GOLDEN — The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday identified the National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden as one of 16 sites across the country where it plans to enlist private companies to develop massive data centers to power the global artificial intelligence arms race.
The announcement about opening federal land to private data center companies coincided Thursday with Energy Secretary Chris Wright‘s visit to NREL, where he toured research labs, gave a 10-minute talk to employees and discussed plans for the agency, including the push to provide more data storage capacity for advancing technology.
The Energy Department has identified an 11-acre site located west of the Flatirons main campus, near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, that “would be an ideal location for a data center facility,” according to a “Request for Information on Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure on DOE Lands” posted online Thursday.
The list of locations identified as potential hosts for data centers included storied nuclear research facilities in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as well as sites in Idaho, Missouri, Washington and Illinois.
“So we’re saying we have a bunch of land. Tell us where you would like to build on these lands. Let’s make a deal. Build a data center. Build the energy that supplies that grid. Maybe share some expertise and intelligence. Maybe share some of your computing power there with our national labs,” Wright said during a news conference. “I think there’s a lot of room for things to be done here with just a more creative, common-sense framework that we’re trying to bring to this government.”
The NREL campus has enough land, power, water and broadband capability to host a 100-megawatt data center, and construction could begin as early as this year, the request-for-information document said.
“Through this project, NREL could help the U.S. establish global AI dominance and accelerate the transformation of the U.S. data center industry by dramatically reducing construction timelines, enabling the U.S. to rapidly deploy critical AI infrastructure at scale,” the document said. “NREL aims to establish a site where a developer can continue its usual business operations while using the site as a proving ground. The approach would not only allow the developer to focus on its business objectives but also provide national stakeholders with valuable insights into accelerating AI data center construction and power deployment, paving the way for future industry innovations.”
In a 20-minute news conference, Wright said the intention is to invite private companies onto federal land to do business in a public-private partnership. That could mean the federal government leases the land to a company or the data center developer reserves some of its capacity for NREL’s work, because the federal lab also relies on data centers.
“It would be a commercial arrangement using our land to get some value out of it with a private company,” Wright said.
NREL’s Flatirons Campus is a 305-acre site where more than 1,000 people research and invent ways to improve and strengthen the energy grid. It has enough space to add several hundred thousand square feet of additional buildings.
The Trump administration’s move follows an executive order signed in January by outgoing President Joe Biden that sought to remove hurdles for AI data center expansion in the U.S. while also encouraging those data centers, which require large amounts of electricity, to be powered with renewable energy.
While President Donald Trump has since sought to erase most of Biden’s signature AI policies, he made clear after returning to the White House that he had no interest in rescinding Biden’s data center order.
“I’d like to see federal lands opened up for data centers,” Trump said in January. “I think they’re going to be very important.”
While the tech industry has long relied on data centers to run online services, from email and social media to financial transactions, new AI technology behind popular chatbots and generative tools requires even more powerful computation to build and operate.
A report released by the Department of Energy late last year estimated that the electricity needed for data centers in the U.S. tripled over the past decade and is projected to double or triple again by 2028, when it could consume up to 12% of the nation’s electricity.
The United States, under both presidents, has been speeding up efforts to license and build a new generation of nuclear reactors to supply carbon-free electricity.
While Biden’s executive order focused on powering AI infrastructure with clean energy sources such as “geothermal, solar, wind and nuclear,” Thursday’s statement from Trump’s energy department focused only on nuclear. But in a lengthy request for information sought from data center and energy developers, the agency outlines a variety of electricity sources available at each site, from solar arrays to gas turbines.
Colorado already is asking how it will be able to provide enough electricity for the surging demand for data centers as it phases out coal-burning power plants.
Data centers come with controversy, especially in the American West, where water is a valuable but vanishing resource. Data centers use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to cool their facilities. They also require an enormous amount of electricity, which often requires the burning of more fossil fuels, creating more greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate climate change.
A 100-megawatt data center would use enough electricity to power about 20,000 homes.
When asked from where NREL would draw enough water and electricity to support a 100-megawatt data center, Wright said the Energy Department would ask private developers to also build the electrical capacity to run their systems. A map included with the request for information shows nearby Xcel Energy substations as well as additional space for windmills, solar and battery storage.
“You’re going to co-locate power,” Wright said. “You’re going to build a data center, and you’re going to build the power and resources to power it.”
He did not answer where the necessary water would come from.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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