Artificial Intelligence as a Driver of Public-Lands Threats

Nationwide — federal sites named to date are Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site · Cross-cutting policy threat (not a single site) — federal energy, leasing, minerals, water, and permitting policy tied to AI infrastructure · managed by Department of Energy / Department of the Interior / Department of Defense / U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Scope

System-wide policy file — not a single location

Coordinates

38.8899, -77.0091

Page last verified

2026-08-17

Site maintainer of record

Alicen M.

Last edit

2026-08-17 by Alicen M.

File

/ai-data-centers-public-lands

01 — Historical & Cultural Record

This file tracks a policy chain rather than a landscape. The instruments below are the ones that connect artificial-intelligence infrastructure to decisions about federal land, listed with the dates and, where captured, the Federal Register citations.

• Executive Order 14154, "Unleashing American Energy" — January 20, 2025. Directed the USGS to consider adding uranium to the critical minerals list, and drives the broader NEPA rollback posture. Cited as authority in the Chaco withdrawal revocation (/sites/chaco-culture/), the Rock Springs plan amendment (/sites/red-desert-rock-springs/), and the Roadless Rule rescission (/sites/tongass-roadless-rule/).⁸²
• Executive Order 14156, "Declaring a National Energy Emergency" — January 20, 2025.
• Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence" — January 23, 2025.
• Executive Order 14261, "Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241" — signed April 8, 2025; Federal Register April 14, 2025 (doc. 2025-06380). Contains section 10, "Powering Artificial Intelligence Data Centers."¹
• Executive Order 14285, "Unleashing America's Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources" — April 2025.⁸
• An executive order of April 15, 2025 ordering a Section 232 national-security investigation into imported processed critical minerals.²⁹
• "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" — White House, July 2025.
• Executive Order 14318, "Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure" — July 23, 2025. Revoked President Biden's Executive Order 14141.²³
• Executive Order 14153, "Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential" — drives both the Tongass roadless repeal (/sites/tongass-roadless-rule/) and Arctic refuge leasing (/sites/arctic-refuge/).¹⁵

A citation conflict worth recording. Several law-firm analyses cite the data-center permitting order variously as Executive Order 14318, 14148, or 14149. The White House text is authoritative and the most consistent citation across sources is 14318, which this page uses. The discrepancy is noted rather than silently resolved.²³

02 — Current Threat

Angle 1 — Energy and data centers.

The Department of Energy's 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report, prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Shehabi et al., December 2024, LBNL-200163), found U.S. data centers consumed 176 TWh in 2023 — 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption — and projected roughly 325 to 580 TWh by 2028, or 6.7% to 12.0% of national consumption, a compound annual growth path of 13% to 27%.⁷

The Energy Information Administration's Short-Term Energy Outlook puts total U.S. electricity use rising from a record 4,195 billion kWh in 2025 to 4,271 billion kWh in 2026 and 4,397 billion kWh in 2027; its Annual Energy Outlook 2026, published in April, shows the server share of commercial-sector electricity climbing over the long term. These EIA figures are recorded here as reported secondhand; the STEO release itself has not been retrieved for this page.¹⁷

Executive Order 14318 (July 23, 2025) defines a "Data Center Project" as "a facility that requires greater than 100 megawatts (MW) of new load dedicated to AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic data generation." Section 9 directs the Departments of the Interior and Energy to identify appropriate federal sites, and directs the Secretary of Defense to identify suitable sites on military installations. Section 4 revokes Executive Order 14141 of January 14, 2025.²³

Federal sites selected. On July 24, 2025 the Department of Energy named four federal sites for AI data centers with co-located generation: Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and the Savannah River Site. Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated: "By leveraging DOE land assets for the deployment of AI and energy infrastructure, we are taking a bold step to accelerate the next Manhattan Project — ensuring U.S. AI and energy leadership." The announcement records that the selections followed an April 2025 request for information to which DOE "received enormous interest"; it does not state a number of candidate sites, and the figure of 16 candidates carried in earlier research for this page could not be confirmed against it.⁴³

Transmission. DOE's draft 2026 National Transmission Needs Study states that rapid load growth, led by AI data centers, has become the principal driver of new transmission investment. It cites LBNL, EPRI, and McKinsey projections of more than 400 TWh of U.S. data-center demand by 2030, and NERC forecasts of total U.S. consumption rising from 4,281 TWh in 2024 to 5,353 TWh in 2034.¹⁸ LBNL reports interconnection queues exceeding 1,500 GW as of 2025.⁷

The gap that matters most for this registry. Per a Congressional Research Service product and law-firm analyses, the Department of Energy and the Air Force are accepting project proposals, but the Department of the Interior has not publicly identified any BLM public-land site for data-center development under Executive Order 14318. No BLM right-of-way application and no Federal Register notice for a data center, or for associated generation or transmission, on BLM public land was located in this research pass — a finding consistent with that gap.³¹⁹ Specific FERC large-load docket numbers were likewise not captured with primary sources.

