Energy is What it Takes to Power America’s Technological Dominance

Good Morning and welcome to ALFA, a policy and idea accelerator. You can learn more about who we are and our mission here, here and here.

As a subscriber you will receive regular ideas, proposals, and general perspectives to strengthen America’s technological posture. Our first piece below, authored by our Chairman, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, gets to the foundation of our technological and industrial ambition: energy and our need for more of it.

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Energy is What it Takes to Power America’s Technological Dominance

We are in a race for the future with China, and that future will be driven by Artificial Intelligence; the winner of this race will hold the keys to the engine of prosperity and freedom. But we will not win this race, and we lose more than our place in the world, if we don’t concurrently win the race for abundant, low-cost and widely distributed energy. 

Energy is everything; it is the essential catalyst for creation and change. Not by accident, God created light first — no light, no life, no world. And so when we speak of the dawning of a new age in which artificial intelligence empowers a new, more productive, and vastly more abundant economy, we should pause and take the metaphor seriously: just as dawn is light, so too AI, and all that it promises, is energy. 

Literally. 

Creating machine-based, semi-autonomous, electronic intelligence — or AI — requires massive amounts of energy to push an incomprehensibly large stream of electrons through vast arrays of computers along pathways designed by brilliant programmers and someday by the machines themselves. 

We need to win both the energy and AI race. This will allow America to capture and capitalize on the transformative promise of this technology, but also to assure that AI is a tool for expanding opportunity for many and not oppression by a few. 
 
As we stand today, we are running this race based upon different rules. 

On the other side of the globe, reports suggest that China is building two new coal power plants every week and is building almost as many new nuclear power plants as the rest of the world combined. 

Meanwhile, our energy policy has been almost exclusively focused on transitioning away from carbon-based energy, which has led to less reliable and more expensive energy at a time when we need the opposite to capture the promise of AI. 

Instead of generating more energy, and more reliable energy, we are closing plants, discouraging pipelines, deferring grid maintenance and upgrades, and hamstringing energy development and production. Blackouts and brownouts are becoming far too normal. Earlier this year, Los Angeles experienced power outages with over 70,000 utility customers losing electricity, including major venues like the Los Angeles Coliseum and Hollywood Bowl. 

So at a time when China emits almost three times as much carbon as the United States, and more than the next five largest emitting countries in the world, we need to refocus US energy policy on an all out, all of the above, production of reliable energy. 

The full bounty of America’s energy portfolio is greater than any country in the world. And we must harness every corner of it, from natural gas to nuclear. Under a Trump administration, the opportunity to do so is exceptional. That means we must rethink, reverse, and revamp almost every aspect of existing energy policy to refocus on winning the energy race. 

The Trump Administration should immediately revoke the EPA’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, which if fully implemented would assure China’s victory in the AI race. The CPP reduces bulk power system reliability and forces premature plant retirements — towards what end? In fact, after President Trump rescinded President Obama’s first Clean Power Plan, the U.S. actually exceeded emissions reduction by more than 10 years. The reality is that America thrives when the shackles of innovation, exploration, and production are off.

Rather than chasing arbitrary goals with inefficient tools, America needs to increase domestic oil and gas production and usher in comprehensive permitting reform so that projects that are being invested in aren’t held up in bureaucratic red tape and frivolous lawsuits — including nuclear energy. 

Today, delays for new energy infrastructure projects can take several years, causing significant downstream delays for operations like data centers. Currently, new data centers are facing long lead times to connect to the power grid, especially in major hubs like Northern Virginia and Phoenix. In some cases, it can take more than three years to get new power connections. Additionally, the Administration should create a new era of regulatory certainty to encourage the extensive investments needed to assure and improve grid effectiveness and reliability. 

And finally, as the Chinese Communist Party elevates its economic aggression through export restrictions of critical minerals, it is time to support and unshackle the discovery and production of the elements that are foundational to the products that will shape the future. 

As we prepare for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the greatest country the world has known, an inflection point awaits us: will we live the next two and half centuries in a world America builds, or will we simply live in one built by others? The answer can be traced back not just to the forming of this country, but all of creation: energy.