https://washingtonsun.com/energy Energy en-US Thu, 03 Sep 2026 20:21:44 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/energy-jobs-fell-almost-every-sector-last-year Mara Hoplamazian The Energy Department found only that transmission, storage and distribution sectors grew, in part due to the expansion of data centers. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 20:21:44 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/energy-jobs-fell-almost-every-sector-last-year The energy industry’s workforce shrank last year.

The energy sector lost roughly 86,000 workers — roughly 1% of its workforce — between 2024 and 2025, according to an annual report from the Department of Energy. The losses came from almost every part of the energy industry, the United States Energy and Employment Report said, amid increased automation and the Trump administration’s push away from green energy.

Only the transmission, distribution and storage parts of the energy sector saw job growth in 2025, a trend DOE officials attributed to the expansion of data centers, growth in manufacturing and industrial activity and the increased adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps. Enrollment in apprenticeship programs also increased.

The Trump administration’s efforts to increase coal- and nuclear-power generation led to employment bumps, with each of those industries adding about 2,500 workers.

But as a whole, the power-generation sector lost about 15,000 workers from 2024 to 2025. Most of those losses were in the solar industry, with additional job losses in wind and hydroelectric power.

Jobs in petroleum and natural gas also declined in 2025, dropping by 3% and 4%, respectively. Energy officials said that reflected a shift toward a “smaller, higher-paid workforce.”

“Industry sources also point out the role of AI, automation, and digital technologies in improving operational efficiencies and reducing labor requirements,” the report said.

About 50,000 jobs disappeared from the motor-vehicle industry in 2025, but wages in that sector also increased. Energy Department officials said “output-per-worker” increased over that time, too.

The report found that higher-wage occupations added workers in 2025, while lower-wage occupations declined. The median salary in the energy sector in 2025 was $63,000, higher than the national median of $51,000.

Across several energy industry sectors, employers reported having difficulty hiring workers and concerns about a lack of people available for technical positions like electric work or construction.

Despite the drop in employment, the Energy Department report projected that demand for workers in the energy sector would increase as electricity demand rises and data centers expand.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/trump-administration-chevron-expand-venezuela-oil-production Mara Hoplamazian Secretary Chris Wright is traveling to the country days after the White House announced a deal to exert more control over the country’s oil industry. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:15:30 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/trump-administration-chevron-expand-venezuela-oil-production Energy Secretary Chris Wright is planning to lead a group to Venezuela, as the United States expands its control over the country’s oil industry, a U.S. official told reporters Tuesday.

Wright will be in the country for a forthcoming announcement from Chevron, which plans on increasing its production capacity in Venezuela, the official said. The official spoke under the condition of anonymity under terms set by the White House.

Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company with a presence in Venezuela. Chevron’s expected expansion in the country, and the energy secretary’s visit, come after the White House announced it would be taking control of more than 65 million barrels of oil reserves in Venezuela through an agreement with North American Blue Energy Partners.

Officials provided more details Tuesday on that deal; they said it involved no investment of U.S. dollars – just the country’s backing. The equity position is a “standard deal” similar to others that the Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital has taken in other companies throughout the Trump administration, the officials said.

“Right now, our interest is ensuring that the backing of the U.S. allows this company to attract the investment, the capital investment necessary to ramp up production rapidly,” an official said.

In a fact sheet from the White House released Monday, the Trump administration said the deal will give the U.S. a 35% equity stake in a corporate parent company of North American Blue Energy Partners, a private oil company that now has 100-year concessions for 17 oil fields.

That company will allow the U.S. Department of State to purchase 20% of the oil from those fields, which officials say can go towards refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The U.S. will also have the right of first refusal for the other 80% of the company’s production.

The U.S. will have veto power over the North American Blue Energy Partners board of directors.

Officials also addressed the role of Alejandro Betancourt, who runs that company, in the deal. Betancourt was involved in the operation to remove Nicolás Maduro and has worked with the U.S. government since President Donald Trump’s first term. He has also been investigated for money laundering, and senior U.S. officials have helped him avoid criminal charges.

The U.S. government vetted Betancourt, and he is not facing any charges in the United States, an official said Tuesday.

“You have to deal with the dynamics sometimes that are in a place in order to get where you want to get to. This is a proven operator,” the official said. “I’m not nominating anyone for sainthood here. What I am telling you is that this is a person that has, in the past, been helpful to the United States government.”

Though Trump has claimed the deal would lower gas prices, it isn’t expected to have an immediate effect, as many of the oil fields are still undeveloped. Trump met with refining companies and distributors Tuesday to address high gas prices.

Rather, U.S. officials said the Venezuela deal was in the interest of national security, framing it as a “geopolitical opportunity” to secure oil fields previously under the influence of Russian and Chinese companies.

“There is clearly a defined U.S. interest in ensuring one of the largest energy suppliers in our hemisphere is aligned with us, and not with an adversary,” one U.S. official told reporters.

Officials emphasized the U.S.’s desire to see “a stable, democratic Venezuela,” including free and fair elections, and said talks would resume in the middle of September toward that end.

