Fears mounted Tuesday following an emergency order issued by the Trump administration designed “to mitigate blackout risks” ahead of a “period of elevated demand,” an order that impacts more than a dozen states in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
“Nothing to see here, just [an] energy crisis in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia,” wrote conservative journalist and author Jessica Marie Baumgartner, sarcastically, in a social media post on X.
Issued by Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday, the emergency order goes into effect starting Tuesday and authorizes PJM Interconnection — a regional electricity grid operator — to direct backup generation resources “as a last resort,” among other measures designed to avoid energy blackouts. The order will be in effect through Friday.
Baumgartner suspected the emergency order was issued due to the enormous energy requirements of AI data centers, with the Mid-Atlantic being home to well over 1,000 such facilities. The energy demand for some AI data centers is equivalent, according to the International Energy Agency, to the “annual electricity consumption of 100,000 households.”
“The 13 mid-Atlantic states & District of Columbia currently experiencing an energy emergency due to power grid overload have a combined 1,386 global data centers,” Baumgartner wrote. “Remember, China has fewer than 400. Can we realistically talk about the energy demands of big tech tyranny?”
In a statement, Wright took an indirect shot at the Biden administration’s energy policies and renewable energy resources while praising the Trump administration’s own energy policies.
“While past leaders’ energy subtraction policies have made the grid more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts,” Wright said.
