Based on four individuals familiar with the planning, the Trump administration is preparing a set of executive orders to increase energy supplies to support the U.S. growth of artificial intelligence.
The best economic competitors The U.S. and China are in a technical weapons race, which gives them an economic and military advantage. AI needs a lot of electricity to analyse all of its data, which is putting a lot of stress on utilities and grids in many areas.
According to the sources, the possible actions include making it easy for projects that generate electricity to connect to the grid and giving the federal government space to create the data centres required to grow AI technology.
According to insiders who asked to remain anonymous to talk about internal discussions, the government will also produce an AI action plan and hold public events to bring attention to the work.
The White House did not answer enquiries for comment.
It takes a lot of energy to train massive AI models, and the industry’s expansion is causing the first substantial rise in U.S. power consumption in decades.
According to Grid Strategies, a consulting firm for the power industry, U.S. energy consumption is expected to expand five times faster than it was thought it would in 2022.
A recent estimate from the consulting firm Deloitte says that AI data centres might use more than thirty times as much electricity by 2035.
Building and connecting additional power production to the grid has been a big problem, however, since these projects need a lot of impact assessments that might take years to complete, and the current transmission infrastructure is already too full.
Two sources indicated that one of the possibilities the government is looking at is to find more completely completed power plants and move them up the waiting list for connection.
Finding places for data centres has also been hard since bigger ones need a lot of land and resources, and they may run into zoning problems or public resistance.
The sources claimed that the presidential directives might help by giving project developers property that is handled by the Defence Department or the Interior Department.
One of the individuals said that the government is also thinking about making it easier for data centres to get licenses by developing a worldwide Clean Water Act permit instead of forcing corporations to get permits in each state.
In January, Trump invited the heads of major tech companies to the White House to talk about the Stargate Project. This project, headed by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, would develop data centres and generate more than 100,000 jobs in the U.S.
Trump’s top priority is beating China in the AI race. On his first day in office, he declared a national energy emergency to get rid of all the rules that make it hard to drill for oil and gas, mine coal and critical minerals, and build new gas and nuclear power plants to increase energy capacity.
In January, he also ordered his administration to draft an AI Action Plan that would make “America the world capital in artificial intelligence” and make it easier for AI to grow quickly by lowering regulatory hurdles.
The National Security Council helped write the report, which is due on July 23. According to two individuals, the White House is thinking of calling July 23 “AI Action Day” to get people to read the study and show that it is serious about growing the business.
On July 15, Trump is scheduled to give a speech at an AI and energy gathering in Pennsylvania that Senator Dave McCormick is hosting.
Amazon said it will spend $20 billion on data centres in two counties in Pennsylvania.