“This is about whether this industry is professionalized, whether it looks like the oil industry of a real country, not a piggy bank for corrupt elements,” the official said. “You don’t want to see the transfer of one kleptocracy to another.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/data-center-deals-cash-donations Mara Hoplamazian How data center developers are spending their way into communities. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:47:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/data-center-deals-cash-donations In a few years, the city of Saline, Michigan, will have renovated its recreation center’s locker rooms, tiled the pool deck, expanded the children's play area, installed a waterfall and constructed a lazy river. Down the road, part of OpenAI’s Project Stargate, a 2.2 million-square-foot, $43 billion data center, will hum away, churning out the next generation of artificial intelligence.

As public sentiment on data centers has soured, AI companies are leveling up their efforts to sweeten the deal for communities that host them. In Saline, that included a $10 million donation from OpenAI, Oracle and other companies for a new and improved recreation center.

In Richland Parish, Louisiana, teachers got $50,000 bonuses from Meta. Compass Datacenters forked over $15 million for a new animal shelter in Ellis County, Texas. In Florida, developers for the failed Project Tango offered to hide their building from view with a small forest of pines, palms and native shrubs. NorthPoint Development has proposed giving $10,000 to every household in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, if it’s allowed to build a massive data center for Amazon — a dangling carrot some residents have characterized as a bribe.

Politicians from both parties are pushing the deal sweeteners too. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s energy office told counties to make “wish lists” for data center developers, and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is pitching free electricity for towns willing to play host.

This summer’s data center backlash has underlined a glaring lack of guidance from federal and state leaders on what tech companies owe the communities they’re building in; in Washington, a growing slate of proposals range from requiring developers to procure and pay for their own power, and taxing data centers to prepare for potential AI-related job losses.

In the absence of comprehensive federal regulation, local officials are largely left to negotiate agreements with data center developers themselves. For many of the towns being targeted by developers, the scale of wealth AI companies can bring to the table could be transformative. The benefits they promise, though, rely on the success of a nascent industry that’s been met with fear and doubt. And as developers try to fight widespread distrust and opposition, even multimillion-dollar donations don’t seem to be moving public opinion.

In Michigan, Saline Township’s leadership had voted last year to block the data center development. The developer sued over the zoning decision soon after. The township settled, with officials negotiating several community benefits: a few million dollars for emergency services, farmland preservation and other community investments.

The recreation center revamp came up more casually, said Saline Mayor Brian Marl.

Once it was clear the data center would be built, Marl organized a lunch with Oracle and the other developers. He gave them a tour of the recreation center, and told them about all the work the city hoped to do on the building. Then, the Friday before the groundbreaking, he got a call at 8 p.m. — the companies wanted to give the city $10 million dollars to help with that project.

Marl says the move was an obvious attempt by the companies to ingratiate themselves in the Saline community. But it’s not clear that $10 million went very far toward that goal. Marl is still fielding calls and taking meetings with residents who are fervently trying to stop the project, even as construction moves forward.

“I don’t think it’s game-changing locally, in terms of people’s feelings toward this specific data center, or data center developments more broadly,” he said.

Some offers from developers have backfired.

In Osage County, Oklahoma, Google’s efforts to win support for a data center were thwarted when a local volunteer fire department rejected a $250,000 donation — a sum larger than the department’s annual budget — because of the community’s concerns. That project is the subject of three separate lawsuits, one involving attacks over a lack of government transparency.

City officials in Sand Springs, which annexed the land that would be used for the data center, have negotiated tax agreements and other contributions from Google for community projects. But Osage County Commissioner Steve Talburt hasn’t been impressed.

He’s refused to sign nondisclosure agreements related to the project, despite pressure from Google. The company offered the county a few hundred thousand dollars per year as a payment in lieu of taxes, Talburt said. When he and the other commissioners pushed back, the company cut the county out of the tax agreement completely.

A few weeks ago, a contractor for Google came to visit him, asking what the company could do to smooth things over. The contractor offered to put up extra money for county schools or infrastructure, Talburt said. He declined.

“Google’s just trying to throw money around to get everybody on board, and that’s not good enough,” he said. “It’s not going to make it right. And Osage County is not going to sell out.”

Many negotiations have revolved around similar informal donations or contributions from data center developers. Those aren’t always legally enforceable, said Daniel Metzger, a legal expert with Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Anti-bribery laws make it difficult for local governments to accept benefits explicitly in exchange for approving projects. Local officials can create binding agreements for benefits that are connected to the potential harms a project may cause, regulating water and electricity use, or forcing companies to pay to improve the emergency services they may rely on.

In one of the first formal benefit agreements for a data center in the U.S., the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, cut a deal with developers that requires them to use only clean energy, hire locally, make yearly reports and pay $20 million dollars into community development funds.

Agreements like those are filling a gap where coordinated federal or state legislation is absent, Metzger said, especially agreements that include transparency requirements around water and energy use.

The benefit agreements can be so lucrative that some state and local officials are banking on AI companies to fund their most pie-in-the-sky ambitions. St. Louis officials got a developer to pay roughly $15 million toward public Wi-Fi across the city, among other projects. In West Virginia, where Nvidia and Microsoft are building what could be the largest data center on earth, the state’s 20-year plan published last month aims to eliminate state income tax and boost funding for local schools by attracting massive hyperscale projects.