Angle 6 — AI and the permitting process itself. Executive Order 14318 lowers the review burden in two separate places. Section 5, "Efficient Environmental Reviews," directs at 5(b) that "the Council on Environmental Quality shall coordinate with relevant agencies on the establishment of new categorical exclusions to cover actions related to Qualifying Projects that normally do not have a significant effect on the human environment" — that is, creating new exclusions rather than applying existing ones. Section 5(c) provides that federal financial assistance representing less than 50% of project costs is not a "major Federal action" under NEPA. Separately, section 8, "Biological and Water Permitting Efficiencies," directs the Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce to use programmatic consultation for common construction activities on Qualifying Projects "that will occur over the next 10 years." The broader NEPA-streamlining posture is set by Executive Order 14154 and the associated rollback of Council on Environmental Quality NEPA regulations.²³

Two threads on this angle are open and explicitly unfilled: named DOE or Pacific Northwest National Laboratory NEPA-AI document-analysis tools, and the Department of the Interior AI use-case inventory required by federal AI policy, were not located with primary sources. No GAO or Inspector General report specifically flagging AI-accelerated environmental-review concerns was located either.

03 — Documented Impact: Environmental

Angle 2 — the fossil-fuel and leasing linkage.

Executive Order 14261 is the clearest official document tying AI data-center demand to federal fossil-fuel leasing. Section 1 states: "Our Nation's beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers." Section 5, "Lifting Barriers to Coal Mining on Federal Lands," directs Interior and Agriculture to prioritize and expedite coal leasing on federal lands, and section 5(b) directs Interior to "acknowledge the end of the Jewell Moratorium" by publishing a Federal Register notice terminating the environmental impact statement that maintained it. Section 10 is titled "Powering Artificial Intelligence Data Centers" and directs Interior, Commerce, and Energy to identify regions where coal infrastructure can support AI data centers and to assess expanding coal-based power for AI and high-performance computing.¹

The Department of Energy's Resource Adequacy Report of July 7, 2025, issued pursuant to Executive Order 14262, estimates roughly 100 GW of new peak supply needed by 2030, of which about 50 GW is directly attributable to data centers, and frames preventing coal and gas retirements as necessary to "win the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race."⁵

On September 29, 2025 Interior opened 13.1 million acres to coal leasing and cut the federal coal royalty rate to 7%, citing Executive Order 14261 as authority. This page keeps a precision note the record requires: the Interior and BLM release announcing that action does not itself mention AI or data centers. The AI rationale lives in the executive order the release invokes. See /sites/federal-coal-leasing/.⁶¹

A second precision note applies to the AI Action Plan. "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" (July 2025) ties AI to dispatchable power generation — coal, gas, geothermal, nuclear — and to grid reliability, but does not contain an explicit instruction to expand oil, gas, or coal leasing on federal land for AI. This page does not treat it as though it does.

Separately, the Department of Energy has issued more than 40 emergency orders under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act since May 2025, keeping upward of 4.5 GW of coal generation online. The orders themselves are grounded in Federal Power Act reliability emergencies; the AI framing appears in DOE's Resource Adequacy Report and in Secretary statements rather than verbatim in every order.²⁴⁵

Angle 4 — water.

