On January 14, 2025, President Biden issued an Executive Order (EO) on Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure. The EO, among other things, directs the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Energy to seek to identify sites on federal land for leasing to for the construction and operation of frontier AI data centers, and directs the Secretary of the Interior to identify the lands for granting or issuing rights of way to private-sector entities to construct and operate clean energy facilities to serve such data centers. The EO allocates the first half of 2025 to the bidding and selection process, with a view of the data centers and energy facilities becoming operational by the end of 2027.
The EO represents a positive step towards utilization of federal land for development of U.S. AI and energy capabilities, and is likely to survive the presidential transition. Furthermore, it is possible that the incoming Trump administration would take a more developer-friendly approach towards implementing the EO project requirements, including those relating to energy efficiency, environmental and labor benchmarks and the stated soft preference for small- or medium-sized developers. The framework nature of the EO makes a pragmatic approach towards its implementation and exercise of agency authority a threshold issue for its success.
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