Senate Democrats hope the White House’s quest to win the artificial intelligence race with China will blunt President Donald Trump’s unrelenting hatred of offshore wind turbines and help restart talks on a permitting deal. It may be wishful thinking.
The administration’s decision in December to halt the construction of five offshore wind projects prompted Democrats to pause bipartisan permitting negotiations on Capitol Hill at a time when some of the nation’s most powerful lobby groups are increasing pressure on Congress to ease project approvals. They said continued attacks on wind and solar means the president can’t be trusted to treat all projects fairly.
Now, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, is calling on technology companies involved in artificial intelligence and energy-hungry data centers to intercede with the president.
“The artificial intelligence folks, the crypto folks, the data system folks who need massive amounts of electrons — you all need to start showing up and letting people know that you actually want permitting reform, and you actually want an administrative and regulatory process in which electrons are treated fairly, irrespective of source, so you can get the power that you need,” Whitehouse said during floor remarks Wednesday.
Whitehouse and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the Energy and Natural Resources ranking member, have been working with Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah).
Whitehouse on Wednesday took pains to say congressional Republicans weren’t the problem in the permitting talks. That title, he said, belonged to the White House.
Trump on Friday reiterated his hatred for wind during a meeting with oil company leaders, saying, “My goal is to not allow any windmill to be built — they are losers.”
Asked whether he thought an intervention from Big Tech would matter, Whitehouse said, “It could make a big difference if the AI, crypto and data people said, ‘Wait a minute, we need these damn electrons.’ They have not. They are just beginning to. We are seeing them for the first time in the permitting reform conversation.”
Some tech lobbyists, however, argued they have been engaged for some time. “This isn’t like a new policy priority for us,” said Cy McNeill, senior director of federal affairs at the Data Center Coalition.
“It’s a pretty simple equation,” he said. “The time it takes to build a data center and the time it takes to build new energy infrastructure is just mismatched in this country, so our priority lies in trying to minimize that delta as much as possible.”
McNeill, during an interview with POLITICO’s E&E News, worked to keep the conversation away from politics, noting they are not in the habit of getting into “fights about which energy generation resources are more valuable.”
“This isn’t something we’re doing in direct response to Democrats calling for us to be more vocal on this,” he said. “This is something that has been a long-standing priority for us, and when we talk to Democrats and Republicans, we talk about the need for more electrons on the grid and shortening that timeline.”
He declined to elaborate on their specific outreach to administration officials, and was hesitant to talk about what their long-term strategy might look like. “I will say: This is our No. 1 policy priority,” he said about permitting.
This is a “real issue” for us, he added, not a “buzzword we’re using to weigh in on the conversation.” For example, the electric utility Dominion Energy saw delays connecting to transmission infrastructure, he said.
Rich Powell, CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, said he was cautiously optimistic both sides could still come together to agree on permitting language to, essentially, ensure that once construction is underway, “a deal is a deal.”
But he stressed that time is of the essence. The bipartisan Energy Act of 2020, which passed that December, was on the Senate floor by March. “It gives you a sense of how mature things will have to be,” he said.
Powell acknowledged frustrations on both sides of the aisle about the Trump administration pausing nearly complete projects, but said: “Our sense is that there is a deal here.”
Powell said his conversations with the administration have revealed three priorities: preserving energy affordability, preserving reliability of the grid and winning the AI race.
“They have taken all kinds of actions, maxed out their ability to go after three things,” he said.
Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to say the administration was working with tech companies to make sure they pay for their energy use.
The Senate was expected to make progress on permitting this month after the House passed the “Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act,” H.R. 4776, to ease the National Environmental Policy Act review process.
But the bill passed the House only after GOP leaders struck a deal with ardent offshore wind opponents who wanted to ensure the Trump administration could continue to block projects it dislikes — at least for now.
Last week, “SPEED Act” sponsor House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) waved off questions about the White House continuing to attack renewable energy.
“If you ask some people in my party last Congress, they would say they didn’t trust the previous administration, which again amplifies why we need permitting reform,” he said. “It’s why Congress needs to act.”
He also touched on a key argument that could compel the White House to play ball: “The Trump administration is doing a remarkable job approving projects and getting things going, but under the current process, a new administration could come in and cancel those projects.”
Nick Loris, executive vice president for policy at C3 Solutions, a consulting firm, suggested the argument about offshore wind was something of a red herring because even without government interference, the industry has supply chain and cost challenges.
“That battle can be lost on the merits of economics and yet it’s the political wedge that’s further driving the divide for permitting reform,” he said.
“I don’t think anything President Trump says on renewable energy is going to change but my hope is that if there’s some movement forward on renewable energy broadly — even if it’s done quietly — is that’s enough to narrow the divide on renewables and get us enough votes.”
Heinrich was not exactly sure the data center push would work: “In theory, if decisions were being made from a logical point of view, then yeah, because there’s a giant new load demand, right, but I don’t know that this administration has been making logical decisions.”
