Donald Trump’s restrictions on renewable energy risk sparking an electricity crisis in the US, driving up costs for consumers and handing China an edge in the global artificial intelligence race, industry executives have warned. In his first week in office, the US president ordered a moratorium on offshore wind approvals and reviews of existing wind leases and paused hundreds of billions of dollars of incentives for green energy. The actions have sent shockwaves across an industry that is the cheapest and fastest-growing source of new capacity on the US grid at a time of rising power demand. By 2028, utilities will need to boost annual generation by as much as 26 per cent from 2023 levels to meet demand, far higher than any supply growth the US has achieved in the past two decades, according to consultancy Bain. Nearly 45 per cent of this demand growth is being driven by the construction of power-hungry data centres required to support the rollout of AI technologies.
“We’re going to need more juice and a lot of it . . . I’m not sure I see the wisdom in slowing down the development of any resource right now,” said Jim Robb, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a regulatory body. “I don’t think we want the AI infrastructure of the country to be dependent on the Middle East or China or India or any place else that has the power so that they can develop very quickly.”
Source: FT
