By David Holt
President Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency signals the fast-track production of more domestic energy. It also promises to generate an equally significant benefit that wasn’t even cited in the EO: Higher energy production will turbocharge our nation’s leadership in artificial intelligence by delivering the huge power supplies AI demands.
Do not underestimate how critically important it is for America to lead the global AI race, especially as China, a potent rival, invests massive resources on AI. The president’s proactive energy strategy can help the U.S. supercharge its AI capabilities and team up with our strategic partners to integrate AI into critical industries and markets. This will prove particularly critical as human-level AI emerges within the next decade.
Already, AI’s rise has triggered breakthroughs in automation, machine learning, and data analytics that are revolutionizing the manufacturing, finance, healthcare, transportation, retail and other major industries – not to mention the tech industry itself.
The president’s EO recognizes that our AI future rests on a significant increase in reliable, scalable, abundant, affordable, and clean energy, notably natural gas and, soon, nuclear. Simply consider this: Open AI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, consumes 3 watt-hours of energy per query – or 10 times more energy than a Google search query. That’s a lot of energy, considering that a common double A battery contains about 3.9 watt-hours.
My friend David Blackmon, a Texas-based public policy analyst and consultant, cites a new study from the Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy that estimates the power needs from new U.S. data computing center installations alone will balloon by 1,000% from the end of 2024 through 2035. That represents a 10-20% increase in electricity demand every year through 2030.
An Energy Department study released in December figures that data centers could account for as much as 12% of the nation’s electricity demand by 2028, tripling their load from 2023. To realize that power need, Energy Secretary Chris Wright acknowledges that the nation will need “to work at warp speed” to remain competitive in AI and keep the lights on.
Administration officials expect their pragmatic energy stance to open up American energy options will lead to new natural gas generation and more nuclear power, among other power-generating impacts. In January, Chevron announced a partnership with GE Vernova to build natural-gas powered generators that will be co-located with data centers across in the Southeast, the Midwest and West. It cited early actions by the administration for setting “the critical foundation to encourage investment leveraging America’s energy abundance to enable America’s AI leadership.” This venture also will use carbon capture and storage in the future, as well as renewable energy elements as practicable.
These are real, large investments that create jobs and economic development that states are competing to land by making it easier to site, permit, build and operate these long-term facilities. In Louisiana, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta announced a $10 billion investment to build its largest data center – which will stretch more than a mile across – and will require new power generation to be added to the state’s grid.
Gov. Jeff Landry, who co-founded the Governors Coalition for Energy Security with the goal of streamlining permitting and facilitating smart energy policy that contributes to state and national energy security, declared it “a new chapter” for Louisiana that will help revitalize the northeastern part of the state.
There is a critical distinction in how Louisiana’s government got involved in this project with a huge energy component. Instead of dictating what can or cannot be done, the state legislative and executive branches worked together to make this project happen with the express goal of economic development. That allowed Meta to work with its partners including the state’s main utility to plan quickly and commit. With so much energy involved, this is a smart approach to ensure that the entire state of Louisiana has the affordable, reliable energy it needs for families, farmers and small businesses, as well as enormous ones such as Meta.
This has traditionally been how the government plays its role supporting private sector investments – facilitating rather than prescribing, enabling rather than hobbling.
The second Trump Administration – recognizing the fact that traditional fuels which provide 83% of our nation’s energy will remain a dominant part of our global energy mix – has expanded oil and natural gas development on public lands, signaled a cutback in unnecessary, costly regulations that delay needed energy projects, promoted energy education, and established the National Energy Dominance Council to ensure energy policies are grounded in reality.
As we bolster our AI capabilities by providing the electricity required, the president’s approach to energy will also help prevent the power brownouts and blackouts that have more than doubled since 2016. These outages have become all too familiar during peak weather conditions when extreme weather events strike more frequently.
