Trump’s “AI Action Plan” would let billionaire tech companies steamroll local communities 

WASHINGTON – The White House “AI Action Plan” goes dangerously overboard in its efforts to limit oversight of the artificial intelligence industry, especially when it comes to data centers that use tremendous amounts of energy and water, alter the local landscape, and often rely on generators that pollute the air.   

The plan released today proposes actions that would pave the way for more development of data centers and the fossil fuel infrastructure to support them with no mention of consulting with communities about their needs and concerns.  

Memphis’ experience with xAI, an artificial intelligence company owned by Elon Musk, is a powerful example of what is at stake when massive infrastructure growth to support AI is allowed to proceed unchecked. 

“Over the last year, xAI installed and operated dozens of unpermitted methane gas turbines at its Memphis data center, essentially building a power plant without any public oversight or input from nearby communities. These turbines pump out smog-forming pollution and harmful chemicals like formaldehyde and are located near predominantly Black communities that are already overburdened with a long history of environmental injustice. Families in South Memphis deserve transparency and clean air,” Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said. 

“Across the South we are seeing states and communities clamor for more information about the infrastructure demands for AI, not less. Transparency is crucial to ensure that the physical infrastructure needed to support AI doesn’t threaten our health, energy grid, access to water, and dramatically increase costs.” SELC Climate Initiative Leader Alys Campaigne said. 

“The Trump administration has manufactured barriers and a fake sense of urgency to roll back public safeguards that help the richest companies of the world at the expense of communities across the South. And ironically, it is calling for an energy boom to support AI while blocking solar, wind, and storage which are the fastest, cleanest, cheapest options to meet demand.” 

Some of the most concerning proposals in the plan include: 

• Creating an exclusion from the National Environmental Policy Act for “data center related actions,” which would make it harder for communities to obtain crucial information about the environmental or public health impacts of new data centers. 

• Pursuing a nationwide Clean Water Act permit that would allow data centers to be built without public notice prior to construction to inform the community about impacts to local water systems.  

• Giving away public lands for the wealthiest companies in the world to construct data centers and build more energy infrastructure to support them.  

• Strong-arming states against issuing their own regulations to limit AI data centers’ energy and water use, protect public health, or mitigate ratepayer impacts by withholding federal funding.