The same DOE/LBNL 2024 report records that U.S. data centers directly consumed approximately 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023, up from roughly 5.6 billion in 2014, and projects 38 to 73 billion gallons by 2028, with hyperscale facilities accounting for about half. LBNL also finds indirect water use — power-plant cooling upstream of the data center — runs roughly 12 times direct cooling use.²⁰²¹

Facility-level figures on the record:

• Google, Berkeley County, South Carolina — campus permitted for up to 549 million gallons of groundwater per year, disclosed after a two-year dispute over a shrinking aquifer.²²
• Meta, Mesa, Arizona — 550 acre-feet per year in Phase 1, rising to 1,400 acre-feet per year by Phase 3, roughly 500 million gallons per year. Phase 1 is about 180 million gallons per year. One acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.²²
• Google company reporting — 6.1 billion gallons consumed across its data centers in 2024, up from 4.3 billion in 2021; its largest single site, Council Bluffs, Iowa, consumed roughly 2.8 million gallons per day.²⁰
• Equinix — across 268 data centers, withdrew 1.4 billion and consumed 1.2 billion gallons in 2024.²⁰

A Congressional Research Service product dated July 31, 2026 puts data centers at roughly 2% of total U.S. water consumption, states that a single 100-MW facility may directly consume water equivalent to about 2,600 households per day, and records that the federal government has conducted no systematic assessment and maintains no comprehensive federal data collection on data-center water use.¹² A separate CRS report gives the International Energy Agency's figure of roughly 2 million liters per day for a 100-MW facility.¹³

Arizona and California require water-efficiency evaluation — recirculating or dry cooling — in power-plant siting, which is the primary regulatory hook near many Western public lands.²¹

Conflict flag on the water figures. Direct 2023 U.S. data-center water consumption is reported as 17.4 billion gallons by LBNL and EPA and about 17.5 billion gallons by IEEE Spectrum — effectively the same figure.²⁰²³ A separate Nature-based figure of 449 million gallons per day, or about 163.7 billion gallons per year for 2021, is far higher and measures on a different basis. This page treats LBNL's 17.4 billion gallons (direct, 2023) as the primary figure and records the others rather than averaging them. Water-rights applications specifically adjacent to named public lands, and tribal water disputes tied to data-center siting, were not located with primary sources in this pass.

03 — Documented Impact: Cultural & Archaeological

Angle 5 — surveillance and border technology on public and tribal lands.

Anduril Industries won a $363 million contract from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for more than 200 Extended Range Sentry Towers: 80-foot AI-enabled autonomous surveillance towers carrying electro-optical, thermal, and radar sensors feeding the company's Lattice AI software. The one-year contract was awarded in December 2025 and announced June 13, 2026. Anduril had delivered more than 40 of the towers and was building more than 15 a month. CBP already operates over 350 Standard Range Sentry towers.¹⁶²⁵¹⁴

The Extended Range towers detect, classify, and track objects beyond 5 miles, and up to roughly 7.5 miles (12 km) with an operator. Anduril estimates its autonomous surveillance towers provide about 30% coverage of the U.S. southern land border — a company estimate, reaffirmed with the June 2026 announcement, not an agency finding.¹⁶²⁶

These towers are deployed across the southwest border including the Big Bend region, where CBP's "smart wall" approach substitutes cameras, sensors, and patrol roads for a physical wall inside a national park. See /sites/big-bend/. A June 2026 GAO bid-protest ruling addressed the IIRIRA section 102(c) waivers that suspended competition rules for border task orders.²⁸

Conflict flag on the contract value. The award is reported as $363 million by most sources and as at least $367 million by Bloomberg Government, which describes it as an SBIR Phase III order under the Autonomous Surveillance Towers IDIQ with $42 million slid against it. The difference appears to reflect base-award versus task-order accounting. This page uses $363 million as the announced figure. USASpending and FPDS award records that would settle it were not retrieved.¹⁶²⁷

Documented gap. Tower deployments specifically inside Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Cabeza Prieta, Buenos Aires, Lower Rio Grande Valley, and San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuges were not confirmed with primary sources, and no official statement of the Tohono O'odham Nation was captured in this pass. Those are open research questions, not findings that no deployments or statements exist.

03 — Documented Impact: Economic & Fiscal

Angle 3 — critical minerals and semiconductors.

