President Joe Biden’s administration is considering executive action to fast-track the construction of data centers key to artificial intelligence — with potentially much looser environmental constraints, two people familiar with the discussions said Wednesday.
The exact nature of the action is still under discussion, the people said. They said the White House was discussing using the Defense Production Act, which gives the president broad emergency powers, to achieve its goal.
The action could allow data centers to exceed pollution limits, open federal lands to data center construction and give data centers priority access to available power supply, the people said. One of the sources said the policy under discussion would take the form of an executive order.
White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson called the sources’ report “inaccurate” but did not specify on record which aspects.
