None of the Above

The White House’s anti-energy policies contradict its AI agenda and undermine our economic future

A great many Americans — Democrats and Republicans — talk about energy in terms of all-of-the-above. They don’t think of electrons as red or blue. They just know that in the 21st century, America needs more power.

But President Trump and Congress are leading us toward a very different energy outcome:

None of the above.

The Administration says it supports market-based, deregulatory policies, but it’s taking the biggest of big-government actions to stifle the only resources that can be deployed quickly (renewables and storage) and elevate others. But the ones it wishes to elevate are years away from scaling either because they take a long time to develop and build (nuclear) or there are significant supply chain problems (gas).

Last week, the White House rolled out “America’s AI Action Plan.” But if the administration and its backers actually want to win the AI race, they’re going to have to listen to the AI infrastructure industry and stop undercutting the solar, wind power, and battery storage that this booming sector will need.

That doesn’t mean clean energy will provide 100% of the nation’s power. But it does mean that renewables need to play the role they’re meant to play — quickly delivering low-cost electricity to meet booming demand — and not be shoved off the grid by anti-energy politicians and bureaucrats.

Actions to delay or kill renewable and storage projects directly undermine the AI race … among many other things.

Harness What Power?

The AI Action Plan includes this quote from the President: “To secure our future, we must harness the full power of American innovation.”

But there’s no “harnessing the full power of American innovation” without abundant, renewable power.

The action plan goes into admirable detail about issues such as AI workforce. But its electric grid section has no details at all. There are lots of pronouncements and goals, but no clear path for achieving them, beyond the acknowledgment that winning this race will require a huge amount of electricity.

Yet gas plants face brutal market-driven supply chain challenges over at least the next half-decade, and new advanced nuclear power is coming but it will take at least 5-7 years, possibly longer. Renewables are the one part of the nation’s energy portfolio that’s booming along with the economy and electricity demand, but the administration keeps trying to hobble them.

So where is this huge amount of electricity the administration acknowledges we need going to come from?

Meanwhile, in the Real World …

Chase Lochmiller, CEO of Crusoe, a developer of AI infrastructure, is building the huge facility in Abilene known as Stargate. It will initially need 1.2 gigawatts of power and will quickly grow to 5 gigawatts (by comparison, Austin — the 11th largest city in America — has a peak demand of about 3 gigawatts).

Unsurprisingly to those of us in the real world — but apparently upsettingly to the White House — Stargate will be powered by a mix of renewables, storage, and gas.

In this podcast, Lochmiller specifically calls out the benefits of wind power. He said it will be a “a gigawatt facility” with onsite wind and “incremental gas.” At an event featuring Cabinet Secretaries and the president, he even showed a slide of the wind turbines that will be powering one of the country’s biggest AI facilities:

This is how energy policy should work: encourage the use of cheap renewables whenever possible, use load flexibility, demand response, and storage regularly to shape load, and burn “incremental gas” when needed. That keeps costs low and reliability high.

Real AI infrastructure developers are already telling — and showing — the Trump Administration how this can be done.

Are they listening?

Actions vs. Words

Just days before releasing the AI Action Plan — which, ironically, vowed to reject “bureaucratic red tape” — the administration announced yet another restrictive new anti-energy policy requiring Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s personal approval for any renewable energy project to be built on federal land.

Also this month, the Department of Energy canceled a loan guarantee for a vital new transmission line across the Midwest.

And the President himself issued an anti-energy executive order that is intended to create copious amounts of red tape before developers can use existing tax credits — credits that were specifically protected by Congress in the budget reconciliation bill — to generate more electricity for Americans.

“Simply put, we need to ‘Build, Baby, Build!’” the AI Action Plan proclaims. Someone should tell the President.

Instead, the administration has embraced big government actions to slow down industry and very specifically pick winners and losers. Sure, that’s counter to generations of conservative policymaking, but set those principles aside.

The biggest problem is a practical one: renewables and batteries constitute the vast majority of power built just about everywhere in the world because they’re cheaper.

Take out the biggest energy supply source — just as demand from AI is going up — and you're left with higher prices, higher grid risk, fewer jobs, and a hobbled economy.

A Way Out

The good news is that developers can add a lot of power to the grid in the next several years — as Congress intended and included in the plain language of the OBBB — just using tax credits before they expire. They need the Treasury Department to quickly issue guidance that allows developers and investors to, as the authors of the White House AI Action Plan put it: Build Baby Build.

Yes, there will be a painful cliff after the tax credits expire, but we’ll cross the bridge when we get there. The administration can say whatever it wants — I’m more concerned that their actions don’t hobble the economy and the President’s own aspirational goals for AI supremacy.

The AI Action Plan talks about “developing new methods to harness energy.” That’s a great goal. But it fails to note that for decades, the U.S. has led the development of solar and storage industries, and those industries are currently delivering the energy that officials say they want. We just need more.

And if we don’t — if the administration continues to throw up road blocks — what’s the alternative for the next 3 years? They haven’t answered that question in the AI Action Plan because there is no viable alternative during the president’s second term.

If we’re going to win the AI race, we’ll need a lot of renewable energy and energy storage. The administration needs to recognize that reality or American consumers of all kinds, including AI companies, will lose.

Thanks for reading. Please share this article widely.