President Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on July 6, 2026.Anna Moneymaker via Getty
Get your news from a source not owned or controlled by oligarchs. Register for free Mother Jones Daily.
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate desk Cooperation.
In brief remarks President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he was shocked to learn how much energy developing artificial intelligence requires and said his administration is now approving plans for energy facilities to power data centers in “within weeks.”
After first describing his children’s investment accounts, Trump responded to a question about cryptocurrencies, saying that major technology leaders seeking to develop artificial intelligence have told him they need access to doubling the country’s existing energy capacity to advance technologies and overtake foreign competitors.
Trump also said that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told him that tech companies would not take advantage of the administration’s promise of quick approvals for private power plants to support AI development.
“An industry of the future should not be tied to dirty fuels of the past.”
Trump said he then called Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk to ask why they hadn’t submitted plans for power plants alongside their data center developments.
“They thought we were joking,” Trump said Monday. “They can’t believe they’re going to get approved in a matter of weeks.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about how the administration is approving power plant plans within weeks.
While the government has attempted to waive environmental protections, expedite permitting, and relax building codes for gas plants and data centers, there are a number of state and local requirements that both power plants and data centers must meet, which can take months in even the fastest permitting environments.
Although Trump said it was his idea to allow tech companies to build their own on-site “behind the meter” generation units to power data, it is common practice to ensure they always have access to power. Dedicated data center power plants are becoming increasingly popular as companies struggle to bring the facilities online.
The president said tech companies can use any type of energy they want to use — he specifically mentioned only nuclear, oil and gas — except wind. “We don’t allow any wind,” Trump said. “The wind is terrible, it just doesn’t work.”
According to the US Energy Information Administration, Trump has sought to end wind energy, the resource that produces a tenth of the electricity produced in the US.
The race to develop AI, which requires data centers to handle energy-intensive computing tasks, has led to plans for 74 new or expanded methane gas plants across the U.S., according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project, a national nonprofit founded more than 20 years ago by a former director of the EPA’s civil enforcement office.
According to the report, these planned gas-fired power plants, intended solely to power data centers, are expected to generate 143 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power the state of California nearly three times.
Of those 74 gas plants, 32 are in Texas, 10 in Ohio and seven in Pennsylvania.
The report said the power plants would also release almost 662 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, equivalent to Australia’s emissions. This wave of data center power plants could also release air pollutants that contribute to smog and lung damage.
Data centers are becoming increasingly popular, prompting some politicians to distance themselves from the industry.
Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement that “an industry of the future should not be tied to dirty fuels of the past.”
“While data centers may be necessary to accommodate technological changes, the public has a right to transparency and accountability, clean air and common-sense controls to protect water supplies, especially in areas already struggling with water shortages,” Duggan said. Data centers can use large amounts of water to keep servers cool.
As the data center industry uses rural areas of the United States to build supercomputer warehouses and their associated fossil fuel power plants and generators, the facilities have quickly become deeply unpopular in communities across America.
Some lawmakers have long been vocal about their concerns about building data centers. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) introduced legislation in March that would propose a moratorium on construction of all new data centers until AI protections, including worker and environmental protections, are in place.
Other politicians who have responded to voters’ protests ahead of the upcoming midterm elections are trying to distance themselves from the industry.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called for blocking new data center developments in rural parts of the state during a campaign stop in East Texas last week. That’s a step further than his recent calls for data centers to cover their own infrastructure costs, reuse their water, integrate new power generation facilities into the state’s independent power grid and take other measures aimed at limiting impacts on residential communities.
New York state lawmakers passed a one-year moratorium on data center licensing in June. If Gov. Kathy Hochul signs the bill, New York would be the first state to restrict data centers in this way. But Hochul, a Democrat who is up for re-election this year, said she believes it should be left up to local governments.
Monterey Park, California, and Ashville, Ohio, are among U.S. communities that have enacted temporary bans or pauses on new data centers.
The Trump administration announced last month that it would not set nationwide environmental requirements or recommendations for the data center industry.
While there are technologies and practices that reduce air pollution and water use, states and localities know what works best for them, EPA chief Zeldin said at a Politico energy summit in June.
By not enforcing federal regulations, said Clara Vondrich, senior policy adviser at Public Citizen’s Climate Program, the EPA gave Big Tech a green light to build polluting power plants and water-intensive facilities without any environmental enforcement.
“Executives from major technology companies have lobbied hard to integrate themselves into the Trump administration’s sphere of influence,” Vondrich said. “Zeldin made it clear that their investment was money well spent.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/donald-trump-epa-lee-zeldin-fast-track-private-gas-fired-power-plants-ai-data-centers/
