The Powering AI: Global Leadership Summit was recently held this week at Oklahoma State University’s Hamm Institute for American Energy in Oklahoma City.
This landmark, high-level event brought together national leaders from technology, energy, and academia to address a critical challenge: how to power the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) with reliable, scalable American energy sources.
I have underscored how much energy it takes to fuel AI capabilities in several of my posts on the subject. It is estimated that data center power demand will grow by 160% by 2030.
Obtaining that energy is clearly a priority for the Trump administration. The summit featured a notable lineup of U.S. Cabinet members and industry leaders, including Doug Burgum (Secretary of the Interior), Chris Wright (Secretary of Energy), Brooke Rollins (Secretary of Agriculture), and Lee Zeldin (Environmental Protection Agency Administrator).
While all the prominent members of the Trump Team seem exceedingly busy, Zeldin seems especially so. He was just in San Diego to encourage Mexico to clean up its Tijuana sewage situation, or face consequences. At this AI summit, he stressed that the EPA would essentially stay out of the way when it comes to extracting the necessary energy resources.
Zeldin was open to getting input from new and off-the-beltway sources, too.
While natural gas and gas-powered turbines emerged as the leading near-term solutions to meet surging energy demands, the summit also spotlighted other dependable sources — such as nuclear and geothermal — as vital components of a long-term, diversified energy strategy.Zeldin invited attendees to share their ideas on how the federal government could facilitate energy industry growth.“I want every single idea that you have, no matter how large it is, no matter how small it is,” he said.
Energy Secretary Wright’s agency has been busy identifying 16 federally owned sites across the country that are suitable for the construction of new data centers and AI infrastructure. These sites include national laboratories, former uranium enrichment plants, and nuclear sites, all chosen for their existing energy infrastructure and potential for rapid development.
“Private data center companies, that’s where the capital is, that’s where the investment is and on federal land, we make a commercial arrangement with them,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a press conference Thursday at NREL.The arrangement could be a combination of lease payments and an allocation of data center computing to the lab. “It is using our land to get some value out of it with a private company,” Wright said. “It helps the lab and helps the country by getting more data centers built.”The underlying goal is to keep the U.S. in the forefront in the development of artificial intelligence. “We have a lot of land,” Wright said, “… and we want to win this AI race or at least stay in the lead.”
Secretary Burgum has been keen on making sure all available energy resources are available for the development of AI. At another summit, he said losing to China in the race for artificial intelligence arms the current biggest “existential threat” to the our country.
“We need more electricity to win the AI arms race against China,” Burgum said, emphasizing the administration’s stance on securing more base-load power Friday during Semafor‘s World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C.Burgum said the U.S. risks letting China get ahead on AI if it continues following past administrations’ strategies of focusing on the accelerated phaseout of fossil fuels such as coal and spending on renewable energy.He said the pursuit of clean energy also puts Americans at a higher risk of grid failure, as renewables and battery storage technologies have yet to meet growing energy demand. Burgum said this is a greater risk than that posed by global warming, which is fueled by carbon and methane emissions that can be traced back to the burning of fossil fuels.“Part of that destabilization, again, is this massive investment that we’ve made in intermittent … in some of the same mistakes that Britain, Germany and others have made with the idea … built around a premise that the biggest existential threat to the world is a degree of temperature change in 2100,” Burgum said.
Interestingly, under Secretary Rollins, USDA is executing a comprehensive AI strategy, with a goal of leveraging intelligent automation by combining AI and machine learning with process automation to enhance agricultural and food processing efficiency.
Let’s hope federal judges don’t get in the way of these good efforts.
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