Open the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US elections mean for Washington and the world
Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Interior warned that the United States will lose the “AI arms race” to China unless it boosts fossil fuel electricity generation and stabilizes its power grid.
Doug BurgumThe billionaire businessman and former governor of North Dakota told US senators on Thursday that the country is experiencing an “electricity crisis” due to a weak grid and “roadblocks” that prevent companies from building fossil fuel plants that can provide power around the clock. power.
He added that the Trump administration would allocate more public lands to oil exploration and cut tax breaks for renewable energy companies that produce “intermittent and unreliable energy.”
“The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow,” Burgum said at his Senate confirmation hearing, adding that the balance was “out of balance.”
Electricity demand is growing at unprecedented rates in the United States, driven by growing demand from data centers for artificial intelligence processing – which… Department of Energy It is expected to triple in the next three years.
“Without core load, we will lose the AI arms race to China, and if we lose the AI arms race to China, that will have direct implications for our national security,” Burgum said.
“Right now, we've stacked the deck, where we're creating roadblocks for people who want to do base load (electricity), and we have huge tax incentives for people who want to do intermittent and unreliable.”
Burgum, who endorsed Trump after ending his 2024 presidential bid, is also expected to lead the National Energy Council. If he is appointed as Trump's “energy czar”, he will have sweeping powers to advance the president-elect's vision of “drill, baby, drill.”
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to open federal lands to artificial intelligence infrastructure on the condition that the energy is drawn from clean electricity sources — part of the Democratic leader's efforts to reduce emissions and combat climate change.
Burgum said new technologies, such as carbon storage, could eliminate emissions from fossil fuels, although there are questions about the commercial and technical viability of the technology.
The former governor added that restricting fossil fuel production in the United States would lead to no environmental benefit, as less scrupulous governments would plug the supply gap.
“America produces cleaner, smarter, and safer energy than anywhere in the world,” he said. “When America's energy production is restricted, it doesn't reduce demand, it shifts production to countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran — whose authoritarian leaders don't care about the environment.”
The United States is already prepared for Boom in natural gas power plants To boost base load capacity, as many as 80 facilities are expected to be operational by 2030, according to Enverus.
Biden's landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, tied sales of offshore oil and gas leases to new offshore wind leases. When asked if he would protect offshore wind projects under development, Burgum declined to comment.
Trump pledged to end offshore wind energy projects on “Day One.”
