Prime Highlights

• Summit hosted by Trump generates more than $90 billion of AI and fossil fuel investment.
• Gas and coal-burning power plants powering AI data centers in co-location.

Key Fact

• Forecasts of AI energy demand are contentious, with others warning that they are too optimistic.
• Pennsylvania shale gas resources will be the foundation of U.S. AI infrastructure development.

Key Background

At a high-level summit in Pittsburgh, former President Donald Trump convened business leaders, energy leaders, and stakeholders in AI to ignite a new era of investment in artificial intelligence and conventional energy infrastructure. The summit, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University and chaired by Senator Dave McCormick, revealed over $90 billion in private sector pledges to construct AI data centers and fossil fuel plants—natural gas and coal, to be specific.

The meeting was all about the concept of “co-location,” a project co-locating data centers and power generation in close geographical space for maximum power efficiency and least dependence on the grid. Blackstone, CoreWeave, and Google made billions in the project where Pennsylvania’s abundant Marcellus and Utica shale reserves are the reservoir of future base fuel supply. The summit highlighted natural gas as the most pragmatic near-term choice for the future energy needs of AI by far outpacing renewable energy proponents in popular opinion.

Regardless of the exaggerated vision, pundits remain skeptical. Estimates of future AI electricity use were touted by commentators as potentially being overoptimistic, drawing comparison with previous overestimations to the arrival of the internet which allowed unjustified fossil fuel exploration. Analysis found that solar and wind power, and particularly with battery storage, continue to be less costly than new gas installations constructed—unless state-subsidized fossil fuels.

The summit was politicized as well. Trump employed the stage to brag about economic leadership, as possible 2028 presidential candidate Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro met across the aisle. Providing reforms for infrastructure were another dominant theme, with business leaders calling for faster federal approvals in order to keep pace with AI and energy development timelines. The spectacle was a deliberate mix of AI technology with the conventional sources of power, predicting a technologically fossil-fueled America to emerge—at least in the imagination of their creators.