The US risks forfeiting a global competition to dominate artificial intelligence if it doesn’t build more reliable, always-on electricity to supply the industry, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department warned Thursday.
Doug Burgum, the former North Dakota governor who has also been tapped to help chart Trump’s energy policy, cast the issue as critical to America’s national security during a Senate confirmation hearing that offered a preview of the incoming administration’s planned embrace of fossil fuels.
Where renewable power supplies are intermittent and “unreliable,” Burgum said, AI’s growing energy demands will require more of the so-called baseload electricity that can be generated around-the-clock by burning coal and natural gas.
“Without baseload, we’re going to lose the AI arms race to China,” Burgum told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “AI is manufacturing intelligence, and if we don’t manufacture more intelligence than our adversaries, that affects every job, every company and every industry.”
During a three-hour meeting marked by cordial exchanges — and none of the intense sparring that has dominated other confirmation hearings this week — Burgum sought to assure senators he would seek a “balanced approach” for oil drilling, conservation and even potentially housing on the federal land managed by the Interior Department.
The agency’s sprawling portfolio spans a fifth of US land, and it is the lead regulator for oil, gas and wind power development in the nation’s coastal waters.
Burgum also made clear that a top priority is addressing what he called a “significant imbalance” in the nation’s electricity mix, as developers look to connect a host of low- and zero-emission power projects to the grid.
“If the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing, and we don’t have baseload, then we’ve got brownouts and blackouts, we have higher electric prices for every American,” he said.
US electricity demand is expected to surge to unprecedented levels in coming years, fed by AI, data centers and domestic manufacturing. While natural gas-fired plants are expected to supply the bulk of growth in the short term, power developers have been racing to deploy renewable projects.
Renewable power developers say that by paring those projects with batteries, they can effectively transform them into baseload supply. Wind and solar power generated at the sites can be stored and made available even when the wind stops blowing or sun isn’t shining.
Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, successfully pressed Burgum to commit to an “all-of-the-above” approach.
“I don’t want the word ‘baseload’ to be code for ‘no renewables,’” King told Burgum. “That’s not what you’re saying is it?”
America needs “all forms of electricity, and we need more of it in the very near term,” Burgum said. “This isn’t about one versus the other,” he said, but rather how to increase the amount of electricity in the US and do it in a way that ensures “affordability and reliability.”
If confirmed, Burgum would be a key figure in executing Trump’s plan to escalate domestic energy production, including by expanding drilling and mining opportunities on federal land. He also would be at the epicenter of fights over the future of US offshore wind development. Trump has been a relentless critic of the energy source, calling windmills “an economic and environmental disaster” and insisting he doesn’t want even one built during his administration.
On Thursday, Democratic senators appealed to Burgum’s history in North Dakota — where wind power makes up a third of electricity generation — in encouraging him to persuade Trump of its merits.
Burgum pledged to work with states in exploring ways public lands can be used to help address housing shortages. And he vowed careful consultation with state and local interests on some issues of land management, responding to Republicans who say local interests were disregarded in some national monument designations.
Burgum also touted carbon capture technology he said offered the opportunity to produce clean electricity from coal — despite persistent industry complaints about the high costs of widely deploying it today. Electric utilities, cooperatives and some states have challenged Biden-era environmental mandates that effectively compel coal plants to adopt the technology or shut down.