Trump’s Energy Emergency Enables Urgent Infrastructure Moves

Artificial intelligence is pervasive and mission-critical to the US’ defense, intelligence, and economic leadership. But AI doesn’t run on thin air, and the power grid can’t deliver the resources we need for the technology. That’s why President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency at the beginning of his second term.

In May, the president announced four additional executive orders, focused on rebuilding the country’s nuclear energy industry. Both the press and the industry have fixated on these, overlooking the initial emergency declaration without realizing the power it unlocked.

The January order called for agencies to cut through cumbersome bureaucracy, mobilize supply chains, and treat energy infrastructure like the backbone of national defense. Energy has been elevated to the same category as aircraft carriers and missile defense—part of our critical national security infrastructure without which the US can’t compete.

Declarative Power

A national emergency declaration isn’t merely theater or symbolism. The declaration didn’t suspend laws, but it activated the bundle of statutory powers Congress pre-delegated to the president for use in a national emergency. Once activated, those statutes empower agencies to suspend, waive, or resequence normal processes.

Trump’s emergency declaration directed agencies to use any lawful emergency authorities to build, site, and connect energy infrastructure with extreme urgency.

Most emergencies are temporary, triggered by hurricanes, wars, or pandemics. This one is different. The national energy emergency isn’t tied to a specific event and has no natural time limit.

Instead, it’s a standing declaration, recognizing the nation’s energy system is inadequate to meet national security needs. That framing gives agencies continuing authority to act across the entire energy sector, including nuclear, until the president says otherwise.

With the stroke of a pen, Trump unlocked myriad options, including:

• Suspension of normal sequencing: Enabling agencies to remove dependencies and compress steps that usually take years
• Emergency licensing and siting: Directing agencies to use any lawful emergency authorities to accelerate projects, including the Defense Production Act and eminent domain
• Fast-track permitting: Unlocking emergency Army Corps of Engineers approvals under the Clean Water Act and Rivers & Harbors Act, emergency consultations under the Endangered Species Act, and compressed National Environmental Policy Act timelines
• Grid connection orders: Clearing the way for Federal Power Act Section 202(c) directives to compel interconnection of reactors and critical infrastructure
• Broader energy mandate: Defining “energy” to include uranium, hydropower, geothermal, biofuels, and critical minerals (while excluding solar, wind, and hydrogen).

Unlike most emergencies, this doesn’t expire with the storm or crisis of the moment. It sets a battle-ready domain for energy, a directive for federal agencies to treat power infrastructure with the urgency of national defense.

If carried out, it could mean gigawatts of new capacity online within years instead of decades, secure and resilient power for AI data centers and defense installations, and supply chains rebuilt at home.

If ignored, the US risks falling behind competitors on both AI supremacy and national security.

Low-Energy Response

Despite the power unleashed by the January declaration, it has been largely overlooked by the nuclear sector. Why?

• Its text leaned heavily on oil and gas resilience, leading many to skim it and move on.
• By May, four nuclear-specific orders captured the headlines, distracting from the broader declaration that provides the legal cover for nuclear acceleration.
• The nuclear industry is conditioned to think only in terms of historic Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing timelines, missing that the declaration empowered agencies to rewrite the rules and bypass unnecessary bottlenecks entirely.

Buried in the order’s definitions, nuclear is explicitly named as part of the national energy mandate. The door is wide open.

Early Progress

This isn’t to say there hasn’t been progress. The emergency authorities are showing results: The Department of Energy has announce the selection of 11 advanced reactor projects for its new reactor pilot program. The Air Force is moving forward on the long-delayed deployment microreactor at Eielson AFB, and BWXT has started fabrication of the Project Pele reactor core.

The Department of the Interior has authorized accelerated NEPA reviews for energy projects, and the Three Mile Island (now Crane Clean Energy Center) restart is ahead of schedule thanks to an expedited interconnection.

These developments represent real progress and demonstrate the framework works.

But the US can’t mistake individual successes for transformation at scale. While we celebrate projects starting to move faster, our competitors are building entire industries. China is building nuclear plants rapidly, and expects to build 150 by 2035. At this rate, China will surpass the US in nuclear-generated electricity by 2030, according to the American Nuclear Society.

Every month of delay here is ground lost in the race for AI supremacy, economic strength, and national security. Energy abundance requires industrial mobilization, not incremental progress.

With the national energy emergency in place, agencies have the tools to take actions with unprecedented speed that would have been unthinkable a year ago. Imagine:

• Aggregated federal demand: Agencies pooling power contracts to guarantee demand for new capacity and create the certainty developers need.
• Rebuilt supply chain: Extending use of the DPA beyond fuel to prioritize reactor vessels, control systems, and specialty alloys. These capabilities would accelerate nuclear projects and reinforce supply chains for submarines, missile defense, and other critical defense systems, multiplying the return on every dollar invested.
• National security pathfinders: Expedited reactor builds on military bases using national security exemptions and NEPA emergency procedures to power bases, data centers, and defense missions at the edge.
• Emergency grid orders: Federal Power Act Section 202(c) invoked to compel interconnection of new reactors and critical infrastructure loads, bypassing years of interconnection queues.

This is execution at warp speed—linking legal authority, sites, supply chain, and demand into a coherent deployment program.

The authorities are in place. The urgency is real. What matters now is execution, using the emergency to do things faster than anyone thought possible.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Christine Wallace is the chief strategy officer at Everstar.

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