President Trump’s slew of energy-related executive orders issued on Monday have declared a national energy emergency that aims in part to juice the United States’ natural energy supplies to help meet power demands required to support emerging technologies.
While the emergency declaration largely makes strides toward increasing oil and gas production domestically and making the nation “energy dominant” – unwinding the Biden administration’s clean energy efforts – it also takes aim at what the administration is calling a “precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply” alongside an “increasingly unreliable grid.”
The extraction of additional natural resources will bolster the nation’s capacity to support emerging technologies, the administration said.
“Without immediate remedy, this situation will dramatically deteriorate in the near future due to a high demand for energy and natural resources to power the next generation of technology,” the executive order signed by President Trump reads. “The United States’ ability to remain at the forefront of technological innovation depends on a reliable supply of energy and the integrity of our Nation’s electrical grid.”
Current energy supplies leave the United States vulnerable to “hostile foreign actors,” and pose an “imminent and growing threat to the United States’ prosperity and national security,” the administration said.
Despite Trump’s calls to “drill, baby, drill,” under the Biden administration the fossil fuel industry achieved record production levels despite the administration’s pushes for clean energy. In 2023, fossil fuels – such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal – accounted for nearly 84 percent of total U.S. primary energy product, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Looking forward, the new administration is seeking to bolster electricity supply in the United States, which will likely rely on natural resources instead of renewable sources.
According to a Goldman Sachs’ report published last year, natural gas is expected to supply 60 percent of the power demand growth from AI and data centers – with renewable sources supplying the remaining 40 percent. Overall energy demand growth its bring driven in part due to power-hungry AI data centers.
“We have a shortage of electricity, and especially we have a shortage of baseload,” Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, said in his Senate confirmation hearing last week. “Without baseload, we’re going to lose the AI arms race to China. And if we lose the AI arms race to China, then that’s got direct impacts on our national security in the future of this country.”
A second EO signed yesterday by Trump intends to “unleash” American energy, with a focus on increasing access to energy supplies – including nuclear energy – and charging the Secretary of the Interior to oversee the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to update its list of critical minerals with aims to help with “supplying and maintaining the National Defense Stockpile.”
USGS has designated 50 critical minerals which it deems essential to economic and national security, with the Department of Defense (DoD) listing over 250 “strategic and critical minerals.” Numerous of those minerals – including arsenic, cobalt, germanium, and yttrium – are used in semiconductors and AI systems.
According to the Department of Defense, there is currently only one active rare earth mine in the United States, supplying 17 elements from the periodic table – all of which are essential to the Pentagon. Limited domestic supplies and reliance on countries such as China has presented a national security risk, the department added.
Under the EO, the Secretary of State is also charged with considering “opportunities to advance the mining and processing of minerals within the United States.”
A third EO also expands natural resource extraction in Alaska – a historically contentious area for congressional debates between bolstering energy supply and conservation – which would also open additional access to fossil fuels.