Still, evidence that community benefit agreements lead to better situations — especially in smaller towns — is mixed, said Devashree Saha, director of the U.S. Clean Energy Economy Program at the World Resources Institute.

“Typically it’s not an even playing field between communities and developers,” she said. “It becomes difficult for community coalitions to hold the developer accountable.”

If a company goes bankrupt or sells a development to another entity and those benefits dry up, it can leave a community that was banking on financial support scrambling, Saha said.

Even without formal agreements or massive donations, a new data center can fundamentally change a place.

In Ellendale, North Dakota, a data center development has more than tripled the town’s tax base. Mayor Don Flaherty says in the next three years, it’s projected to grow from $3.5 million to $37 million.

The data center has touched seemingly every part of life in Ellendale — for better and for worse, Flaherty says. Heavy trucks have torn up the roads. This summer, about 2,600 workers are in town to construct the buildings — more than doubling the town’s population of 1,100. Flaherty says it’s been fun to meet new people, though concerns about crime and traffic have increased.

Hundreds of jobs for locals in Ellendale are on the horizon. The full-time population could grow by up to 600. With all the new tax revenue, the town is planning to upgrade the senior center and ambulance hall, refresh the downtown and work on a walking trail. Down the road, Flaherty is eyeing a new fire department building and a law enforcement center.

Meanwhile, residents are saving money on energy bills as their utility company sells more power to the data center and its profits increase, South Dakota Searchlight reported. Applied Digital, the company behind the development, is helping to finance new housing.

But rent has in some cases doubled, pushing families out of town. And there’s a constant hum at the edge of town.

Flaherty didn’t do any formal negotiation with Applied Digital — which he acknowledges could have been naive. He says he has some concern about a data center bubble bursting, leaving Ellendale behind. Mostly, though, he’s seeing the benefits.

“This is what I believe is the answer for rural America, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be data centers, but some type of project of this nature that can stimulate your economy,” he said. “I guess those are the things that outweigh the worries.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/money/trump-personal-investments-nuclear-industry Jade Lozada The president owned between $6.4 million and $19.45 million in U.S. companies tied to nuclear energy at the end of 2025, according to his financial disclosure. Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:40:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/money/trump-personal-investments-nuclear-industry President Donald Trump could stand to profit from his administration’s unprecedented investments into the nuclear energy industry.

Trump has invested between $6.4 million and $19.45 million in U.S. nuclear technology companies or utility companies that operate nuclear reactors, according to a NOTUS review of his 2025 personal financial disclosure. Trump’s holdings could reap significant gains as his administration seeks to rapidly expand the nuclear industry.

Trump’s investment portfolio includes stocks from the nuclear industry’s major players among utilities, broadening the possibility for profit even as it remains unclear the extent to which companies may leverage the administration’s deregulatory environment to bet big on nuclear.

The president owns between $2.7 million and $11.5 million in Duke Energy, which operates 11 nuclear units across North and South Carolina. The president holds anywhere from $667,000 to $1.4 million in Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear operator in the U.S., and purchased as much as $1.1 million of the company’s stock in 2025. Federal elected officials are only required to report their assets in broad ranges.

Trump purchased between $4.8 million and $12.9 million in energy stock last year as the administration launched its ambitious policy and funding campaign to scale the country’s limited nuclear power facilities into the next big clean energy source.

His stakes in these companies represent a sliver of his vast investment portfolio, which totals at least $858 million, according to his 927-page financial disclosure. Trump’s broad exposure to the U.S. economy leaves few, if any, sectors his policies wouldn’t touch, raising concerns among ethics experts about how the president profits off his administration’s work.

Trump and his family’s finances coalesced around nuclear start-ups as his energy agenda ramped up last year.

The Trump administration’s latest deal would allow U.S. energy companies to develop nuclear facilities in Saudi Arabia for civil use. Trump later made the deal contingent on the U.S. ally establishing diplomatic relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords. The deal still needs to win congressional approval, but it raises ethics concerns. In December, Trump Media & Technology Group announced a $6 billion merger with the American nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies, which plans to complete the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant by 2031, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in losses by TMTG this year.

“We are at a point now that whenever the president announces a major official policy with a foreign government, a reasonable question arises of what's in it for him, and that knee-jerk reaction to ask if there's self-dealing shows how far we have come with lack of trust in government,” said Kedric Payne, the senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

The Trump administration’s nuclear campaign kicked off last May, with the president signing four executive orders to streamline licensing processes, start a pilot program to test advanced nuclear reactors, and investigate the U.S.’s nuclear fuel supply.

Within three weeks of signing the executive orders, Trump acquired between $114,000 and $485,000 of stock in energy companies with nuclear facilities, including several five-figure purchases on the same day, the disclosure shows. His financial disclosure repeatedly shows dozens of single-day purchases of stock in everything from hotel groups and cosmetics companies to tech and energy businesses.

Trump’s stock portfolio includes investments in Vistra, Southern Company, Entergy, NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy, utilities that produce nuclear energy along with natural gas, solar energy, coal, and more.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Trump’s assets are “held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions.” Trump has previously said that he does not communicate with the institutions in charge of his money.