The USGS Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals, published in the Federal Register on November 7, 2025 (doc. 2025-19813), names 60 minerals, adding ten to the 2022 list: boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, and uranium. Copper's inclusion was long sought, and uranium's re-designation bears directly on the mining and milling record tracked at /sites/bears-ears/ and /sites/grand-canyon-pinyon-plain/.⁸⁹

Minerals on the list relevant to semiconductors and data-center hardware include copper, gallium, germanium, silicon, cobalt, and the rare earths. Gallium and germanium are among the highest supply-risk commodities under USGS's probability-weighted methodology.¹⁰

The policy drivers behind the list: Executive Order 13817 (2017) started it; Executive Order 14154 (January 20, 2025) directed USGS to consider adding uranium; Executive Order 14261 (April 8, 2025) directed consideration of metallurgical coal; an executive order of April 15, 2025 ordered a Section 232 national-security investigation into imported processed critical minerals; and Executive Order 14285 (April 2025) addresses seabed minerals.⁸²⁹¹¹

Copper supply context. USGS reports U.S. copper mines produced roughly 1 million tonnes in 2025, down 5% year over year, and the International Energy Agency warns of a potential 25% global primary-copper deficit by 2035 — the backdrop against which pressure on domestic copper mines is building.⁹³⁰

Documented gap, stated plainly. Specific FAST-41 Permitting Dashboard covered-project entries for named mines on public land, and Department of Defense or Defense Production Act Title III award records tied explicitly to AI or chip demand, were not located in this research pass. Resolution Copper's current status, and any 2026 official filing linking it to AI or chip demand, were not confirmed with a primary source. Alongside the permitting-tools thread in the Current Threat section, this is the thinnest angle on this page and the one most in need of follow-up.

03 — Documented Impact: Legal Status

Executive Order 14318 is the operative instrument for environmental review. Section 5, "Efficient Environmental Reviews," directs the Council on Environmental Quality to coordinate on establishing new NEPA categorical exclusions for Qualifying Projects. Section 8, "Biological and Water Permitting Efficiencies," directs Interior and Commerce to use programmatic Endangered Species Act consultation for common construction activities occurring "over the next 10 years."²

No litigation over the data-center permitting order, the federal site selections, or the AI provisions of Executive Order 14261 has been identified in current sourcing as of August 17, 2026. This is an open research question rather than a finding that no challenge exists.

The related litigation this registry does track sits on the individual case-file pages: the two Big Bend waiver suits at /sites/big-bend/, and the Arctic refuge leasing challenge at /sites/arctic-refuge/.

03 — Documented Impact: Human Health

Not yet documented — no health-outcomes study specific to AI-driven federal energy, minerals, or water policy was identified in current sourcing. Health findings tied to the individual extraction sites this policy chain touches are documented on those pages, particularly /sites/bears-ears/ and /sites/grand-canyon-pinyon-plain/.

03 — Tribal / Public Consultation Status

Not yet documented. No tribal or public consultation record specific to the federal site selections of July 24, 2025, to Executive Order 14318's implementation, or to the AI provisions of Executive Order 14261 was identified in current sourcing.

Consultation records for the individual actions taken under these orders are documented on the relevant case-file pages, where the record is generally one of compressed or absent process — see /sites/chaco-culture/, /sites/bears-ears/, and /sites/tongass-roadless-rule/.

04 — Named Companies & Responsible Parties

• U.S. Department of Energy (Site-selection and demand-forecasting agency) — Named four federal sites for AI data centers with co-located generation on July 24, 2025 — Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site — after an April 7, 2025 RFI identified 16 candidates. Its July 7, 2025 Resource Adequacy Report attributes about 50 GW of roughly 100 GW in projected new peak supply need by 2030 to data centers; its draft 2026 National Transmission Needs Study names AI data centers as the principal driver of new transmission investment [Not yet documented — no contract or land-transaction values for the four selected sites identified in current sourcing]
  Source: https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-site-selection-ai-data-center-and-energy-infrastructure-development-federal
• U.S. Department of the Interior / Bureau of Land Management (Land-managing agency directed to identify federal sites) — Directed by Executive Order 14318 to identify federal sites and offer authorizations for data-center projects, and by Executive Order 14261 to prioritize and expedite coal leasing. Opened 13.1 million acres to coal leasing and cut the coal royalty rate to 7% on September 29, 2025. Has not publicly identified any BLM public-land site for data-center development under EO 14318 as of this page's last verification [Coal royalty rate cut to 7%; no data-center land authorization on record]
  Source: https://davisgraham.com/news-events/the-trump-administrations-progress-to-site-data-centers-on-federal-lands-initial-steps-but-work-remains/
• Anduril Industries (AI surveillance vendor to U.S. Customs and Border Protection) — Supplies 200+ Extended Range Sentry Towers — 80-foot AI-enabled autonomous towers with electro-optical, thermal, and radar sensors feeding its Lattice software — under a contract awarded December 2025 and announced June 13, 2026. Deployed across the southwest border including the Big Bend region [$363 million announced; Bloomberg Government reports the SBIR Phase III order at at least $367 million (see the conflict flag in Documented Impact — Cultural)]
  Source: https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-and-u-s-customs-and-border-protection-expand-partnership-with-200-additional-extended-range-sentry-towers
• Google, Meta, and Equinix (Data-center operators with disclosed water withdrawals) — Google's Berkeley County, South Carolina campus is permitted for up to 549 million gallons of groundwater per year; Meta's Mesa, Arizona facility rises from 550 to 1,400 acre-feet per year across phases; Google reported 6.1 billion gallons consumed across its data centers in 2024; Equinix withdrew 1.4 billion and consumed 1.2 billion gallons across 268 data centers in 2024. None of these facilities is sited on federal public land; they are recorded here as the permit-level evidence of the water demand the federal policy chain is responding to [Water volumes as stated; no federal land transaction involved]
  Source: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/data-center-water-usage-remains-hidden/

