AGA on President Trump’s Innovation and Energy Summit: Natural gas will play critical role in meeting AI demand 

WASHINGTON – The American Gas Association applauded President Trump’s investment in and focus on AI and the energy needed to fuel it during his innovation summit alongside Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. As global powers like China accelerate investments, America’s ability to lead hinges on its capability to fuel a rapid scale up in compute capacity. While many energy sources will play a role, natural gas provides the U.S. a strategic advantage of abundant, reliable, flexible and scalable energy to keep America at the head of the race. 

“America’s AI ambitions depend on our ability to scale our energy infrastructure to meet the growing demand while maintaining reliability, affordability and safety for data centers, for businesses, for manufacturing and for our families. With more than 2.8 million miles of existing pipeline networks, extensive storage systems and abundant natural gas resources, the U.S. natural gas industry is strategically placed to serve as the backbone of a scalable energy system that can reliably meet surging energy demands. These new investments will help us continue the mission we have already begun – delivering reliable, safe and affordable energy today to data centers being built across the country,” said AGA President and CEO Karen Harbert. 

Read Harbert’s op-ed on natural gas’ role as America’s strategic advantage in fueling the AI race in RealClear Energy here. 

According to the Combined Heat and Power Alliance, data centers require reliability, with unplanned downtime due to power outages costing some facilities more than $100,000 per incident between 2017 and 2020. Such losses of power risk corrupting data, halting critical services and even melting down servers. Direct-use natural gas provides the increased reliability these facilities need, with only one in 650 natural gas customers expected to experience a planned or unplanned natural gas outage in any given year. 

More than 21,000 businesses sign up to use natural gas for their manufacturing processes, heating needs, and operational tasks every year. As a result, natural gas has helped commercial and industrial customers save more than half a trillion dollars over the last decade through more affordable energy costs.