Trump's AI Plan: Faster Permits And More On-Site Power For Data Centers

The White House is calling for data center projects to face fewer environmental reviews and encouraging on-site generation as central tenets of its artificial intelligence strategy. 

The Trump administration published its AI Action Plan Wednesday, a wide-ranging set of policy proposals aimed at boosting U.S. competitiveness in what the White House called “a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence.” 

While the administration lists more than 90 different policy recommendations — many pertaining to export controls, limiting regulation of AI models and eliminating perceived “top-down ideological bias” in AI products — the plan places a substantial focus on measures intended to promote the rapid build-out of data centers and the energy infrastructure needed to power them. 

Central to this strategy are initiatives aimed at substantially lowering environmental permitting obstacles for developers of data centers and power generation facilities. This plan, coupled with an executive order signed by the president on Wednesday, mandates the streamlining of federal permitting by eliminating several previously required environmental reviews.

“My administration will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the United States can build and maintain the largest and most powerful and most advanced AI infrastructure anywhere on the planet,” President Donald Trump told tech leaders gathered at an AI summit in Washington, D.C., Wednesday evening.  “You are a regulation-prone group. We’re looking to get those regulations out of your way.”

In order to expedite the development of new data centers and power plants, the administration’s plan calls for permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act be streamlined, with some elements of the data center construction process exempt from certain permitting requirements. The administration also called for data centers and related energy projects to be included in FAST-41, a program that provides expedited permitting and environmental reviews for industrial projects.

The White House’s AI strategy also seeks to standardize permitting processes under the Clean Water Act, and it aims to reduce other regulations enforced through that law and the Clean Air Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, and other related legislation.

While the administration’s action plan is nonbinding, these measures were also included in an executive order signed by the president Wednesday, alongside directives intended to promote the construction of data centers on public land. 

Beyond paring back environmental regulations and streamlining permitting, the administration’s AI plan also outlines measures intended to expand the capacity of U.S. electric grids, which have struggled to keep up with skyrocketing demand from data centers.

There is growing concern that regional grids across the U.S. are on the verge of a reliability crisis and may be unable to provide the power needed for the data center industry’s continued growth. 

The administration’s plan leans heavily on fossil fuels to solve the industry’s power woes, recommending delayed retirements of fossil fuel power plants and the prioritization of "dispatchable" power sources like natural gas in interconnection queues.

On Wednesday, the president also voiced support for the development of data center campuses that produce their own power, mainly through natural gas. This strategy has become increasingly common due to the increasing scarcity of utility-supplied power despite facing considerable economic and regulatory obstacles. Although the administration's strategy document said little about it, the president informed industry leaders that on-site power solutions would be encouraged. 

“Every company will be given the right to build their own power plant … you are essentially going to become your own utility,” the president told industry leaders Wednesday. “Any excess energy you’re going to sell back to the grid and make plenty of money doing it.” 

Within the data center sector, the administration’s AI framework has received a generally positive reception.

Industry advocacy group Data Center Coalition called the plan “a major step forward,” pointing to measures to streamline permitting as well as commitments to assist the industry’s workforce development efforts. 

“DCC was pleased to see that many of our policy recommendations were incorporated in President Trump’s plan,” Data Center Coalition President Josh Levi said in a statement. 

“These recommendations focus on the removal of barriers to faster data center construction and operation—ranging from power access to supply chains to workforce development—which will allow data center companies to continue investing hundreds of billions of dollars to expand U.S. data center infrastructure across the country.”

At the same time, the administration’s AI strategy has raised alarm bells among environmental groups and advocates for clean energy. 

Speaking on a conference call Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers and environmental activists decried the rollback of environmental regulations as a handout to the oil and gas industry — the latest in a line of decisions meant to undermine the country’s transition to renewable energy. 

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, said the administration’s policy will benefit Big Tech at the expense of consumers, with self-powered data centers “taking our ability to breathe fresh air as gas plants and diesel generators get built alongside these massive facilities.” 

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Markey said. “Our environment doesn’t have to be a sacrificial lamb on the altar of innovation.”