How Has the Rise of AI Changed the Odds of a Permitting Deal?

Today’s chat is with Ray Long, CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy. We first discussed the odds of permitting reform a year and a half ago, for one of the first Q&As in The Fight. Flash forward and we’re still in the same situation, but now also wrestling with added demand for electricity to power data centers. I wanted to talk again about whether he thought the rise of artificial intelligence would increase the odds of some federal deal happening any time soon. The result: a wide-reaching conversation about the future of the electric grid, the struggles to win community buy-in and the sclerotic nature of the U.S. Congress.

The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.

Do you think the buildout of our energy grid is entwined with the rise of the nation’s data center buildout?

When you look at what we need over the next four years — 166 gigawatts, 15 times the peak load of New York City — that’s a lot of power to build. Roughly half of that is for data center and AI growth.

There are five things we can build in the next four years at scale to address that collective amount. First, it’s transmission — the transmission buildout will help to get a modern grid to enable power flow to where it’s needed in a much more effective way. That’s the first step because if we just build all that power, the current grid can’t handle it.

Second, there are four supply technologies that can be built: solar, batteries, wind, and natural gas. All four of those technologies, we know there’s enough equipment here in the U.S. available for purchase that we can build at volume. And I’ll say this — natural gas is only about 10% of all those gigawatts because of the availability of turbines from suppliers. You can’t get enough over the next four years. So when I talk about decarbonization, most of what is built to address this issue is zero-carbon resources, renewable energy resources.

If you were to compare the current conversation around data center development to the debate over developing renewable energy in the U.S. — or energy in general — do you see any similarities or differences?

There are always issues with permitting projects. Communities are always going to have concerns about what’s built in their backyards.

What’s new — and your polling shows this — is the level of concern communities have. But here’s the thing: Most of this can be overcome by developers going in, listening to what the needs of the communities are, then responding and through the permitting process addressing those concerns. You can’t do that 100% of the time. But my experience is, when you take that sort of approach, you can overcome a lot of it.

Most of the large data centers are actually doing the things I’m discussing — going in and saying, Look, we want to be grid interconnected because grid connection at the end of the day means the resources we’re bringing to bear are also going to make a stronger grid. Number two, it's investing in power generation sources like the ones I said — and those power sources will be on the grid, so they’ll solve for the increased power demands of a community.

Third, water. They should bring the water solutions. You’re seeing data centers coming in and saying it head on now, that they have closed-loop systems or whatever the solution is. At the end of the day, the communities they’re proposing these in have a real negotiating opportunity to make sure they’re holding the data center developers accountable to the needs of the community.

For a community to say we don’t want it here misses a real opportunity for those communities to get the power they need, the grid they need, and the ability to bring down energy costs.

How is the data center debate affecting permitting reform conversations in Washington, from your perspective?

Permitting reform in the U.S. at the state and federal level has been broken for years. The SunZia transmission project? It took 17 years to permit. Ribbon-cutting is in a week or two and there’s still litigation around it. From a business perspective, it’s just untenable, and it’s a miracle that the project is getting built. Developers need a chance to come in and have their project evaluated. Both the community and the developer should be able to get to a go or no-go in a couple of years on one of these projects.

How is data center growth affecting the permitting reform discussion? It’s a very hot issue right now. Right now I think in part because the data center issue is so huge — because we’ve only got four years to solve for the first really big tranche of power we need and prices across the board for electricity are escalating — this is coming to a head. The data center load is a part of the catalyst to get people talking about it [permitting reform].

Do you expect legislating in Congress on permitting reform this year? Anything beyond more conversation?

My hope is that we get a bill. A few weeks ago someone from the administration was quoted as saying they wanted a framework for a bill by the end of May, and it’s June now. We haven’t seen both sides or the administration coalesce around a final project yet.

We’re in a midterm election cycle. Typically it’s very difficult during these cycles to move bills like this. At the same time, with electricity prices increasing and the need to build more, to fix this, I’m very hopeful something will come together. And look at the Senate — you’ve got Republicans and the Democratic ranking members talking about this. It’s all good signs.

If everyone’s talking about energy and affordability during this election, isn’t that a good thing for action in the next Congress?

I’ll say this: You’re seeing the catalyst for it right now with prices rising, and almost every grid operator around the country has raised concerns about shortages at some point this year or next year. It’ll hopefully be enough to have policymakers do something about it this year.