Trump promotes fossil fuels for AI future at $92B Pittsburgh summit

President Donald Trump joined energy executives and tech leaders at a Pittsburgh summit to promote fossil fuels as the primary power source for AI expansion, with companies announcing $92 billion in energy and AI investments. The event strategically positioned natural gas as essential for meeting AI’s projected energy demands, potentially revitalizing a struggling industry facing supply gluts and market headwinds.

What you should know: The Energy and Innovation Summit brought together an unlikely coalition of Trump administration officials, Big Tech executives, and fossil fuel leaders to advance a pro-natural gas agenda for AI infrastructure.

• Trump acknowledged that AI is “not my thing” but emphasized that advisors told him AI would require “double the electric of what we have right now, and maybe even more than that.”
• Panelists included White House AI czar David Sacks, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google president Ruth Porat, and ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods.
• The summit’s location in Pittsburgh was strategically chosen, as Pennsylvania sits on the Marcellus and Utica shale formations and remains the country’s second-most prolific natural gas producer.

The big picture: The natural gas industry is leveraging AI’s energy demands to create new market opportunities amid challenging economic conditions.

• Global gas markets have faced mounting supply gluts for years, with Morgan Stanley predicting gas supply could reach “multi-decade highs” over the next few years.
• Pennsylvania natural gas has struggled against ultra-cheap supply from Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin, plus inadequate infrastructure to transport regional supply.
• Pipeline companies are already pitching new projects to carry northeastern gas, citing data center demand as justification.

Key investments announced: Tech companies revealed major energy infrastructure commitments, though not all aligned with the administration’s fossil fuel focus.

• Meta announced plans to build “titan clusters” of data centers, with the first facility in Ohio powered by onsite gas generation.
• Google committed $3 billion to hydropower investments, reflecting the company’s interest in any cheap power available for AI.
• The $92 billion in total announced investments spans various energy and AI-related ventures.

Industry tensions emerge: Despite the unified messaging, ideological splits between tech companies and the Trump administration occasionally surfaced.

• Energy Secretary Chris Wright criticized the Obama and Biden administrations for being on an “energy crazy train” regarding wind and solar support.
• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink acknowledged that solar would likely support dispatchable gas in powering AI, directly contradicting Wright’s anti-renewables stance.
• No representatives from wind or solar companies appeared on any public panels, reflecting the administration’s priorities.

What they’re saying: Industry leaders provided varying perspectives on AI’s energy future and economic impact.

• Blackstone CEO Jonathan Gray projected that AI could drive “40 or 50 percent more power usage over the next decade.”
• Google’s Ruth Porat cited economists’ projections that AI could add “$4 trillion to the US economy by 2030.”
• Energy finance analyst Clark Williams-Derry of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis noted that the industry is “doing their best to sort of create this drumbeat or this narrative around the need for AI data centers.”

Reality check on projections: Computing experts urge caution about AI energy demand forecasts, drawing parallels to past technology hype cycles.

• Jonathan Koomey, a computing researcher, expressed “great skepticism” about AI power projections: “I don’t think anyone has any idea, even a few years hence, how much electricity data centers are gonna use.”
• Koomey compared current AI-energy hype to late 1990s internet predictions that never materialized, when sources claimed the internet could consume half of US electricity.
• Microsoft’s decision to back out of 2GW of data center leases in March suggests the AI-energy bubble may not inflate as much as projected.

In plain English: The late 1990s saw similar predictions about the internet requiring massive amounts of new electricity, with experts claiming it could consume up to half of all US power. Investment banks and trade publications pushed for more coal-fired power plants to support this supposed expansion. However, these dire predictions never came to pass because technology became more efficient over time, and the initial calculations were flawed.

Why this matters: The convergence of AI development and energy policy could reshape both industries, though the actual energy requirements remain highly uncertain.

• Financial analyst Lazard reported that utility-scale solar and batteries remain cheaper than natural gas plants, even without tax incentives.
• Gas infrastructure faces a global shortage with five-year waiting lists for new turbines, while solar capacity can be deployed more quickly.
• The presence of “self-interested actors” in the AI-energy hype cycle, including energy executives, utilities, and AI companies, suggests caution is warranted when evaluating demand projections.