand in allowing reform to chop down limitations 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 might probably 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 may undo the 2009 “endangerment finding” that enables the EPA to manage greenhouse gasoline emissions beneath the Clear Air Act.
Zeldin additionally writes that on the subject 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 knowledge center-related tasks from the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act (NEPA), a sunshine regulation that mandates enter from native communities on main federal tasks. The plan directs companies to establish federal lands for the “large-scale growth” of knowledge facilities and energy technology.
There are different elements at play that might 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 tasks earlier than Biden-era tax credit absolutely disappear. One early vivid spot for renewables was the truth that knowledge facilities used to coach AI are theoretically simpler to construct near far-flung wind and photo voltaic tasks. In contrast to different knowledge facilities, they don’t have to be constructed close to inhabitants facilities to scale back latency. They may additionally theoretically time their operations to match the ebb and stream of electrical energy technology when the solar shines and winds blow.
However to date, issues are shaping up otherwise in the actual world. “It’s only a race to get related as rapidly as doable,” says Nathalie Limandibhratha, senior affiliate US energy at BloombergNEF.
Knowledge middle builders are additionally involved that in the event that they construct services particularly to coach AI nearer to renewable vitality, they might be left with stranded property down the street. They’d somewhat preserve constructing knowledge facilities near inhabitants facilities the place they will repurpose the power for different makes use of if wanted. Additionally they get extra bang for his or her buck working 24/7, so knowledge facilities are leaning towards around-the-clock electrical energy technology from gasoline and nuclear energy (and nuclear vitality has extra bipartisan assist than different sources of carbon-free vitality).
“There’s no query proper now that AI is driving better fossil gasoline use in the US and actually setting us again by way of local weather change,” says Cathy Kunkel, an vitality marketing consultant 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 gasoline air pollution remains to be rising, taking them additional away from their local weather objectives of reaching web zero emissions.
“If [tech companies] wished to satisfy their sustainability objectives, they might accomplish that,” Kunkel says. “They’re getting a free cross, clearly, from the Trump administration.”
