Federal Lands Reassigned for Massive Artificial Intelligence Data Center Expansion

The administration is converting vast swaths of federal land into sites for massive data centers and the corresponding power infrastructure to speed up artificial intelligence development and circumvent expanding local resistance to such facilities.

The Energy Department revealed on Wednesday its plan to transform sections of a decommissioned Cold War uranium enrichment site in Paducah, Kentucky, into a large new artificial intelligence data center campus. The government-owned location has been under environmental remediation for several years.

Valued at $100 billion, the initiative entails building 2 gigawatts of natural gas power capacity linked to the regional grid alongside 2.6 gigawatts of battery storage. The Energy Department stated the project would be privately financed through a collaboration with NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power providers; Brookfield, the investment firm; and various local utilities. (A single gigawatt of gas-fired power can supply approximately 750,000 homes.)

“The U.S. government is leveraging its assets — such as federal lands — to expand power generation, generate employment, and ensure the country leads in artificial intelligence,” stated Energy Secretary Chris Wright in an official release.

This marks the third instance where the administration has outlined plans to convert Cold War-era installations into data centers. In March, the Energy Department announced it would repurpose sections of a former nuclear enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to accommodate an enormous 10-gigawatt data center, primarily fueled by natural gas and partially financed by Japan.

Additionally, this month the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced it would partner with engineering firm Amentum to investigate a potential 1-gigawatt data center powered by a mix of natural gas and nuclear energy at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a federal complex previously used for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.

President Trump has remained a strong advocate for artificial intelligence, describing it as crucial to winning the technological competition with China. Recently, he has also sought to address increasing community resistance to the rapid spread of large, energy-intensive data centers, which are significantly increasing electricity demand.

A recent Gallup poll indicated that nearly half of Americans would “strongly oppose” the construction of a new data center in their vicinity, with concerns ranging from noise and pollution to increased energy and water consumption. According to Data Center Watch, a project by the AI research firm 10a Labs, at least 75 data center projects valued at $130 billion were either delayed or halted in the first quarter of this year due to local resistance.

Mr. Trump highlighted instances where new data center developments had lowered local property taxes or reduced electricity rates. He also harshly criticized opponents, labeling them “radical left communists” who “would not lower your electricity bills.”

His administration has worked to facilitate data center development on Department of Energy-owned lands, which could streamline the approval process. The Environmental Protection Agency has likewise taken measures to ease construction, including relaxing regulations on smog-forming pollution from the gas turbines typically used to power these facilities.

Separately, the Interior Department recently approved plans for the first-ever data center on federal land near Boulder City, Nevada, on a site where a large utility-scale solar project had previously been permitted. The agency stated it would not conduct a new, time-consuming environmental review, citing that the data center’s impacts would be comparable to those of the original solar facility. This approval was originally reported by Heatmap, a climate news outlet.

Two environmental groups filed a legal challenge against this decision this week.

“By bypassing the public, they are attempting to hand over Nevada’s desert to multi-billion-dollar tech firms without allowing anyone any input,” said Olivia Tanager, executive director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe area chapter in Nevada.

In Kentucky, the new data center will occupy portions of a 3,556-acre Energy Department site that has produced low-enriched uranium for military reactors and nuclear weapons since the 1950s. The enrichment facility, which utilized a now-obsolete gaseous diffusion process, ceased operations in 2013.

The Energy Department stated that the project’s new gas-fired power plants would generate surplus electricity beyond the data center’s needs and could supply the excess to local communities. The initiative is expected to reach completion in 2031.

The administration has sought to increase natural gas usage to fuel the AI data center boom while simultaneously restricting wind and solar energy development. Natural gas has become the leading source of America’s greenhouse gas emissions driving planetary warming. A Wednesday report by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, discovered that U.S. emissions declines could decelerate in the coming years due to accelerated data center expansion and increasing gas demand.

Source link