Biden signs executive order that will make federal lands available for AI infrastructure – News

President Joe Biden today signed an executive order that will make federal lands available for artificial intelligence data centers.

The order also seeks to support green energy projects that can meet those facility power requirements. According to The Verge, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently determined that data centers’ electricity usage has tripled over the past decade. It’s believed demand could triple again by 2028. 

Under the new executive order, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense will lease federal sites to AI infrastructure builders. Some of those sites are set to be allocated to small businesses and startups. Officials will enable developers to bid for leases via “competitive solicitations.”

According to the White House, participating companies will have to bring online new energy projects that can fully meet their AI data centers’ power requirements. Their efforts in this area will be supported by multiple government agencies.

The Department of the Interior will identify federal sites that are suitable for hosting clean power facilities. Additionally, it will streamline the permitting process for geothermal energy projects. The Energy Department is likewise launching a new clean power program that will focus on, among others, supporting the deployment of nuclear energy.

Several other federal agencies will participate as well. According to the White House, those agencies will dedicate staffers to ensuring that permits for AI infrastructure projects are granted in a timely manner.

The push to streamline the permitting process will focus partly on “categorical exclusions,” a legal tool in the National Environmental Policy Act. It facilitates expedited regulatory reviews of construction projects that don’t significantly affect the environment. Federal agencies will identify opportunities to use categorical exclusions to expedite AI infrastructure development.

In addition to new data centers and green energy generation facilities, the executive order seeks to support the construction of the power transmission lines needed to connect them. 

The Energy Department will help developers finance, plan and build new transmission lines. As part of the effort, officials will identify locations where existing power cables are operating at capacity and new ones need to be added. The Energy Department plans to work with utilities to determine how the necessary power grid infrastructure enhancements should be made.

In a separate initiative, several federal agencies will support manufacturers of power transmission equipment such as transformers. The Defense, Energy and Commerce departments will explore opportunities to establish reserves of such hardware. Loan guarantee programs will also be considered.

“The organization likely to ‘win’ the most in this deal is Nvidia, who powers the training and inference processors used by AI systems,” said David Brauchler, technical director and head of AI and machine learning security at cybersecurity consulting firm NCC Group. “They’ve already experienced their stock skyrocketing as demand for high-end AI hardware increases, and this deal is likely to contribute to their further growth.”

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