Former President Donald Trump said on September 5 that the U.S. needs more power to keep the artificial intelligence (AI) sector growing and keep the U.S. tech industry ahead of China. He vowed to issue it in his second term. “Declaration of a national emergency to dramatically increase the nation's energy supply”
But expanding domestic energy production is hindered by a notoriously slow federal permitting process. Some members of Congress acknowledge the problem, but their latest efforts to fix it risk being overtaken by surging energy demand and troubling geopolitical realities.
Hoping to untangle the massive bureaucracy that has for years shackled, and in some cases completely undermined, transport, energy and mining projects. Senator Joe Manchin (I.W.Va.) and Senator John Barrasso (Wyoming Republican) told his colleagues,Energy Permit Reform Act of 2024The bill's central focus is to centralize national transmission decision-making.Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) The power to approve interstate transmission lines and require interregional transmission plans. (Related article: Bonner-Cohen: The Inflation Control Act is leading America down a path of ruin)
To satisfy as many competing interests as possible, bill The bill sets deadlines for filing lawsuits over energy and mining projects and establishes requirements for onshore and offshore oil, gas, coal and renewable energy leases and permits. The bill also includes provisions for hard rock mining and sets a 90-day deadline for the Secretary of Energy to approve or deny applications for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, according to a summary of the bill.
The bill is primarily supported by the following organizations: American Clean Power Association, Solar Energy Industries Association, American Renewable Energy Council, Advanced Energy Unitedand Americans want a clean energy gridUtilityDive reported.
Many of the wind, solar and transmission projects these groups support face the same permitting and litigation delays that have plagued fossil fuel producers. The Sierra Club opposes the measure.He said the bill was not hostile enough to fossil fuels, and would “open up federal lands and waters to more leasing and drilling and unnecessarily expedite review of natural gas export projects.”
Setting aside all the problems that come with giving so much power to the federal bureaucracy, FERC, to deal with the nation's power transmission problems, this traditional approach is no match for the transformative developments that are already shaking up electricity supply in the U.S. While politicians and less-than-savvy investors have been content to pump copious amounts of public and private money into the green energy transition, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly upending what the global elite thought they knew.
Energy-hungry data centers (there are currently more than 2,700 in the U.S., with hundreds more planned) need 24/7 power to meet the massive demands of AI. The amount of power AI-driven data centers require can’t be produced by intermittent solar or wind power sent hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away from the sunny Southwest or windy plains of the Upper Midwest. Big Tech’s demands on an already shaky power grid far exceed what politically fashionable solar panels and wind turbines can provide. Unfortunately, the Big Four data center developers (Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Beta) are increasingly relying on fossil fuels, which they have long despised, and nuclear power, where available.
But given the choice between meeting the ambitious goal of net-zero carbon emissions or cashing in on the economic promise of AI, big tech companies will choose the latter. And the stakes go far beyond their own companies’ profits: Data centers are essential to AI, and AI is essential to national security. If the U.S. isn’t the global leader in AI, China (and its junior partner, Russia) will be. (Related article: Bonner-Cohen: Biden administration could carry the illusion of net-zero emissions into another key sector)
“AI can be the foundation of a new industrial base that our country needs to embrace,” OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said recently. Written in the Washington Post.
Ceding America's current advantage in AI to China would be a blow to America's industrial base and therefore its military power that would make it difficult to recover. Data centers powered by reliable power supplies are now a critical asset in the dangerous world of the 21st century.st Geopolitics of the century.
Data centers are both good and bad for the communities in which they are located. They bring in huge amounts of revenue for local governments, but they can also be seen by neighbors as disruptive to the community. The unassuming but noisy buildings that make up data centers are home to thousands of computer servers that process the data that enables the internet, cloud computing, and AI. Not only do data centers require large amounts of electricity, they also require large amounts of water to keep them cool.
Combined with a government-led effort to put more electric vehicles on the roads, data centers are compounding the challenges facing an already strained power grid. These developments are outside the scope of any bargaining chips put into Congressional legislation. But what's clear is that the much-vaunted green energy transition will never match the challenge before us.
Dr. Bonner Russell Cohen is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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