As energy demand spikes due to AI-driven data center expansions and the shift to electrification of transportation and other sectors, a sweeping bill signed this month by President Trump cuts resources for deploying renewable power, Washington state leaders said Friday.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray convened a roundtable in Seattle on Friday to highlight the potential energy impacts of the “Big Beautiful Bill” and issue a call to action. She warned of rising utility costs for businesses and residents and lost jobs in the energy sector.
“It’s going to set us back in terms of our access to clean energy,” Murray said. “It’s so important that people know why this is coming and that we continue to raise our voices to fight back.”
Joe Nguyen, director of the state’s Department of Commerce, was blunt in his criticism of the bill in a GeekWire interview following the roundtable.
“This is a direct attack on tech,” Nguyen said. “Without clean energy, we don’t have technology.”
That’s particularly true, he added, as companies such as Amazon and Microsoft are building out capacity to meet AI demands.
The Pacific Northwest is already home to numerous data center facilities, with plans to build more. In Washington alone, the Republican-backed bill could decrease electric capacity by 18 gigawatts over the next decade — or the equivalent of two Seattles’ worth of energy — said Gregg Small, executive director of Climate Solutions, speaking at the event.
The legislation repeals tax cuts for renewable power efforts including wind and solar installations that were included in the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. At the same time, the GOP measure bolsters support for fossil fuel power.
President Trump staunchly defends the nixing of benefits for wind and solar, calling the intermittent power sources “unreliable,” and even some critics of the president acknowledge that tax cuts for renewable power should phase out over time.
Others say the support makes sense to get new energy deployed as quickly as possible. Renewable power made up 93% of the U.S. energy capacity that came online last year.
“Even if you’re pro-fossil fuels, pro-coal, that is very expensive and it takes a long time to build. And also, the market is not demanding that right now,” Nguyen told GeekWire.
The data center tech giants — also called hyperscalers — are seeking clean power sources given that they’ve set ambitious goals for shrinking their carbon impacts. The AI boom is making it increasingly difficult to reach their targets, with Microsoft and Amazon both reporting rising carbon emissions.
At the same time, Trump this week announced his “AI Action Plan” to accelerate data center growth in the U.S. and support America’s leadership in AI. Clean energy advocates say there’s a disconnect between those ambitions and policy that limits options for new power.
“For us to be leaders in that [AI] space, it requires hyperscalers. It requires energy for those hyperscalers,” Nguyen said. “So limiting the amount of energy we can produce is counterintuitive in terms of trying to be a dominant player in the AI space.”
