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President Trump said Thursday will use your energy emergency declaration approve power plants for artificial intelligence (AI) centers.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Trump said: “We’re going to make it so that plants have their own power generation facilities right at their plant. They don’t have to worry about a utility.”
He said the emergency declaration would allow the approval of electric power construction for AI uses.
“We’re going to build power generation facilities; they’re going to be built. I’m going to get them approved,” he said. “In an emergency declaration, I can do the approvals myself without having to spend years waiting.”
“And the big problem is that we need twice the energy that we currently have in the United States — can you imagine? — for AI to really be as big as we want it to be,” he said. “So I’m going to make emergency declarations so they can start building them almost immediately.”
He added that companies could power their centers with “anything they want, and they can have coal as a back-up.”
Artificial intelligence technology is especially famous for power and is expected to contribute significantly to electricity demand in the coming years.
Trump, on his first day in office, declared an energy-related national emergency, which is expected to unlock additional powers aimed at building the nation’s energy supply.
Speaking about the statement from behind his desk in the Oval Office, Trump said “this means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of this problem.”
“And we have this kind of emergency,” he added.
Trump has also adopted other policies to embrace AI, announcing at the beginning of the week which would invest up to $500 billion in related infrastructure.
His latest announcement generated some backlash from the left.
“Trump’s false emergency to justify fast-tracking coal and gas-fired power plants to supply power-hungry AI data centers will expose American families to higher utility bills, harm the quality of air and increase greenhouse gas emissions,” Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said in a written statement.
“Trump’s continued abuse of emergency powers to enrich his powerful special interest donors comes at the expense of the health and wallets of working Americans,” he added.