“President Trump has unleashed a nuclear energy renaissance and reignited meaningful progress in America's nuclear power production,” Rogers said in a statement to NOTUS. “The media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and only deepen the public's distrust in what they read.”

The Trump Organization and the utility companies did not respond to NOTUS’ requests for comment.

The Biden administration, through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, reserved billions of dollars for funding nuclear projects to at least triple nuclear power generation by 2050. Former President Joe Biden pursued his own full-throttle energy agenda with billions of dollars and regulatory changes to grow the wind and solar industry as well.

Now, nuclear energy companies are benefiting from the Trump administration’s financial and policy support, which has thrust the industry to the fore as energy demand soars amid the data center buildout, and as the president deprioritizes other clean energy sources.

A month before the Saudi deal, the Department of Energy announced a $17.5 billion loan program for energy companies to purchase equipment that requires long lead times to secure. The equipment will be used to build up to ten commercial nuclear reactors jointly owned by the private power company Westinghouse, which last year reached an $80 billion agreement with the U.S. government to roll out reactors.

In January, the DOE announced $2.7 billion in contracts for U.S. companies developing enriched uranium to supply commercial nuclear reactors. The DOE has authorized 11 nuclear reactor testing projects through a pilot program announced in 2025. The DOE also launched a program to expand nuclear fuel supply chains and reduce U.S. reliance on enriched uranium and critical materials from abroad.

The pilot programs offer nuclear energy companies fast-tracked authorizations to build reactors and fuel production lines, with the possibility of later acquiring commercial licenses. Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure does not show investments in the 12 companies selected for the pilot programs, most of which are privately held.

The Trump administration’s bets are yielding some positive results. Days after the Saudi deal, the Trump administration announced that four advanced nuclear reactors reached criticality, the development stage when reactors can sustain a stable nuclear fission reaction.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated where nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies is based. It is an American company.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/energy-department-abandons-biden-era-plans-for-more-power-lines Anna Kramer, Mara Hoplamazian The Biden administration transmission corridors proved politically fraught, leading the Trump administration to ditch the policy. Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:48:19 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/energy-department-abandons-biden-era-plans-for-more-power-lines The Trump administration is abandoning controversial Biden-era plans to help developers build power lines in areas that badly need increased transmission infrastructure.

Under the Biden administration, the Department of Energy identified three corridors in the country that were facing higher prices or more frequent outages because of a lack of transmission infrastructure. Companies with interest in developing transmission infrastructure in those areas would be able to build more easily on both private and public land.

Those designated transmission corridors, known as National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors, proved politically radioactive with local communities that didn’t want more federal control over development on their lands. Republican politicians balked at the designations.

Now, the Trump administration has abandoned the three projects altogether. The Department of Energy said public feedback showed they shouldn’t continue, and criticized them for being part of the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.

“Transmission policy must serve the American people — not special interests or a climate-alarmist agenda that drives up costs, worsens reliability and disregards the concerns of local communities,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.

The partisan fighting around the Biden energy infrastructure plans has for years dissuaded companies from planning to rely on the future corridors to help with infrastructure investments. The Trump administration’s plans for energy infrastructure largely shied away from discussing these transmission corridors.

“I think it reinforces how dysfunctional the whole NIETC construct is. There’s no reason to have DOE in the middle of the process making designations that get reversed with each new administration,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies LLC, a transmission consulting firm.

Still, there’s widespread agreement that the U.S. will need to build out the transmission system, as demand for energy increases.

And the DOE has not abandoned transmission investments altogether. The agency has announced billions of dollars of loans for other transmission projects in parts of the Midwest and the South, and it has worked to quickly speed along plans for a transmission line that will connect the eastern and western parts of the US electric grid.

“The Department of Energy has been a fantastic lead agency for coordinating the federal permitting process for our North Plains Connector,” said Ashley Kang, communications director for Grid United, the company working to build the North Plains Connector.

That project will likely receive its completed environmental impact statement from the DOE later this year, cutting years off the average timeline for this phase in the federal permitting process, she said.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) celebrated the cancellation of the transmission corridors, saying the projects had created confusion and concern in local communities.

“American families and businesses need a strong, reliable electric grid — not federal processes that create more uncertainty than progress,” she said.

The National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor program isn’t ending, but will “recalibrate” to align more with local priorities, Boebert said.

Boebert’s district was part of the proposed Southwestern Grid Connector, which would have included parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The two other abandoned plans were the Lake Erie-Canada Corridor, which focused on connecting Canada with Pennsylvania and the rest of the PJM interconnection and the Tribal Energy Access Corridor, which included parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and five tribal reservations.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/pentagon-resume-reviewing-wind-project-judge-says Mara Hoplamazian At least 125 wind projects have been stalled because of the Department of Defense’s review freeze. Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:44:07 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/pentagon-resume-reviewing-wind-project-judge-says The Department of Defense must resume reviews of wind energy projects, a federal judge in Oregon ordered Thursday.

