In a final move before leaving office, President Joe Biden has issued an executive order granting private AI companies the opportunity to lease federal land to build AI data centers. This includes land from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.
Companies that develop data centers on these sites must ensure they provide enough clean energy to meet the power demands of the centers.
Regardless of how, this initiative is not a grant program, meaning companies will bear all costs related to building, operating, and maintaining the data centers.
The White House focused on the purpose of this order, which is to strengthen U.S. global leadership in AI, ensuring domestic companies are not reliant on foreign nations for AI tools and infrastructure. The government will also allocate necessary resources to speed up the inspection and approval process for bids from companies interested in using federal sites.
A notable aspect of this executive order is its focus on renewable energy. Data centers in the U.S. currently consume 4% of the nation’s total power, with projections indicating that this figure will rise to 9% by the end of the decade.
Overall, the demand for energy from data centers is expected to double within the next five years. However, these policies might be reversed once Donald Trump returns to the presidency next week, potentially undoing many of Biden’s initiatives in the AI field.
