Trump’s Draft Report on the State of the Nation’s Power Grid Centers On AI

The Department of Energy’s assessment of the nation’s power grid is out: Data centers, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining and manufacturing — major priorities of the Trump administration — are straining the system.

The National Transmission Needs Study, which comes out every three years, is like a report card for the grid. In the 2026 version, a draft of which was published Thursday, the DOE lays out a similar assessment as it has in years past: The U.S. needs more transmission infrastructure to handle increasing demand for electricity.

The source of that increasing demand, however, has shifted substantially over the last three years.

Concerns about a clean energy transition that took center stage in the 2023 version of the study got passing mentions. This time, officials are citing utility and industry assessments that AI data centers are the main drivers of electricity demand growth.

Based on a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, officials say data centers could represent up to 12% of the nation’s electricity consumption by 2028. Virginia and Texas are projected to see the biggest increases.

While many regions are updating their transmission infrastructure because of concerns about reliability, Texas’ grid operator, ERCOT, said growth in demand was the main driver.

In PJM Interconnection’s territory, which spans 13 states and the District of Columbia and is the nation’s largest power grid, transmission congestion cost $2.5 billion in 2022 and more than $1 billion in 2023. Those costs have grown in recent years, peaking at $7.3 billion in 2025.

The congestion made it difficult for Dominion Energy to deliver power to data centers, the study said. Last summer, Dominion proposed 44 “supplemental” transmission projects to address increasing power needs from data centers.

The Trump administration has tried to accelerate transmission development, including by putting $1.9 billion toward transmission technologies. But efforts to build more transmission lines have long faced local pushback and permitting challenges.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright met with congressional Republicans in May to discuss permitting reform, around the same time top Senate leaders met to revive talks of a bipartisan bill, according to E&E News.

Democrats, however, have maintained that the Trump administration’s animus toward wind and solar energy is a major sticking point to accomplishing reforms.

“The thing that is the biggest threat to permitting reform right now is that the Trump administration backslid into a series of stalled-out permits,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee told E&E. “They’re permitting fossil fuel projects left and right, and they’re not moving solar, wind and batteries.”

Since 2016, investments in transmission infrastructure have remained relatively steady, the study said. But some regions have approved large projects, including a $21.8 billion investment in MISO and a $33 billion project in Texas, which has since been challenged by landowners and state lawmakers.

The administration has been bullish on investments in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, especially when it comes to building data centers. Wright said political pushback around data centers has been “overblown” at an Amazon Web Services conference earlier this month. Last week, during the historic heat wave across the East Coast, he instructed grid operators to push data centers to their generators to preserve the stability of electricity.

The Department of Energy will accept public comments on the study until Sept. 8.