By improving what has been the declining reliability of our aging electric grid and increasing power production, we can generate reliable power instead of no longer taking that dependability for granted.
This realistic energy path can improve our environment, meet our economic needs, and provide cleaner, always-on energy. It will keep the U.S. economy as the world’s strongest with one of the best standards of living.
That’s a far better place than the mirage utopias that certain groups would have us believe can be achieved by taking energy options off the table. Just ask residents of California, New York, Germany, or the UK, where prices are on the rise again.
Our nation is turning away from that bleak future and back toward common sense and practical policies. That’s a strong and welcome sign for affordability, environmental responsibility, reliability and – above all – prosperity.
David Holt is president of Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), the leading voice for sensible energy and environmental policies for consumers.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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What is this “AI” supposed to do? Here’s a sample of an AI response to me –
This is from an American AI race contender – hardly leading the race, is it?
At least the Chinese Deep Seek contender is open source (no charge for the code, change it to suit yourself), and apparently uses between 75% and 95% less energy to provide the same incorrect information.
If Meta and others want to sell their “AI”, let them generate the necessary power themselves, or pay more to get a greater proportion of a limited supply.
Whatever happened to capitalism?
“If Meta and others want to sell their “AI”, let them generate the necessary power themselves, or pay more to get a greater proportion of a limited supply.
Whatever happened to capitalism?”
Good points Michael.
AI is another energy dependent activity that very few individuals actually need to live their lives, although it’s use is forced on us through our phones. For everyday people AI is a luxury, not a necessity, but big money people in social media have a way of forcing and using taxpayers to help underwrite their business’s infrastructure, their necessity – it’s called socialism for tech companies.
Also, AI is impeding actual scientific progress in the climate arena in the same manner the CO2 crowd does with their activism and promotion of their one-sided climate gospel, because both are underpinned by the same literature base. AI doesn’t think outside the box made for it. Readers of AI articles will always be herded into the same position over time on climate and other topics. If the climate science literature is wrong or biased an AI-aided article will be wrong and slanted as well.
Here’s an example of AI (direct quote) –
GHE enthusiasts obviously believe rubbish like this, where frozen CO2 can heat non-frozen CO2. Just as silly as believing that frozen water can be used to heat liquid water!
Ridiculous? Here’s another AI direct quote –
Heat water by adding ice? Yes, GHE believers are gullible enough to think this is true. Or maybe just ignorant?
Deluded either way.
Anything above absolute zero radiates energy. Whatever that energy hits, will gain energy. Basic physics.
The only thing limited here, is your understanding of physics.
“Whatever that energy hits, will gain energy.”
Then it’s a good thing Earth has polar ice to warm up the tropics. /sarc
Do you care to try and refute anything I said, or is saying stupid things really the best you can do?
I didn’t say something stupid Mark, so you’re gaslighting me again!
In the real world the poles don’t warm the tropics, which is not a stupid position to take like yours.
In case your attitude is getting in the way of your understanding this, the preceding images mean the poles do not warm the tropics, its the other way around. No amount of your dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin physics (pinhead physics) can change that reality.
Mark this isn’t true.
Quote “Heat Transfer” book: “When they (gases) absorb and emit radiation, they usually do so only in certain narrow wavelength bands.”
My added parentheses.
Gases are not black bodies. They do not necessarily radiate due to the temperature.
The main atmospheric gases are transparent at low temperature.
Yes they do. Gases are not very dense, compared to solids or liquids, so the intensity of emitted radiation is less. Lower emissivity. However, at the same temperature, all are emitting and absorbing exactly the same photon frequencies.
Nothing getting warmer, nothing getting colder. In a freezer at -18 C, the air, the ice, the shiny Christmas bauble, the side of beef, the walls – all -18 C. A general use IR thermometer will show items with different emissivities as having different temperatures, and is too insensitive to record the IR emitted by the air.
I accept reality. No need for mythical GHEs or anything similarly fantastic.
