Trump Plans Executive Orders To Boost AI Growth and Power Supply

Trump plans three major executive decisions to expand AI systems, while competing with Chinese dominance due to increasing electricity demand surges nationwide.

Four unnamed sources revealed to Reuters that the Trump administration will use executive orders to accelerate the growth of American AI, while boosting energy capacity and challenging Chinese technological supremacy.

The planned actions include speeding up power grid connections for energy projects and offering federal land for AI data center construction. “Training large-scale AI models requires a huge amount of electricity,” one source said to Reuters, noting that energy demand is growing at a rate not seen in decades.

Reuters reports that the administration also intends to streamline environmental permits alongside introducing a nationwide Clean Water Act permit that will simplify zoning rules and reduce construction delays. The administration is taking these steps as part of its initiative to remove all barriers that impede AI development.

President Trump is expected to highlight these initiatives on July 15 at an AI and energy event in Pennsylvania, and the White House is set to release a comprehensive AI Action Plan on July 23. That date may be declared “AI Action Day” to publicly reinforce the administration’s commitment, as reported by Reuters.

These steps come amid growing concern over the energy needs of AI. Reuters reports that power demand from AI data centers could grow more than thirtyfold by 2035, with outdated infrastructure and delayed grid connections already posing serious challenges.

AI models such as Claude, DeepSeek’s R1, and OpenAI’s o3 are significantly contributing to environmental costs. Research indicates that reasoning-enabled models produce 50 times more CO₂ emissions than basic systems when performing identhttps://www.watch-everywhere-guide.com/news/ai-data-centers-are-driving-up-energy-use-but-transparency-is-lacking/ical tasks.

The “chain-of-thought” method which models use to mimic human reasoning leads to substantial increases in their power consumption.

This concern is far from abstract. Recent research reports that AI has started to transform energy consumption patterns across the globe. Data centers in Virginia’s Culpeper County consume electricity at a level that equals the power needs of 10,000 to 20,000 residential homes.

The data center sector in Ireland now supplies more than 20% of the country’s total electricity requirements. The International Energy Agency predicts that data centers worldwide will consume 340 terawatt-hours of electricity during 2022 which represents 1.3% of global electricity usage.

The growing carbon footprint of AI will challenge governments to develop effective management strategies because they lack adequate transparency and proactive policies as more energy-intensive models enter the market.