Senate permitting bill would accelerate data center and fossil fuel generation deployment across U.S. regions.

Data centers are fueling a massive buildout of gas-fired power plants and associated pipeline expansions across the country. A bipartisan Senate permitting bill, which some Democrats have framed as beneficial to clean energy by accelerating transmission lines and grid connections for renewable power, would in practice more likely support an unprecedented expansion of gas infrastructure tied to the AI data center boom.

The bill would gut bedrock environmental protections—including laws protecting Tribal sovereignty, environmental justice, clean water, and endangered species. But it also ignores the reality of current energy development. The largest expansion of electricity generation the country has possibly ever seen is being planned not with wind and solar, but with gas. Tech giants, awash with capital and intent on building AI infrastructure as quickly and cheaply as possible, have announced plans for power plants that could increase gas consumption in the U.S. power sector by over 40%.

Part of their strategy is to bypass federal permitting by building in gas basins themselves, where they can access gas at lower cost and without needing interstate pipelines that require federal oversight. The bill does nothing to curb this resource grab. Data centers built off the grid also avoid transmission cost reforms intended to ensure they pay the full cost of required transmission upgrades. Yet when interstate gas pipelines are needed to supply the massive gas consumption these facilities require, they will benefit from the bill's provisions that eliminate environmental and community protections.

The planned Desert Southwest Expansion illustrates the stakes. This $5 billion, 520-mile, 48-inch gas pipeline would run from Texas through New Mexico to Arizona, where several large data centers are planned. The project is meeting resistance along its route. The bill would eliminate communities' ability to participate in the permitting process, including the crucial Clean Water Act 401 permit that states use to protect water resources—a vital issue in the arid Southwest—and to challenge the project in court. It would all but ensure that another 2.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas, an amount equal to the entire gas consumption of the Netherlands, will be extracted from the Permian Basin and burned to generate power for AI.

Across the country, pipeline developers are planning expansions to supply gas to new data centers. Some of these projects will cross state lines and require federal certificates and permits, which this bill will only make easier and faster by removing states' ability to protect their water resources, land, and communities.

According to an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, if the current slate of data centers and associated gas power plants proceeds as planned, data center gas demand will rise by over 15 billion cubic feet per day by 2035—more than 40% of the power sector's gas consumption in 2025 and equal to Central and South America's total gas consumption that year.

The bill arrives as renewable energy faces unprecedented attacks. In the first ten months of 2025 alone, the Trump administration took 23 actions targeting wind and solar energy. This is not the time to eliminate the mechanisms that enable community resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure. Renewable energy will not surge ahead with oil executives running the Department of Energy, and the fossil fuel industry's grip on the country's energy system will only become harder to diminish.

Resistance to data centers is crossing political divides and uniting communities against the AI industry's grab for land, water, and energy. But data centers are only part of the story—the gas industry is hiding behind every one of these projects. As the climate crisis deepens, we need more tools to fight it, not fewer.