From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Bonner Cohen

Trump vowed in a second term to issue a “national emergency declaration to achieve a massive increase in domestic energy supply.”

Citing the need for more electricity to continue growing the artificial intelligence (AI) sector and keep the U.S. tech industry ahead of China, former President Donald Trump on Sept. 5 vowed in a second term to issue a “national emergency declaration to achieve a massive increase in domestic energy supply.”

But standing in the way of ramped up domestic energy production is a federal permitting process notorious for its foot-dragging. Some in Congress acknowledge the problem, but their latest effort to rectify the situation risks being overtaken by surging energy demand and troubling geopolitical realities.

Hoping to unravel the reams of red tape that have tied up transportation, energy, and mining projects for years, and in some cases killed them altogether, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Sen. John Barasso (R-Wyo.) want their colleagues to approve their “Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.”  Centralizing decision-making on power transmission nationwide is the centerpiece of their legislation. Accordingly, it would bolster the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) authority to approve interstate transmission lines and require interregional transmission planning.

In a bid to satisfy as many conflicting interests as possible, the bill establishes deadlines for filing lawsuits over energy and mining projects, and sets requirements for onshore and offshore oil, gas, coal and renewable energy leasing and permitting. It also includes provisions on hard-rock mining and sets a 90-day deadline for the secretary of Energy to grant or deny liquified natural gas (LNG) export applications, according to a summary of the legislation.

The bill is generally supported by such groups as the American Clean Power Association, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the American Council on Renewable Energy, Advanced Energy United, and Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, UtilityDive reported.

Many of the wind, solar and transmission-line projects favored by these groups have encountered the same permitting and litigation delays that have bedeviled fossil-fuel producers. On the other hand, the Sierra Club opposes the measure, finding it insufficiently hostile to fossil fuels and saying it “would open up federal lands and waters to more leasing and drilling and unnecessarily rush reviews of natural gas export projects…”

Aside from all the problems inherent in vesting so much authority in one federal bureaucracy, FERC, to handle the nation’s power transmission challenges, such conventional approaches are no match for the transformative developments already roiling America’s electricity supply. While politicians, along with some less-than-savvy investors, have been content to pour wads of public and private cash into the green energy transition, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly upending the world elites thought they knew.

Energy-hungry data centers — there are currently over 2,700 in the United States with hundreds more planned — need electricity 24/7/365 if they are to meet the extraordinary demands of AI.  The amount of electricity AI-driven data centers require cannot be produced by intermittent solar and wind power transmitted hundreds if not thousands of miles from the sunny Southwest or the gusty plains of the Upper Midwest. Big Tech’s demands on an already shaky grid far outstrip anything politically fashionable solar panels and wind turbines can ever deliver. To their chagrin, the Big Four data center developers — Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Beta — now find themselves increasingly dependent on the very fossil fuels and — where available — nuclear power they have been so quick to dismiss over the years.

But given the choice of meeting their lofty Net-Zero carbon emissions goals or cashing in on AI’s financial promise, Big Tech will choose the second option. And the stakes go well beyond the companies’ respective bottom lines. Data centers are essential to AI, and AI is essential to national security. If the U.S. is not the global leader in AI, China (along with its junior partner, Russia) will be.

“AI can be the foundation of a new industrial base it would be wise for our country to embrace,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, recently wrote in the Washington Post.

Ceding the United States’ current lead in AI to China would be a blow from which America’s industrial base, and thus its military preparedness, would be hard pressed to recover. Data centers, powered by a steady flow of reliable energy, are now key assets in the perilous world of 21^st century geopolitics.

As neighbors in the communities in which they are located, data centers are a mixed blessing. They generate enormous revenues to local governments but can be seen by nearby residents as disruptive to their community. The non-descript but noisy buildings comprising data centers house thousands of computer servers processing the data that make the internet, cloud computing and AI possible.  They not only require gobs of power but also plenty of water used to lower temperatures.

Together with government-driven efforts to put more EVs on the road, data centers further complicate the challenges facing the already stressed electric grid. These developments are beyond the reach of the horse-trading that goes into Capitol Hill legislation. What is clear, however, is that the vaunted green-energy transformation will never be equal to the task before us.

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

From Resource Works

The short-term costs of nuclear SMRs are preferable to paying hundreds of millions to import foreign energy in the long-term.

British Columbia takes great pride in its tremendous hydroelectric resources, which result from the province’s many long, powerful rivers. For decades, BC has found it easy to rely on hydroelectricity as a clean, renewable source of power for homes, industry, and businesses.

However, the ongoing viability of hydropower in BC should be called into question due to worsening summer droughts and declining snowfalls, which have negatively impacted the annual supply of hydropower. BC has not seriously entertained the possibility of alternatives, even though other provinces have begun to embrace one particular source of energy that has been illegal here for over a decade: nuclear power.

By refusing to strike down the law passed in 2010 that prohibits the mining of uranium or the building of nuclear reactors, BC has made itself an outlier among its peers. Since last year, Ontario has announced plans to expand its existing nuclear capacity, which already provides the majority of the province’s electricity.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia have also begun to explore the possibility of expanding nuclear power to help power their growing provinces. BC has prohibited nuclear energy since passing the Clean Energy Act of 2010, which bans the building of reactors or mining uranium.

This prohibition is a barrier to diversifying BC’s energy supply, which has become more reliant on foreign energy. Due to energy shortages, BC Hydro had to import 15 to 20 percent of the energy required to meet the province’s needs.

Do not expect the situation to improve. Snowpacks are shrinking in the winter months, and summer droughts have become more frequent, which means BC’s dams will see a reduction in their power capacity. Power shortages may be on the horizon, leading to vastly more expensive purchases of foreign energy to meet BC’s growing electricity demand, driven by the construction of new homes and projects like LNG facilities on the coast.

Energy diversification is the solution, and nuclear power should be included, especially Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).

Low-carbon and reliable, SMRs can provide steady nuclear power in any season. They are flexible and much more cost-effective than traditional, large-scale nuclear reactors.

For a vast province like BC, filled with small communities separated by mountainous terrain, SMRs can be deployed with great ease to ensure energy stability in remote and Indigenous communities that still struggle with energy access. The Haida Nation, for example, is still reliant on diesel to supply its energy, which goes against the BC government’s clean energy goals and relies on fuel being shipped to the Haida Gwaii archipelago.

While SMRs are cheaper than massive nuclear reactors, they are still expensive and require strict safety regulations due to the ever-present risks associated with nuclear energy. However, is the cost of building nuclear facilities in the short term more expensive than importing energy for years to come?

In 2023, BC Hydro spent upwards of $300 million USD on imported energy, while the cost of the smallest SMR is $50 million, with the more expensive units costing up to $3 billion. Building SMRs now is the right decision from a cost-benefit perspective and in terms of BC’s clean energy goals because SMRs guarantee low-emitting energy, unlike imported energy.

The Clean Energy Act stands in the way of nuclear power’s emergence in BC. Amending it will be necessary for that to change.

BC is not going to need any less energy going forward.

It is high time to get over old fears and stereotypes of nuclear energy. Hydroelectricity need not be displaced as the cornerstone of BC’s energy supply, but it alone cannot face the challenges of the future.