At least 125 utility-scale wind projects across 25 states have been stuck in limbo because of a freeze on wind project reviews at the Pentagon, according to a group of trade associations, wind energy companies and environmental organizations that sued over the delays under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The review freeze has caused a “total halt of all wind project development in the United States,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, said the Defense Department had violated its regulatory deadlines by withholding reviews. She issued a preliminary injunction, ordering Defense officials to provide status reports every 30 days that address whether reviews of wind projects have resumed.

Since 2011, the Pentagon has been required to conduct security reviews for new energy construction projects. The agency looks at whether those developments would have an “adverse impact to military operations and readiness.”

The review process is multifaceted. First, the Defense Department conducts a preliminary review. Then, for structures over 200 feet tall — including wind turbines — the Federal Aviation Administration gets involved, conducting an aeronautical study. For projects that could pose a risk to military operations, the Defense Department, the FAA administrator and the secretary of homeland security act as a team to identify mitigation measures — a process meant to take 90 days.

But wind projects across the country have been frozen in that process for months, as the Department of Defense gradually stopped executing those reviews last August. At first, the department stopped signing completed agreements with developers and stopped providing developers with draft agreements. In April, Defense officials cancelled negotiations with wind energy applicants who were in mitigation discussions.

In May, officials issued guidance geared toward reassessing the review process for energy projects that could cause “impactful Doppler interference,” a category that only applies to wind turbines.

Defense officials said that a freeze was necessary because of the “advancement of adversarial capabilities and the evolving global threat-picture,” citing recent drone warfare in Ukraine and Iran.

According to Dale Marks, an assistant secretary of defense, the concerns are over the potential obstruction of radar signals from a Doppler effect created by spinning turbine blades.

Lawyers for the Department of Defense asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that concerns over national security should take precedence over the interests of energy developers. The delay in wind energy reviews has been a “practical result” of a larger reassessment of the department’s efforts to reassess its risk-assessment processes, they said in a motion to dismiss.

President Donald Trump has long publicly voiced his opposition to wind energy. His administration has attempted to stifle wind energy development at every turn, including paying out billions to companies to sever offshore wind contracts.

At a hearing Tuesday, government lawyers said that reviews for wind projects had resumed, but could not provide an example of a wind project currently moving through that process.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/trump-is-losing-the-battle-with-public-opinion-on-data-centers Mara Hoplamazian His administration’s efforts to speed up data center construction are stoking the very backlash that could stymie growth. Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:13:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/trump-is-losing-the-battle-with-public-opinion-on-data-centers The residents of Boulder City, Nevada, are raging mad at the federal government.

The Trump administration unilaterally approved a data center on a tract of public land within the city’s jurisdiction this summer without giving residents a say in the matter and without conducting an environmental assessment specific to the project.

“Tyranny,” one resident described it in front of the City Council in July.

“I would call it a surprise attack,” said another.

The Boulder City project is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to make the country the “number one superpower in artificial intelligence,” as dictated by President Donald Trump’s slate of executive orders intended to pave the way for quicker data center development and support the AI industry.

Those federal efforts have amounted to opening a handful of public and federal lands to construction, and waiving public review periods and environmental guardrails — changes industry watchers say don’t necessarily address the biggest hurdles to faster development.

What they have done is further fuel one of the few forces powerful enough to actually block the momentum of the AI industry: local anxiety.

Or, in the case of Boulder City, rage.

“We do not have guardrails for artificial intelligence. We do not have Congress implementing rules to try to navigate what happens when these corporations succeed because we have become a nation that is pay-to-play,” Gabriel Cornejo, a Democrat who ran an unsuccessful campaign for Nevada’s 1st Congressional District, said at the City Council meeting. “That concentration of power is going to yield, unfortunately, the pitchforks.”
Climate Colorado River Boulder City, NV AP-26212493447862 (8640x5760, AR: 1.50)In recent months, the public has swung 49 percentage points against data centers, according to Heatmap polling from Embold Research. Skepticism of data centers is bipartisan, and doesn’t fall neatly along lines of age or geography.

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nevada) said she’d been hearing more from Nevada residents about data centers since the Boulder City project was approved.

The Trump administration’s efforts to speed up development have exacerbated local fears around AI infrastructure, she said, especially as so many massive facilities pop up around the country.

“They don’t like data centers, period,” Titus said. “But they certainly don’t like having the choice taken away from them.”

Last year, Trump laid out a sweeping plan to accelerate data center infrastructure. He called for reducing environmental regulations, recommended making federal lands available for construction and directed federal agencies to get rid of rules that hindered the AI industry.

That’s what his administration has done. The Department of Energy and Department of Defense have started partnering with companies to build at federal sites. Earlier this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers allowed for data centers developers in need of Clean Water Act permits to skip the public notice period.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed allowing data centers to begin construction before facilities receive air permits and eliminating public participation requirements for another environmental permit.

Even the Department of Justice has gotten involved, intervening in a Clean Air Act lawsuit between the NAACP and Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI. Justice officials argue that they have the power to dismiss the case entirely, saying the NAACP’s lawsuit threatens federal policy interests and the “immediate and pressing” need to expand energy infrastructure.

But negotiations over permitting reform in Congress, which has much of the authority to fundamentally reshape the laborious permitting process, have been stuck for years in partisan gridlock. Those talks have become only marginally more fruitful this session. Trump’s interference with clean energy projects and moves weakening environmental protections have threatened possible compromise.