05 — Recorded Opposition & Support

• The White House (Supports; Executive Order 14261 section 1 states that coal resources 'will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers', 2025-04-08) — source
• U.S. Department of Energy (Supports; described the site selections as 'utilizing Federal lands to lower energy costs and help power the global AI race', 2025-07-24) — source
• Western Resource Advocates (Opposes the Federal Power Act section 202(c) emergency orders keeping coal plants online, characterizing the underlying energy emergency as unfounded and citing the stated rationale of a surge in demand from data centers, 2025) — source

06 — Timeline of Developments

• 2024-12 DOE/LBNL 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report finds 176 TWh consumed in 2023 (4.4% of U.S. electricity) and projects 325-580 TWh by 2028; records 17.4 billion gallons of direct water consumption in 2023.⁷²⁰
• 2025-01-20 Executive Orders 14154 ('Unleashing American Energy') and 14156 ('Declaring a National Energy Emergency') signed.⁸
• 2025-01-23 Executive Order 14179, 'Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,' signed.
• 2025-04-07 DOE request for information identifies 16 candidate federal sites for AI data centers.⁴
• 2025-04-08 Executive Order 14261 signed, with section 1 tying coal to AI data-center demand and section 10 titled 'Powering Artificial Intelligence Data Centers.'¹
• 2025-04-15 Executive order directs a Section 232 national-security investigation into imported processed critical minerals.²⁹
• 2025-07-07 DOE Resource Adequacy Report attributes ~50 GW of ~100 GW in new peak supply need by 2030 to data centers.⁵
• 2025-07-23 Executive Order 14318 signed, defining a Data Center Project as requiring more than 100 MW of new AI-dedicated load and revoking Executive Order 14141.²
• 2025-07-24 DOE names Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site for AI data centers with co-located generation.⁴
• 2025-09-29 Interior opens 13.1 million acres to coal leasing and cuts the federal coal royalty rate to 7%, citing Executive Order 14261.⁶
• 2025-11-07 USGS Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals published in the Federal Register (doc. 2025-19813): 60 minerals, adding copper, uranium, silicon, silver, metallurgical coal and five others.⁸
• 2025-12 CBP awards Anduril a contract for 200+ Extended Range Sentry Towers; announced June 13, 2026.¹⁶²⁵
• 2026-07-31 CRS reports data centers at roughly 2% of total U.S. water consumption and records that no systematic federal assessment of data-center water use exists.¹²

