In AI and Fossil Fuel LoveFest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week President Donald Trump – surrounded by Members of the office and management From the main technological and energy giants, such as Google and Exxonmobil – he said that “the most important man of the day” was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin. “He will give you permission for the largest electric factory in the world for about a week, would you say?” Trump said the giggle in the audience. Later this week, the Trump administration released coal -fired power plants, objects that produce chemicals for semiconductor production and Some other industrial places With Provisions on air pollution from the time of biden.
If Trump has its own way, the next generation of data centers will work more soiled than the last one. It is not enough to kill renewable energy sources and pave the way for more carbon and gas plants to the hungry energy of AI data centers. Trump is also obsessed with throwing environmental protection.
“Doing things in the environment costs much more,” said Trump in interview with Joe Rogan in October 2024 after his appointment to EPA (or rather, rather,, Start it to the ground), Zeldin said he would focus on “release[ing] American energy domination “and” MAK[ing] America’s capital of the world. “EPA announced Thousands of dismissals on July 18Looking at it Research and development arm.
“Doing things in the environment costs much more.”
At the peak of Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, Trump tried to be considered private investments with a total value of around $ 36 billion for data centers and $ 56 million for a up-to-date energy infrastructure. The ceremony itself was mainly pumps and circumstances, but says that Trump’s administration claims that he wants to make a up-to-date center of AI data centers. It is a swing that Republicans are cheerful to move to their column, but it is also The main producer of coal and gas. Sitting at the top of a stern gas reserve, the fractigation in Pennsylvania (and also Texas) helped to initiate “Shale revolution“In 2000, which made the US a leading gas producer in the world.
This was to start changing under the direction of former president Joe Biden. He set up goal In order for the United States to obtain all their electricity from sources free from coal pollution by 2035, and in 2022 he signed the act on reducing inflation, which was full of tax incentives to make cheaper building up-to-date solar and wind farms, as well as other energy -free energy sources. If it remained intact, the law was expected To reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US by about 40 percent in this decade.
The law came at a crucial moment for technology companies that extended data centers when the AI arms race raised Steam. The demand for electricity in the US is growing for the first time in over a decade, largely thanks to the hungry energy, data centers. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and other technology giants have their own climate goals, committing to reduce their coal traces by supporting renewable energy projects.
But Trump makes it complex to build these projects in the USA. Republicans voted in favor of limiting tax incentives from the biden era for solar and wind energy in a immense expenditure account that they passed this month. According to the Act, it will probably reduce the efficiency of electricity production in 2035. one analysisWith a huge majority of losses from solar and wind farms that will no longer build.
All these up-to-date data centers still need from nowhere to get electricity. “They will not be powered by the wind,” Trump said during the summit, repeating the misleading points of conversation about renewable energy, which became the cornerstone of a up-to-date climate refusal. In April, he signed an executive order, head Trade, energy and internal departments to examine “where coal -powered infrastructure is available and appropriate for supporting AI data centers”. Advantage, Supported by fossil fuels donorsHe ran a campaign based on the promise of “drilling, child, drill” – a slogan at which he doubled at this event. He also referred to the Homer City generating station, Old coal installation, which re -opens as a gas installation that powers a new data center.
. offers The enbrid on the top includes enbridge investing $ 1 billion to expand their gas gases in Pennsylvania and Equinor by spending $ 1.6 billion on “increasing natural gas production in Equinor Pennsylvania facilities and examining the possibility of combining gas with flexible energy production for data centers.”
“They will not be powered by wind.”
Data centers are the “main driver” of the boom in up-to-date gas pipelines and power plants in the southeast, according to January report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The southeast is the house “Avenue of the data center“The center in Virginia, through which about 70 percent of world internet traffic flows. Even if AI models become more capable over time, the amount of electricity they currently require can block the US communities in prolonged relying on fossil fuels, because public utilities build up-to-date gas infrastructure.
Zeldin’s task is now to be essentially removing all regulatory obstacles that can snail-paced down this growth. From the first day of office, “it was clear that EPA would have a serious hand in enabling the reform to limit the barriers that acted as a blockage of the road so that we could strengthen the development of AI” as Zeldin wrote last week in Fox News. “A company that wants to build an industrial facility or power plant should be able to build what is possible before obtaining an emission permit,” he added. And later Moving to withdraw regulations regarding pollutants for the power plantThe Trump administration is reportedly working on a principle that would withdraw 2009 “Finding a threat” This allows EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the tidy air act.
Zeldin also writes that when it comes to permits for tidy air for pollution, which he considers to be “smaller emitter”, EPA will only meet “minimal requirements for the participation of society.” Some Action plan AI The fact that the White House fell on July 23 proposes to create up-to-date categorical exclusions for projects related to data centers from the National Environmental Policy Act (Nep), the Sun Act, which requires the contribution of local communities in immense federal projects. The plan requires agencies to identify federal land in the field of “large -scale development” of data centers and energy production.
There are other factors that could derail the Trump program, including backlog in gas turbines under great demand. Solar and wind farms are usually faster in construction and A more affordable source of new electricity than coal or gasAnd we saw some developers rush to perform projects before the tax relief from the time of Biden fully disappears. One of the early brilliant points for renewable energy sources was the fact that the data centers used for AI training are theoretically easier to build close to distant wind and solar projects. Unlike other data centers, they do not have to be built near population centers to reduce delay. They could also theoretically time for their activities to adapt to the outflow and flow of electricity production, when the sun shines and winds blowing.
But so far in the real world of matters have been shaped differently. “It’s just a race to connect as quickly as possible,” says Nathalie Limandibhratha, a senior collaborator of American power in Bloombergnef.
Data centers developers are also concerned that if they build objects especially for training and closer to renewable energy, you can stay with orphaned assets on the road. They prefer to continue to build data centers near population centers, in which they can change their purpose with other applications if necessary. They also get more for their zlotys, in which they operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so the data centers bend towards the production of 24 -hour gas and nuclear energy (and nuclear energy has more bilateral support than other sources of coal free energy).
“At the moment, there is no doubt that AI conducts greater consumption of fossil fuels in the United States and really restores us in terms of climate change,” says Cathy Kunkel, energy consultant at IEEFA. Technology Giants Google and Amazon announced ads from Pennsylvania committing to buy water energy AND Nuclear energyappropriately. But their latest reports on sustainable development show that their contamination of greenhouse gases is still growing, pulling them away from their climate goals consisting in achieving zero net emissions.
“If [tech companies] They wanted to achieve their goals in the field of sustainable development, they could do this – says Kunkel. “Of course, they get a free pass from the Trump administration.”