EXCLUSIVE — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said skyrocketing electricity costs are a “binding constraint” of growing America’s artificial intelligence sector but suggested several ways the Trump administration is working to ease the cost of those increases on households.
The AI expansion has placed a significant strain on the electrical grid, causing homes located near the growing number of data centers within the states to see their monthly power costs jump by as much as 70% compared to last year.
Bessent held a brief roundtable discussion with reporters at the Treasury Department on Wednesday morning, during which he fielded a series of questions on the topic from the Washington Examiner.
“I think of it as a binding constraint. We’re going to have to build it for them to come,” he said of rising electricity costs.
Bessent did point to three specific ways that both federal and state governments can offset those costs.
The treasury secretary specifically went after Democratic lawmakers and candidates in states like New York and New Jersey, both of which have seen electricity costs rise amid the Trump-backed AI expansion, for “going all in on a ridiculous green [energy] strategy.”
“Kathy Hochul in New York refuses to let a pipeline run through New York,” he stated. “New York state has some of the biggest gas reserves in the world, sitting next door in Pennsylvania, and they refuse to let it come in.”
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“So we were encouraging companies, and they’re doing it organically, to build where energy supplies are ample,” Bessent added before pointing to a July executive order President Donald Trump signed opening up federal lands to new nuclear power projects, with the specific aim of powering AI data centers.
“The president is giving companies the ability to build their own power source,” he told the Washington Examiner. “We’re talking about putting nuclear power on federal land to expedite the process.”