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 — mentioned that “an important man of the day” was Environmental Safety Company head Lee Zeldin. “He’s gonna get you a allow for the most important electrical producing plant on the earth in a few week, would you say?” Trump mentioned to chuckles within the viewers. Later that week, the Trump administration exempted coal-fired energy vegetation, amenities that make chemical substances for semiconductor manufacturing, and certain other industrial sites from Biden-era air pollution regulations.
If Trump has his approach, the subsequent era of knowledge facilities will run dirtier than the final. It isn’t sufficient to kill renewables and pave the best way for extra coal and gasoline vegetation to energy energy-hungry AI information facilities. Trump can also 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 go the EPA (or, quite, run it into the ground), Zeldin mentioned that he can be targeted 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 middle 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 significant 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 below 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 cut back US greenhouse gasoline emissions by round 40 p.c this decade.
The legislation got here at an important time for tech firms, which had 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 objectives, pledging to shrink their carbon footprints by supporting renewable power initiatives.
However Trump is making it tougher 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 doubtless lower electrical energy era capability in 2035 by 340 GW, in keeping 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 received’t be powered by wind,” Trump mentioned 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 check “the place coal-powered infrastructure is out there 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 embrace Enbridge investing $1 billion to broaden its gasoline pipelines into Pennsylvania and Equinor spending $1.6 billion to “enhance pure gasoline manufacturing at Equinor’s Pennsylvania amenities and discover alternatives to hyperlink gasoline to versatile energy era for information 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, in keeping with a January report from the Institute for Power Economics and Monetary Evaluation (IEEFA). The Southeast is house to “data center alley,” a hub in Virginia by means of which round 70 p.c of the world’s web site visitors flows by means of. Even when AI fashions become more efficient over time, the quantity of electrical energy they’re at present projected to demand may lock communities throughout the US into extended reliance on fossil fuels as utilities construct out new gasoline infrastructure.
Zeldin’s job now’s basically to take away any regulatory hurdles that may decelerate that progress. From his first day in workplace, “it was clear that EPA would have a significant hand in allowing reform to chop down boundaries which have acted as a roadblock so we are able to 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 could 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 will undo the 2009 “endangerment finding” that enables the EPA to control greenhouse gasoline emissions below 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 determine federal lands for the “large-scale improvement” of knowledge facilities and energy era.
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 quicker to construct and a more affordable source of new electricity than coal or gas, and we may see some builders rush to finish initiatives earlier than Biden-era tax credit absolutely disappear. One early vibrant 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. In contrast to different information facilities, they don’t must be constructed close to inhabitants facilities to cut back latency. They might additionally theoretically time their operations to match the ebb and circulate of electrical energy era when the solar shines and winds blow.
However to this point, issues are shaping up in a different way in the true world. “It’s only a race to get related as shortly as potential,” says Nathalie Limandibhratha, senior affiliate US energy at BloombergNEF.
Knowledge middle builders are additionally involved that in the event that they construct amenities particularly to coach AI nearer to renewable power, they might be left with stranded belongings down the highway. They’d quite hold constructing information facilities near inhabitants facilities the place they will repurpose the power for different makes use of if wanted. In addition they get extra bang for his or her buck working 24/7, so information facilities are leaning towards around-the-clock electrical energy era from gasoline 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 better fossil gasoline use in the US and actually setting us again by way of local weather change,” says Cathy Kunkel, an power advisor 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] needed to satisfy their sustainability objectives, they might achieve this,” Kunkel says. “They’re getting a free move, clearly, from the Trump administration.”