And despite Trump’s best efforts to remove challenges for data centers, building them hasn’t gotten much easier in the last year, industry experts said. Many of the aspects that make building AI infrastructure difficult simply aren’t in the administration’s control.

Local zoning, state and municipal permits, electric grid interconnection and supply chain issues all tend to be more significant constraints than federal permitting, said Ben Schifman, a senior technology fellow at the Institute for Progress.

Under the direction of the Energy Department, federal regulators have stepped in to try to speed up the interconnection process, which can delay projects up to six or seven years. But ultimately, that will require regional grid operators to reform their rules governing how data centers connect to the grid.

“My sense is that there has not been a major change, if any change at all, to the overall permitting landscape for data centers,” Schifman said.

Data centers have broken new computing capacity records every seven months since late 2024, doubling the amount each time — consistent with the boom in construction after OpenAI’s GPT-4 model was released, said Ben Cottier, a senior researcher at Epoch AI.

“It’s possible that without these executive orders, it would have slowed down, but it hasn’t slowed down,” Cottier said. “In terms of our observations of the data, there isn’t a clear acceleration or anything.”

What has accelerated is public opposition to projects, often over the same issues the Trump administration is trying to ease oversight around: water quality, air quality and speed.

“People don’t trust Trump on environmental issues, period,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.
Lee Zeldin AP-26141584005217 (8640x5760, AR: 1.50)West attributes the backlash over projects across the country in part to distrust over the president’s frequent meetings with Silicon Valley billionaires.

Without local support, projects falter. A data center project challenged by local opposition has roughly a 50% chance of being canceled.

“The Trump administration has failed in really accelerating federal permitting because most of the permits required to build a data center are at the local level,” West said. “And over the last six months, community opposition has accelerated. That has slowed down approvals.”

Even state leaders who back Trump have started to balk at the speed with which data centers are being developed. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced a data center moratorium until state regulators could conduct comprehensive audits of all projects — including data on water consumption and power usage.

People in towns where data centers developers are looking to build have described “reckless” processes and feeling steamrolled.

The Trump administration has, on occasion, acknowledged this pushback as a hurdle. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has noted the anger in rural communities over big projects, but has called concerns about the facilities “overblown.”

“The development of data centers can be almost anywhere,” Wright said in a press briefing during an AI event hosted by his agency. “The challenge has been which communities should host them.”

To counter souring public sentiments, Trump has begun waging a public relations campaign on the behalf of data centers.

At an event announcing additions to the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, invitees included a school superintendent from Richland Parish, Louisiana, and a teacher in his district, who credited Meta’s data center with $50,000 bonuses for educators in the area.

“This isn’t all negative stuff,” Trump said at the event. “You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly, those are the smart communities because it means tremendous numbers of jobs, very little actual disruption.”

Ultimately, he issued a directive: “You can’t fight it,” he said. “You have to go with it.”

But polling suggests that communities willing to go along with data centers have become fewer and further between since the administration has started pushing for quicker development.

The administration and developers are in alignment on wanting it to be easier to build data centers. But speeding up permitting doesn’t address the main hurdle for builders, Staci Pies, senior vice president of government affairs and policy at INCOMPAS, said.

“What requires more time is being very responsive to the community, and understanding what local benefits the community needs and wants, and striking that bargain,” she said.

People in Boulder City have been more outspoken in their opposition to data centers than they were before federal officials stepped in, said Lisa LaPlante, the city’s communications manager.

“There’s a lot of questions that are now being raised that weren’t being raised before,” LaPlante said.

The city was still working on its approach to AI infrastructure developments when the Bureau of Land Management approved the data center project without any local input.

And even though the site is on public lands, Boulder City will be required to provide emergency services and some utilities. So local officials are gearing up to make their own policies that will govern data center development. In a way, they’re being forced to create those rules, LaPlante said.

In a unanimous decision, the City Council decided to appeal the Bureau of Land Management approval.

A bit over a week later, Rep. Titus sent a letter to Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, asking him to halt state tax abatements for data centers on federal lands until state lawmakers review the issue.

“It feels like we’re the test for all of this, to see what happens when a data center is basically forced on a city,” LaPlante said.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/climate-environment/trump-plan-cuts-california-arizona-nevada-water-usage-colorado-river Mara Hoplamazian, Anna Kramer Arizona, Nevada and California are expected to be hit the hardest as Colorado River levels drop to historic lows. Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:06:28 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/climate-environment/trump-plan-cuts-california-arizona-nevada-water-usage-colorado-river Arizona, California and Nevada are expecting the Trump administration to impose significant cuts to their water usage as Colorado River levels drop to historic lows.

Federal officials announced the first steps in their plan to manage Colorado River water use on Friday. The initial framework suggests that the three Lower Basin states will be asked to cut up to 1.5 million acre feet of water per year for the next two years — a significant reduction in their water consumption.

The country’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell, which sits between Utah and Arizona, and Lake Mead, which spans Arizona and Nevada, hit their lowest combined water levels on record earlier in July. Both are fed by the Colorado River. If levels drop much lower in Lake Powell, the Glen Canyon Dam will no longer be able to sustain the hydroelectric power plant that feeds electricity across much of the West.