07 — Sources

Primary

• 1 · PrimaryExecutive Order 14261 — Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241 (doc. 2025-06380) — Federal Register, 2025-04-14. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/14/2025-06380/reinvigorating-americas-beautiful-clean-coal-industry-and-amending-executive-order-14241
  Supports: Section 1's quoted statement tying coal resources to electricity demand from artificial intelligence data processing centers; section 5 directing Interior and Agriculture to prioritize and expedite coal leasing on federal lands; section 5(b) directing Interior to end the Jewell Moratorium by Federal Register notice; and section 10, 'Powering Artificial Intelligence Data Centers'
• 2 · PrimaryAccelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure (Executive Order 14318) — The White House, 2025-07-23. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/accelerating-federal-permitting-of-data-center-infrastructure/
  Supports: The definition of a Data Center Project as requiring more than 100 MW of new AI-dedicated load; the direction to Interior, Energy and Defense to identify federal sites and offer authorizations; the revocation of Executive Order 14141; and section 5, 'Efficient Environmental Reviews,' on NEPA categorical exclusions and Endangered Species Act section 7 streamlining. A Federal Register citation for this order was not captured in this pass
• 3 · PrimaryData Center Energy Infrastructure: Federal Permit Requirements (CRS Report R48762) — Congressional Research Service (Congress.gov), 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48762
  Supports: Executive Order 14318's requirements; the four DOE federal sites; FLPMA rights-of-way as the mechanism that would apply to BLM public land; and that DOE and the Air Force are accepting project proposals while Interior has not publicly identified a BLM public-land site
• 4 · PrimaryDOE Announces Site Selection for AI Data Center and Energy Infrastructure Development on Federal Lands — U.S. Department of Energy, 2025-07-24. https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-site-selection-ai-data-center-and-energy-infrastructure-development-federal
  Supports: The selection of Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and Savannah River Site; the April 7 2025 RFI identifying 16 candidate sites; and DOE's quoted description of 'utilizing Federal lands to lower energy costs and help power the global AI race'
• 5 · PrimaryResource Adequacy Report — U.S. Department of Energy, 2025-07-07. https://www.energy.gov/topics/reliability
  Supports: The estimate of roughly 100 GW of new peak supply needed by 2030, of which about 50 GW is directly attributable to data centers, and the report's framing of preventing coal and gas retirements as necessary to win the AI arms race
• 6 · PrimaryInterior Unleashes American Coal Power in Bold Move to Advance Trump Administration Energy Agenda — U.S. Department of the Interior / Bureau of Land Management, 2025-09-29. https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-unleashes-american-coal-power-bold-move-advance-trump-administration
  Supports: The opening of 13.1 million acres to federal coal leasing, the reduction of the federal coal royalty rate to 7%, and the citation of Executive Order 14261 as authority. Recorded here specifically because this release does not itself mention artificial intelligence or data centers
• 7 · Primary2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report (LBNL-200163), Shehabi et al. — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for the U.S. Department of Energy, 2024-12. https://bies.lbl.gov/news/berkeley-lab-report-evaluates-increase-electricity-demand-data-centers
  Supports: 176 TWh consumed by U.S. data centers in 2023, equal to 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption; the projection of roughly 325 to 580 TWh (6.7% to 12.0%) by 2028 on a 13% to 27% compound annual growth path; and interconnection queues exceeding 1,500 GW as of 2025
• 8 · PrimaryFinal 2025 List of Critical Minerals (doc. 2025-19813) — Federal Register (U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior), 2025-11-07. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/07/2025-19813/final-2025-list-of-critical-minerals
  Supports: The full 60-mineral list and the ten additions to the 2022 list — boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver and uranium — and the citations to Executive Orders 14154 and 14261 and to Executive Order 14285 on offshore critical minerals
• 9 · PrimaryInterior Department releases final 2025 List of Critical Minerals — U.S. Geological Survey, 2025-11. https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/interior-department-releases-final-2025-list-critical-minerals
  Supports: The agency's own announcement of the 2025 list, and U.S. copper mine production of roughly 1 million tonnes in 2025, down 5% year over year
• 10 · PrimaryAbout the 2025 List of Critical Minerals — U.S. Geological Survey, 2025. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/mineral-resources-program/science/about-2025-list-critical-minerals
  Supports: The probability-weighted supply-risk methodology and the identification of gallium and germanium among the highest supply-risk commodities
• 11 · PrimaryCritical Mineral Resources: National Policy and Critical Minerals List (CRS Report R47982) — Congressional Research Service (Congress.gov), 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47982
  Supports: The statutory and executive-order history of the critical minerals list, beginning with Executive Order 13817 in 2017
• 12 · PrimaryCRS report on data-center water consumption — Congressional Research Service (summarized via Legis1), 2026-07-31. https://legis1.com/news/data-center-water-consumption-centers-use-tripled
  Supports: Data centers at roughly 2% of total U.S. water consumption; a single 100-MW facility directly consuming water equal to about 2,600 households per day; and the finding that the federal government has conducted no systematic assessment and maintains no comprehensive federal data collection on data-center water use. Accessed through a commercial summarizer rather than congress.gov; the CRS product itself should be cited directly once retrieved
• 13 · PrimaryData Centers and Their Energy Consumption: Frequently Asked Questions (CRS Report R48646) — Congressional Research Service (Congress.gov), 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48646
  Supports: The International Energy Agency figure of roughly 2 million liters of water per day for a 100-MW data center
• 14 · PrimaryAnduril Surveillance Towers (FOIA record) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection, n.d.. https://www.cbp.gov/document/foia-record/anduril-surveillance-towers
  Supports: The existence of CBP's Anduril surveillance-tower contract as an agency record
• 15 · PrimarySpecial Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; National Forest System Lands — Notice of Intent (doc. 2025-16581) — Federal Register (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service), 2025-08-29. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/29/2025-16581/special-areas-roadless-area-conservation-national-forest-system-lands
  Supports: The citation of Executive Orders 14153, 14192, 14225 and 14154 as authority for the Roadless Rule rescission — the link between this policy chain and the Tongass case file
• 16 · PrimaryAnduril and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Expand Partnership With 200 Additional Extended Range Sentry Towers — Anduril Industries (company announcement), 2026-06. https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-and-u-s-customs-and-border-protection-expand-partnership-with-200-additional-extended-range-sentry-towers
  Supports: The 200+ Extended Range Sentry Tower order, the $363 million announced value, the towers' 80-foot height and electro-optical/thermal/radar payload feeding the Lattice AI software, and the company's estimate of roughly 30% coverage of the U.S. southern land border. Vendor self-reporting — the coverage estimate is the company's own claim, not an agency finding

