Power CEO Says US to Lose AI Race to China Without New Lines
(Bloomberg) -- The question of whether or not the US wins the race with China to develop artificial intelligence will hinge on Washington backing the construction of power superhighways to move large quantities of electricity, according to one of the country’s biggest energy developers.
Invenergy LLC Chief Executive Officer Michael Polsky is pushing the idea of establishing a national transmission authority to build high-voltage lines in the spirit of the highway system. Such a move could offer regulatory reform and speed up the process, said Polsky.
The Trump administration has issued executive orders indicating there’s an energy emergency, and “I do believe it’s an emergency” because of how difficult it is to build things, Polsky said. “We don’t have decades to figure this out. We have years.”
The AI boom has supercharged the need for electricity, while America ability’s to meet that need is stymied by an aging and balkanized power grid. Building big power projects can take a decade or much longer — and uncertainty sowed by US President Donald Trump’s policies threatens to make it harder by running up costs through tariffs and squashing renewables, which currently are some of the fastest resources to build.
Power developers, Polsky said, need support just like others, such as Elon Musk, who build large infrastructure, including spaceships. “Even with Mr. Musk, he has NASA support, he has government support, he has government contracts. There are a lot of government enablers,” he said in an interview at Bloomberg News in New York.
The administration and Congress need to send clear signals of support and ensure developers can be adequately compensated for making those investments, he said. Last month, the Trump administration said it was canceling some $3.7 billion in government support for certain clean energy projects.
Hanging in the balance is Invenergy’s $11 billion Grain Belt Express project, which would move 5 gigawatts of power — the equivalent of five nuclear reactors — over 800 miles in four states, connecting three regional grids.
The project, aiming to break ground next year, received a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee from the Energy Department of as much as $4.9 billion under the Biden administration in November, and now it’s uncertain if those funds will materialize as Trump guts programs.
Polsky, who has been in the industry for 45 years after migrating from Ukraine, and Invenergy President Jim Murphy say they are optimistic the loan will come through. “This is a national project of a national concern,” Polsky said.
(Updates with details on Trump cancelling energy projects in sixth paragraph)
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