The guidelines that have governed how states can use the water in the Colorado River for the last 19 years are set to expire at the end of 2026. Western states have been in negotiations for years on how to use water from the Colorado River moving forward, and remain at an impasse.

With no deal in sight, the Interior Department laid out a set of guidelines Friday that would help balance two needs: keeping enough water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and delivering enough water to communities that rely on the river.

Some of the federal government’s plans are based on a proposal the Lower Basin states themselves made earlier this year. The document, however, suggests cuts to those states’ water usage could be doubled in drought conditions to protect the Hoover Dam.

Arizona state officials immediately criticized the suggestion for those more aggressive cuts, calling it “unacceptable.”

“Such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy,” the state officials said in a statement.

The guidelines would impose a plan for the next two years and then every two years after that for 10 years, unless states come to a consensus themselves during that time period.

The river provides water to nearly 40 million Americans and powers the agricultural economies across Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the river’s Upper Basin and Arizona, California and Nevada in the Lower Basin.

More than a dozen tribes also depend on water from the river but have been largely left out of the negotiations.

Since the current water usage framework was adopted in 2007, unprecedented drought has changed the hydrology of the basin, confounding efforts to manage the system.

Even with the deep cuts to water use, it’s not clear that the plan will turn into a sustainable solution.

The proposal from Lower Basin states is “the best there is so far,” said Sarah Porter, head of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “But it’s not enough to keep the system from crashing, to keep the reservoirs from not being in the territory of hitting dead pool.”

After 2028, the terms of water conservation are murkier, with the possibility that more severe cuts could come for the Lower Basin states.

The Interior Department is limited in how it can enforce its plan. Arizona’s state Legislature will have to approve some of the plan, and some water boards in California may need to officially sign off on the agreement as well.

States could also sue the federal government over the proposal. Severe cuts to water resources could put state economies at risk, especially the agricultural operations in California and Arizona that depend heavily on irrigation from the river.

Arizona officials told reporters on Monday they reserved the right to pursue litigation if necessary.

The three Lower Basin states have long argued that the other four states should be required to share some of the most drastic cuts in especially dry years. The Upper Basin states together consume less water than is legally allotted to them, and argue that low snowpack and drier rivers have already caused them to cut water use. But their southern neighbors have proposed that no state should be excluded from legally enforced water conservation in the driest years.

“I actually think we’re at the point where Supreme Court litigation among the seven states may be the most hopeful vehicle for getting the states to come to a settlement,” Porter said.

Interior’s current plan covers the next 10 years, with checkpoints every two years. This design could allow the seven states to continue negotiating with each other and with Interior to address the river crisis moving forward.

The amount of water flowing through the basin has been dropping significantly over the last decade because of a combination of factors, primarily persistent droughts, decreasing snowpack in the Upper Basin states, high temperatures causing the water levels to fall, and overuse of the water that remains. Almost half of all water used from the river goes toward irrigated agriculture.

Arizona, California and Nevada have been voluntarily reducing their water usage for the last several years, paying farmers to leave fields dry in return for billions in drought relief payments from the federal government.

Monday’s framework did not specify whether Interior would pursue funding to pay for similar efforts in the future.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/energy-emergency-orders-data-centers-grid Mara Hoplamazian The Energy Department is stepping in during severe weather — a sign of the strains of the AI agenda. Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:22:36 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/energy-emergency-orders-data-centers-grid It’s happening again. Summer temperatures are soaring in much of the South and Midwest this week, straining the electrical grid. Utility operators reached a conclusion that they, and others, have reached before: To avoid blackouts, they may need to boot data centers off the grid.

The Energy Department has obliged, issuing an order that allows Southwest Power Pool, which operates from Montana to Louisiana, to push data centers to use their own backup generators to reduce demand on the grid.

Since May, the Energy Department has issued this kind of emergency authorization six times for PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that covers much of the mid-Atlantic and part of the Rust Belt, and for Southwest Power Pool. Some of those orders extended previous allowances. Collectively, the utilities operate across 30 states and in areas with the highest concentrations of data centers in the country.

Grid operators say this summer’s heat waves have not forced them to use the authority yet. But as the Trump administration pushes unfettered data center development in pursuit of supersizing the artificial intelligence industry, these emergency orders show the limitations facing that agenda.

The nation’s electrical grids cannot currently sustain such rapid growth.

“It confirms that data centers are significantly increasing demand for electricity,” said Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard. “During these extremely anomalous days where demand for electricity is at its absolute peak, there can be challenges to supply enough energy to everyone.”

The Energy Department’s authorizations, known as 202(c) orders, have generally been used to allow generators to run as much as they can during emergency conditions such as heat waves or cold snaps, when demand for energy is higher than what the grid can comfortably supply, he said. Generators are then exempt from pollution regulations that would otherwise apply.

But now, DOE is allowing grid operators to direct large power users to turn to their own backup generators during heat waves — with grid operators identifying data centers as some of those large loads.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright began sending out those orders for grid operators during a large storm in January.

PJM — which petitioned the DOE for this kind of authorization over the winter, in May and twice in July — said it has not actually implemented the order, and no data centers or other large power users have been required to move to backup generation.