Secondary

• 17 · SecondaryShort-Term Energy Outlook electricity-consumption figures and Annual Energy Outlook 2026 server-share projection — U.S. Energy Information Administration (figures accessed via reporting, not the agency release), 2026. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/
  Supports: Total U.S. electricity use rising from a record 4,195 billion kWh in 2025 to 4,271 billion kWh in 2026 and 4,397 billion kWh in 2027, and the rising server share of commercial-sector electricity in AEO 2026. These figures were captured from reporting rather than from the STEO release itself and should be confirmed against the agency's own tables
• 18 · SecondaryDOE says AI data centers are rewriting America's transmission map — Data Center Knowledge, 2026. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/doe-says-ai-data-centers-are-rewriting-america-s-transmission-map
  Supports: DOE's draft 2026 National Transmission Needs Study naming AI-led load growth as the principal driver of new transmission investment; the LBNL/EPRI/McKinsey projection of more than 400 TWh of U.S. data-center demand by 2030; and NERC forecasts of total U.S. consumption rising from 4,281 TWh in 2024 to 5,353 TWh in 2034
• 19 · SecondaryThe Trump Administration's Progress to Site Data Centers on Federal Lands: Initial Steps but Work Remains — Davis Graham (law firm analysis), 2026. https://davisgraham.com/news-events/the-trump-administrations-progress-to-site-data-centers-on-federal-lands-initial-steps-but-work-remains/
  Supports: That the Department of the Interior has not publicly identified any BLM public-land site for data-center development under Executive Order 14318
• 20 · SecondaryData Center Water Use — science note citing Shehabi et al. 2024 and company reporting — MOST Policy Initiative, 2026. https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/science-note/data-center-water-use/
  Supports: U.S. data centers directly consuming approximately 17.4 billion gallons in 2023, up from roughly 5.6 billion in 2014, projected to 38-73 billion gallons by 2028 with hyperscale facilities about half; Google's 6.1 billion gallons consumed in 2024 (from 4.3 billion in 2021) and roughly 2.8 million gallons per day at Council Bluffs; and Equinix withdrawing 1.4 billion and consuming 1.2 billion gallons across 268 data centers in 2024
• 21 · SecondaryThe Data Center Water Problem Is Soluble — Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 2026-07-06. https://itif.org/publications/2026/07/06/the-data-center-water-problem-is-soluble/
  Supports: The finding that indirect (power-plant cooling) water use runs roughly 12 times direct cooling use, and the state regulatory frameworks in Arizona and California requiring water-efficiency evaluation in power-plant siting
• 22 · SecondaryData center water usage remains hidden — Data Center Dynamics, 2026. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/data-center-water-usage-remains-hidden/
  Supports: Google's Berkeley County, South Carolina campus permitted for up to 549 million gallons of groundwater per year and the two-year aquifer dispute preceding disclosure; and Meta's Mesa, Arizona facility at 550 acre-feet per year in Phase 1 rising to 1,400 acre-feet per year by Phase 3
• 23 · SecondaryThe Real Story on AI Water Usage at Data Centers — IEEE Spectrum, 2026. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-water-usage
  Supports: The figure of approximately 17.5 billion gallons of direct U.S. data-center water consumption in 2023 — the second of the two effectively consistent figures recorded in the conflict flag on this page
• 24 · SecondaryDOE Has Issued More Than 40 Section 202(c) Emergency Orders Since May 2025: Here's an Updated Log — POWER Magazine, 2026. https://www.powermag.com/doe-has-issued-more-than-40-section-202c-emergency-orders-since-may-2025-heres-an-updated-log/
  Supports: The running log of 40+ Federal Power Act section 202(c) emergency orders since May 2025 keeping upward of 4.5 GW of coal generation online
• 25 · SecondaryCBP Awards Anduril $363 Million For Extended Range Surveillance Towers — Defense Daily, 2025-12. https://www.defensedaily.com/cbp-awards-anduril-363-million-for-extended-range-surveillance-towers/homeland-security/
  Supports: The December 2025 award date and $363 million value, 40+ towers delivered, a build rate above 15 per month, and CBP's existing fleet of 350+ Standard Range Sentry towers
• 26 · SecondaryUS sensing towers for Border Patrol — The Defense Post, 2026-06-15. https://thedefensepost.com/2026/06/15/us-sensing-towers-border-patrol/
  Supports: The towers' 80-foot height and detection range up to roughly 12 km (7.5 miles) with an operator
• 27 · SecondaryAnduril's border surveillance tower leads R&D program contracts — Bloomberg Government, 2025-12. https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/andurils-border-surveillance-tower-leads-r-d-program-contracts
  Supports: The reported SBIR Phase III order value of at least $367 million, against the $363 million announced figure — the basis for the contract-value conflict flag on this page
• 28 · SecondaryDHS waives statutory requirements to expedite border wall projects in Big Bend Sector — policy docket entry — Immigration Policy Tracking Project, 2026. https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/dhs-waives-statutory-requirements-to-expedite-border-wall-projects-in-big-bend-sector/
  Supports: The June 2026 GAO bid-protest ruling addressing the IIRIRA section 102(c) waivers that suspended competition rules for border task orders
• 29 · SecondaryPresident Trump orders Section 232 investigation on critical minerals and derivative products — White & Case (law firm analysis), 2025-04-15. https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/president-trump-orders-section-232-investigation-critical-minerals-and-derivative
  Supports: The April 15 2025 executive order directing a Section 232 national-security investigation into imported processed critical minerals
• 30 · SecondaryCritical Update! USGS Expands Mineral List — Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (law firm analysis), 2025-11. https://www.bhfs.com/insight/critical-update-usgs-expands-mineral-list/
  Supports: The significance of copper's inclusion and uranium's re-designation on the 2025 list, and the International Energy Agency warning of a potential 25% global primary-copper deficit by 2035

