WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is repurposing large chunks of federal land to host enormous data centers and the power plants needed to run them as officials seek to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence and overcome growing local opposition to the facilities.

The Energy Department announced Wednesday that it would redevelop parts of a retired Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility in Paducah, Kentucky, to host a large new AI data center campus. The site is owned by the federal government and has been undergoing environmental cleanup for years.

The $100 billion project would include construction of 2 gigawatts of natural gas power connected to the local grid and 2.6 gigawatts of battery storage capacity. The Energy Department said the project would be privately funded through a partnership with NextEra Energy, one of the nation’s largest power companies; the investment firm Brookfield; and several local utilities. (One gigawatt of gas can power roughly 750,000 homes.)

“The U.S. government is leveraging its assets — like our federal lands — to add power generation, create jobs and ensure the United States wins the AI race,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement.

It’s the third time that the Trump administration has detailed plans to redevelop Cold War-era facilities into data centers. In March, the Energy Department announced that it would repurpose parts of a former nuclear enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio, to host an enormous 10-gigawatt data center, mostly powered by natural gas and financed partly by Japan.

And this month, the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration said it would work with engineering firm Amentum to explore a 1-gigawatt data center, potentially powered by gas and nuclear power, in Savannah River, South Carolina, at a federal complex once devoted to making plutonium for nuclear weapons.

President Donald Trump has been a major supporter of artificial intelligence, which he has called essential to winning the technology race against China. In recent months, he has also tried to confront growing opposition in many communities to the proliferation of giant, energy-hungry data centers, which are driving up electricity demand.

A recent Gallup poll found that nearly half of Americans would “strongly oppose” a new data center in their neighborhood, with many citing concerns about noise, pollution and energy and water usage. In the first quarter of this year, at least 75 data center projects worth $130 billion were delayed or stopped by local opposition, according to Data Center Watch, a project by the AI research firm 10a Labs.

At a White House event last week, Trump aimed to address some of those concerns by announcing that nearly 200 companies — including tech giants, utilities and data center developers — had signed a voluntary pledge to prevent AI data centers from increasing electricity costs for Americans. Experts said that pledge could be hard to honor in practice, since power prices are often determined by local regulators.

Trump highlighted examples where new data center projects had helped reduce local property taxes or electricity rates. And he railed against data center opponents, calling them “radical left communists” who “would not lower your electricity bills.”

His administration has moved to encourage data center development on lands owned by the Energy Department, which could offer a smoother path for approval. The Environmental Protection Agency has also taken several steps to make data centers easier to build, such as loosening limits on smog-causing pollution from the gas turbines that often power the facilities.

Separately, the Interior Department recently approved plans for the first-ever data center on federal land near Boulder City, Nevada, on a site where a large utility-scale solar array had previously been permitted. The agency said it did not to conduct a new, time-consuming environmental review for the project because the data center would have impacts similar to the original solar facility. The approval was originally reported by Heatmap, a climate news site.

Two environmental groups filed a legal challenge against that decision this week.

“By cutting the public out of the process, they’re trying to hand over Nevada’s desert to billion-dollar tech companies without anyone getting a say,” said Olivia Tanager, executive director of the Sierra Club’s chapter in the Toiyabe area of Nevada.

In Kentucky, the new data center will sit on portions of a 3,556-acre Energy Department site that produced low-enriched uranium for both military reactors and nuclear weapons since the 1950s. The enrichment facility, which used a now-obsolete gaseous diffusion method, closed in 2013.

The Energy Department said the project’s new gas-fired power plants would produce more electricity than the data center needed and could provide the surplus to local communities. The project is expected to be completed in 2031.

The Trump administration has sought to use more natural gas to power the AI data center boom while cracking down on wind and solar energy. Natural gas has become the largest source of America’s greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet. A report issued Wednesday by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, found that U.S. emissions declines could potentially slow in the coming years because of faster data center growth and rising gas demand.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Brad Plumer/Kenny Holston
c. 2026 The New York Times Company