So my heat transfer book is wrong? And you say they are black bodies?
Unless your book explains what is meant by “do not necessarily radiate due to the temperature”, if the radiation is from unexcited gases, then yes, it’s wrong.
Now you’re just making stuff up. Where did I say gases are black bodies?
You need to understand NET radiation flux.
If you put something cold near something warmer, the cold object will get warmer but the warm object will get colder.
They will equilibrate to a temperature somewhere between the two starting temperatures.
Mark, if you believe that you can warm water by immersing ice in it, I won’t challenge your belief. A man’s religion is his own.
“AI doesn’t think outside the box made for it.” Maybe it will someday- and when it does, it’ll truly be intelligent. Until then, perhaps we need to redefine it as “fake intelligence”.
AI: “Artificial Ignorance”
The US could have a federal 50% energy use surcharge, c/kWh, to AI and data storage companies, to help pay for generation and transmission, or they could have their own fossil or nuclear power plants.
“no charge for the code, change it to suit yourself”
Must be a ton of code! Then what do you do with it, recompile it to suit yourself? I can’t imagine they just offer the code like that.
Recently, my wife had a lens replaced in her eye, which took much longer to heal than normal.
I described her experience and asked Grok.
I was amazed at the results, because it described the various measures that could be taking in easily understood medical terms, which reassured us, because our doctor had taken some of these measures.
They are paying for the resources they use.
The problem is that government won’t let them buy the most efficient forms of energy. IE fossil fuels.
There is no problem with capitalism, the problem is creeping socialism that seeks to restrain capitalists.
Pretty much every ’failure of capitalism’ turns out to be the unintended consequence of some brain dead government deformation of free markets.
There are evil capitalists, and evil socialists, etc. Capitalism is just easier to pick on because the press and media insists on free speech to maintain their capitalist income…
Microsoft has pulled back at least 2GW of data center expansion; Amazon is doing the same. To put this in perspective: Microsoft had 4 GW of data centers in April 2024 slated to expand to 7.5GW by June 2025.
Microsoft is furthermore the original and the biggest partner to OpenAI=ChatGPT, who in turn is AT LEAST 75% of the LLM market.
If Microsoft doesn’t think it needs to build out AI data centers, that ain’t a good sign.
And yes, there are still the problems of:
1) What is the killer app for LLMs? Ripping off artists is not going to generate a lot of money, especially since it looks like OpenAI is going to need 10s of billions of new funding every year just to survive
2) Even disregarding the killer app issue – what are the unit economics of LLMs? Frankly, they look so bad as to make Uber look like a profit center. Uber lost 31.5 billion dollars since it was created; OpenAI lost $5B? $6B? just last year.
“In January, Chevron announced a partnership with GE Vernova to build natural-gas powered generators that will be co-located with data centers across in the Southeast, the Midwest and West.”
OK, great!
“This venture also will use carbon capture and storage in the future, as well as renewable energy elements as practicable.”
Let’s hope this part of it is just talk, because CCS is costly and misguided, and “renewable” wind and solar are pointless. They are not “practicable” at all for reliable power.
If Chevron can afford to do this then we’re all paying them too much for fuels. I want to pay for just gasoline/diesel/oil, not data centers. Why does Chevron need multiple data centers?
It’s not that these data centers are for Chevron’s own purposes. Chevron is involved to produce electricity from natural gas. Apparently they think it will be a good business venture. I don’t disagree that maybe Chevron should stick to oil and gas exploration and production.
It was reported yesterday that gasoline prices were lower by about $0.60 per gallon.
A few years back, a couple of analysts on CNBC estimated that every price reduction of $0.80 per gallon would result in a one percent increase in U.S. GDP.
It looks like Trump is getting the gasoline prices down, which will result in an improvement in the U.S. economy.
Chevron doesn’t have multiple data centers, and nothing in the post implies that they do.