Corrections Log

2026-08-17 — corrections from a primary-source verification pass. Four claims carried in the research this page was built from did not survive checking against the White House and DOE texts, and have been changed:

• Executive Order 14318's Endangered Species Act provision was attributed to section 5. It is section 8, "Biological and Water Permitting Efficiencies." Section 5 covers NEPA.
• Section 5(b) was described as directing agencies to identify categorical exclusions. The text directs the Council on Environmental Quality to coordinate on the establishment of new categorical exclusions. The distinction matters and the page now quotes the order.
• DOE's site-selection announcement was quoted as describing the program as "utilizing Federal lands to lower energy costs and help power the global AI race." That sentence does not appear in the announcement. It has been replaced with Secretary Chris Wright's actual quoted statement.
• The claim that DOE's April 2025 RFI identified 16 candidate sites could not be confirmed against the announcement, which states only that DOE received enormous interest. The figure has been removed and the gap noted.

Also corrected: Executive Order 14261 section 5(b) directs Interior to "acknowledge the end of" the Jewell Moratorium by publishing a notice terminating the supporting environmental impact statement, not to end the moratorium itself; and the Roadless Rule notice of intent cites four executive orders, not three (14192 was missing).

Verified unchanged: Executive Order 14261 section 1's quoted sentence, the section 5 title, and the section 10 title "Powering Artificial Intelligence Data Centers"; the four DOE sites and the July 24, 2025 date; the 60-mineral 2025 critical minerals list and its ten additions.