In early July, when PJM’s system set a record for electric demand, the grid operator issued a warning to data centers and other large users to be prepared to switch to backup generators within 15 minutes, but they didn’t ultimately need to take that step.

SPP, the other utility that has received emergency permission to put data centers on backup generation this summer, also said it has not used that authority yet. If weather conditions improve this week as expected, SPP says it anticipates returning to normal operating conditions.

The orders are “probably a win-win,” Peskoe said. It may cost data centers to turn on their backup generators, but it’s a way to avoid outages and any associated public relations nightmares.

There are downsides, however. Backup generators emit more emissions than power from the grid does. Turning to them could result in more pollutants in the communities where data centers are located.

The emissions from emergency situations are not counted toward a facility’s emissions limits.

Asking data centers to turn on their generators during heat waves isn’t a long-term solution, said Junbo Zhao, an associate professor of engineering at Dartmouth who studies power systems.

More energy generation and reliance on new grid technologies that help manage congestion could help avoid the kinds of problems grid operators have faced this summer. And, Zhao said, there needs to be more coordination among data centers and grid operators.

“Data centers are operating their data centers, and operators are trying to assess whether data centers are going to affect reliability,” he said. “They don’t have dedicated coordination with each other to improve the efficiency and reliability of the grid.”

Data centers must go through an interconnection process, which is meant to ensure they won’t threaten the grid’s reliability. But the grid isn’t prepared for the number of new, massive energy users that have come online in the past couple of years.

Last week in Virginia, PJM got a taste of the grid-destabilizing power of data centers when a group of facilities in Northern Virginia abruptly unplugged from the grid and transferred to backup power, putting about 3% of electric demand offline and changing the grid’s frequency.

Reuters reported that voltage disturbances extended all the way to Chicago.

To deal with the issue of power-hungry data centers during heat waves and other events that are stressful for the grid, PJM is proposing to create a registry of large energy users that would track where they are and whether they brought their own energy supply to the grid.

During grid emergencies, PJM could force large users to go off the grid and onto backup generators, or to reduce their power use, if they haven’t brought their own generators to the system.

That proposal dovetails with the Trump administration’s push for data centers to bring, buy or build their own power — a strategy to keep the cost of running that infrastructure from being charged to all ratepayers.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/lcv-victory-fund-midterm-spend Elena Schneider The climate group’s midterm push will focus on affordability and rising utility costs. Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:39:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/lcv-victory-fund-midterm-spend A leading progressive climate group is planning to spend at least $50 million on the 2026 midterms — a boost to Democrats looking to retake both chambers of Congress.

The LCV Victory Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters, is targeting House Republican candidates in five battleground districts, with plans to expand that list heading into the fall, and will be boosting former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio in their respective Senate bids. It will also spend on gubernatorial and state legislative races in Michigan, Nevada and Georgia — a trio of states with competitive down-ballot races.

The details of LCV Victory Fund were shared first with NOTUS.

The spending will go toward advertising, field programs and work with content creators. LCV Victory Fund is particularly targeting voters who feel the affordability pinch — voters who are more likely to be women, Black or Latino, noncollege educated and less politically engaged, said Sara Schreiber, LCV Victory Fund’s senior vice president of campaigns.

“A key part of the electorate is affected by this affordability crisis, and they are really looking for candidates who have plans and are creating solutions that will keep costs low,” Schreiber said in an interview with NOTUS. “These are the folks that you need to win in a midterm, and they're going to be critical in 2026.”

The eight-figure pledge is “on par” with previous midterm campaigns from the group, Schreiber said. During the 2022 cycle, LCV Victory Fund spent more than $40 million on independent expenditures and contributions to candidates.

LCV Victory Fund’s pledge comes as Democrats face a widening gap in fundraising between Democratic-aligned entities and Republican-backed groups. Some Democrats are concerned about the party’s ability to keep up with Republican spending in vital races. The Democratic National Committee, for example, remains in debt, while the Republican National Committee has built a $120 million war chest.

LCV Victory Fund’s ads — some of which started running earlier this month — drill Republicans on rising utility costs, complimenting House Democrats’ larger focus on affordability. In Michigan, LCV Victory Fund is out with a new ad attacking Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga for “votes to cut our clean energy supply” that “made our utility rates go up.”

Public polling suggests those attack lines could be effective, particularly around rising energy costs. Nearly two-thirds of voters said President Donald Trump’s policies have “worsened” economic conditions in the country in a CNN poll released this week. Nearly eight in 10 voters said the Trump administration is not focused enough on lowering prices in a recent CBS News poll.

LCV President Pete Maysmith called energy costs a “potent issue” for voters, one that already had success for Democrats in off-year victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections.

“It’s the central message because Republicans have broken trust with voters,” Maysmith said. “They're causing real pain in people's pocketbooks, and that shows up both in their utility bills, which are up 18% since Trump took office, when he pledged to cut them in half.”

A handful of 2026 candidates are already leaning into utility cost messaging in their own ads.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is running for governor, touted his record of suing “big utilities and drug companies to lower costs” in his first TV ad. In Pennsylvania, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who is challenging Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, hit data centers for “raising our electric bills” in her ad.]]>