President Trump said Thursday he would use his energy emergency declaration to approve power plants for the Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Trump said: They don’t have to worry about utilities.”
He said the emergency declaration would allow for the approval of AI's power buildout.
“We're going to build the power generation facility. They're going to build it. I'm going to get them approval,” he said. “Under the emergency declaration, I can complete the approval myself without experiencing years of waiting.”
“And the big problem is we need to double the energy that we have in the US right now. Can you imagine? – AI becoming as big as we want it to be. for,” he said. “So we're going to make an emergency declaration so we can start building them right away.”
He added that companies could run the center with “whatever they want, they might have coal as a backup.”
Artificial intelligence technologies are particularly power-hungry and are expected to make a significant contribution to electricity demand in the coming years.
Trump declared a national energy-related emergency on his first day in office.
Speaking about the declaration from behind his desk in the Oval Office, Trump said, “That means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem.”
“And we have such an emergency,” he added.
Trump also undertook other policies to embrace AI, announcing earlier in the week that he would invest up to $500 billion in related infrastructure.
His latest announcement generated some left-field pushback.
“Trump’s fake emergency to justify fast-tracking coal and gas-fired power plants will expose American families to higher utility bills to feed power-hungry AI data centers, It ruins air quality and increases greenhouse gas emissions,” the Public Citizen Energy Program said in a written statement.
“Trump's continued abuse of emergency powers to enrich his powerful special interests comes at the cost of the health and wallets of working Americans,” he added.
