Neil Chatterjee is the chief government affairs officer at Palmetto, a clean energy company. He served on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2017 to 2021, leading the agency as chair from 2018 to 2020.
You can’t turn on the news, check social media, or use a search engine today without hearing about or seeing an option to use artificial intelligence.
The technology’s impact already extends well beyond Google searches, chat bots and videos — it's also a critical technology for national security, making winning the AI competition with China a top priority for President Donald Trump.
Despite the inherent uncertainty regarding future power needs for any industry, including AI, nearly all agree a tremendous amount of new generation as well as infrastructure is needed now and in the future. And with the Departments of Defense, Interior and Energy tasked with addressing a “National Energy Emergency,” there’s an immediate opportunity to ensure the U.S. takes action to deploy advanced transmission technologies in the near term, as well as high-voltage regional and interregional transmission lines to accommodate power needs of the coming decades.
The National Emergency is directly related to not adding enough of the most efficient transmission capacity to the U.S. system over the last decade. Nowhere near enough to meet the demands of AI.
OpenAI is seeking to build AI-specific data center campuses multiple times the size of the largest data centers currently in the U.S. A new joint venture known as Stargate is slated to invest upwards of $500 billion into AI infrastructure. And Trump recently announced a $100 billion investment from Japanese company SoftBank into AI and emerging technologies in the U.S. and a $20 billion investment from a Dubai-based property development company to build new data centers.
All these projects will need enormous quantities of power. But the U.S. is not building the infrastructure to support it.
The U.S. built a measly 55 miles of high-voltage transmission lines in 2023. China, on the other hand, has been building tens of thousands of miles of ultra-high-voltage projects to carry electricity from hydropower and coal plants across the country for years.
Recent projections have forecast annual peak demand growth in the U.S. over the next five years, requiring six times more new generation and transmission capacity than the current pace of expansion. Much of this growth stems from the data centers required to power the AI boom.
In short, winning on technology development requires transmission development to enable the power for data centers. We will need all energy sources — fossil fuels, nuclear, renewable resources and storage technologies — to meet this demand.
Similarly, we will need all available transmission tools to enable these resources. Advanced transmission technologies — like grid-enhancing technologies and high-performance conductors — can add power capacity on existing power lines in one to two years; while efficient, high-voltage regional and interregional transmission lines are built to support longer-term growth.
New transmission builds can take a decade or more to plan, permit and build under existing regulatory processes. While efforts to streamline the nation’s antiquated siting and permitting processes failed in the last Congress, Republicans are well-positioned to pass legislation reducing the timelines for pipelines and transmission lines alike to support Trump’s energy dominance mandate.
At the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, regulators can build upon the smart regional transmission planning rule — which garnered support from now-Chairman Mark Christie — by ensuring grid regions quickly comply with the directive. FERC can also take further action requiring grid planners to consider advanced grid technologies in their planning processes.
Further, the U.S. Department of Energy has various tools at its disposal to speed the development of new transmission capacity. The Grid Deployment Office is helping rural communities across the country get the upgraded transmission they need to attract new industry. For example, in 2024, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming received joint funding from DOE to improve their interstate transmission system through the deployment of advanced high-temperature, low-sag conductor cables, increasing transmission capacity in the region.
An America First AI agenda will require every available transmission technology to pull off. Without an expanded transmission system, the U.S. will cede its leadership in the AI race.
Let’s get the private sector building again.
