Trump’s AI action plan calls for dispatchable resources and grid upgrades

• The White House published an artificial intelligence “action plan” last week that calls for cutting regulations and the construction of more data centers and energy assets to power them.
• To that end, the administration “will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape” by recommending categorical exclusions from certain environmental regulations for data centers and expediting related permitting.
• The plan says the United States must prevent the “premature decommissioning” of critical power generation resources and “explore innovative ways to harness existing capacity, such as leveraging extant backup power sources to bolster grid reliability during peak demand.”

The document is in line with previous actions by the Trump administration to delay the shuttering of coal plants and promote the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy by declaring a national energy emergency.

It calls for the prioritization of “reliable, dispatchable power sources” and new technology, nodding specifically to enhanced geothermal, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

But it also acknowledges the need to maximize existing resources through enhanced efficiency and transmission, and appears to leave the door open to limiting data centers’ power consumption during “critical grid periods.” And while it calls for building new generation as quickly as possible, it is silent on the role of renewables. The vast majority of new generation coming online now is from solar, and clean energy advocates say it is the cheapest and fastest way to deploy new power to the grid.

The plan received mixed reviews. Conservation groups decried the impact of AI on energy and water resources, while some free market advocates praised the administration’s intentions while questioning its ability to enact unilateral reforms.

Paige Lambermont, a fellow at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said, “Only so much of this can be done by executive power alone.”

“AI is certainly important but permitting reform should be broad-based, requiring major changes to the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and NEPA, among other laws,” she said in a statement. “Broad-based permitting reform will help our nation to develop critical infrastructure and energy projects and benefit industries and specific projects across the economy, including those related to AI.”

Mitch Jones, the managing director of policy and litigation for Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group, called the Trump plan “nothing more than a thinly-veiled invitation for the fossil fuel” industry to “ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources – all at the expense of everyday people.”

A spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing investor-owned utilities, referred to its recently-released annual financial review, which highlighted the significant investments by the electric power sector driven by rising electricity demand.

The EEI report said that investor-owned U.S. electric utilities plan to invest more than $1.1 trillion over the next four years, nearly as much as it spent from 2015 to 2024.

Much of the rising demand is from data centers, the review noted, though predictions of load growth vary dramatically. EEI cited a McKinsey study predicting data center demand will rise about 20% annually from 2023 to 2030, from 60 GW today to about 170 GW to 220 GW.