They state that the power centers will have the ability to capture carbon in the future, because that’s the kind of nonsense the government makes you put out in order to get the government’s permission to build power centers these days.
Chevron sees a demand and is trying to meet that demand. Nothing wrong with that.
Mark, I didn’t say “Chevron HAS multiple data centers”, but that they want to build them. David Dibbell didn’t say they HAD data centers now either, but that they intend to build them. So what was all your gaslighting about?
The Green New Deal was also supposed to be a response to “demand”, but was it?
No, it was to introduce financing to create ‘demand’ for such projects, where there would be none otherwise.
The way things are in politics, we are never going to be rid of this nonsense as long as the money is flowing.
From your post: “I want to pay for just gasoline/diesel/oil, not data centers.”
The post said nothing about Chevron building data centers, what it said was that they were building power plants that would be dedicated to supplying the data centers.
Pointing out more of your many errors is not gaslighting.
Chevron said they were going into a partnership with a company with the goal of building data centers, with carbon capture and storage in mind. Whether they are building just the energy system is just parsing.
That means Chevron is going to inevitably invest profits/capability they obtained from the gas/diesel/oil trade that customers pay for into new data center infrastructure and support. Sorry, but I don’t want to pay for any of that at the pump, at any time, including in the form of any new or increased fuel taxes, or any new climate-related regulations, is that clear?
This is a simple concept that can be applied to other arenas. For instance, I also don’t want to pay for anything that enables Google to censor us, which is why I never use their search engine nor buy any of their services. If everyone did that Alphabet would be forced to change.
I am not interested in enabling any ‘climate change’ chicanery, meaning I don’t intend to support with my purchases either directly or indirectly through taxes and regulations any of the physically nonsensical and unnecessary carbon sequestration schemes or carbon taxes.
Such sequestration schemes will never keep up with current emissions and certainly not be able to put a dent in the historical man-made CO2 accumulation, and most certainly will not change the climate, ever.
I implore the Trump administration to stop funding these useless money-pit sequestration projects. The problem he faces is the entrenched culture that created this artificial demand for sequestration and the political class who think every dollar the government spends into the economy through subsidies and payments enabled through bills like the IRA is ‘good’ for the economy, regardless of real-world results.
It’s not good for the economy when time, money and energy are wasted pumping CO2 into the ground unnecessarily while everyone pays higher prices and taxes. It shouldn’t be part of the Trump energy policy.
CO2 capture *is* costly and misguided and it, and windmills and industrial solar, should not be included in the energy mix. These are not solutions to anything, they are the problems. Eliminating them is the solution.
you hit the target on the head. There’s also reason to believe that Moore’s law for hardware, along with improved software efficiency can reduce power requirements as well.
My first experience with computers happened about the time Gorden Moore first stated what became his ‘law’ in 1965. It was with a Pace 231R vacuum tube analog computer. When this computer was scrapped, I VERY briefly considered using it at home. My home power feed was woefully inadequate as it would require air conditioning even in mid-winter, just to operate at all. My smart watch now has far-far more computing power on a single button cell battery. Don’t rule out future smart watches with built-in AI.
I do not need AI to tell me how to interpret digitally displayed time.
If they use CCS it will not only be expensive but it will also be harmful. The more CO2 in the atmosphere the better offf the earth and all life on are. CO2 increases crop yields and water use efficiency anld greens the earth. What little warming it may do will also be benefitial. Absolutely should not pay to limit thi.s wonderful gas.
Seen this?
https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/sams-club-phasing-out-checkouts-betting-big-ai-shopping
My wife has been doing this at the local Sams Club for more than a year (significantly more?). She has an app on her phone to scan items as she throws them in her shopping cart. There is a scan to make her payment.
That requires AI?
You have to call it AI if want to sell it, just like research papers have to genuflect to the Climate Change Consensus to get funded.
What’s the hidden message behind a keyboard with Cyrillic characters on it? A bit odd.