The elimination of federal renewable energy tax credits in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has major implications for the global AI race.
Ultimately, the shift means slowing down US progress on new energy production, which is key to winning the technology Cold War with China. There is no possible way tech companies can power the massive rollout of AI factories without solar, and now it will be that much more expensive.
But the attempt to throw a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry could be too little, too late, as detailed in this New Yorker article by Bill McKibben. The rate of solar adoption is now about a gigawatt every 15 hours. A gigawatt is the output of a typical nuclear power plant.
Solar isn’t just cheaper than fossil fuels. It’s also faster to deploy, which is crucial in the AI race. The expansion of AI data centers is creating new economic incentives for innovation in renewables, from geothermal to fusion to new battery chemistries, which can store all that new solar power. It’s a topic I expect we’ll be covering more and more here in the coming months.