Trump touts energy, AI investments at Pennsylvania summit
President Donald Trump and key officials in his administration joined technology and energy moguls in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, July 15, to highlight investments in electricity generation and artificial intelligence data centers. Trump and various officials emphasized how coal, nuclear and natural gas will help power the AI revolution and keep the United States ahead of China.
“Remaining the world’s leader in AI will require an enormous increase in the energy production, and that’s taking place,” Trump said in Pittsburgh.
The remarks came at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit organized by the state’s Republican Sen. Dave McCormick. The summit featured executives from Amazon, Google, Anthropic, major investment firms, Gov. Josh Shapiro and key Trump administration officials, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
In a fact sheet, McCormick’s office detailed $90 billion in investments from artificial intelligence and energy companies at the summit. The event marks a victory lap for the Trump administration to revisit the key swing state that helped deliver him the presidency while celebrating investments and jobs that fit his policy of energy dominance.
“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” McCormick said, describing the economic and national security benefits of gaining an AI advantage over China. “This is a competition that we must win.”
What investments were announced in Pittsburgh?
The largest move came from investment management company Blackstone, which announced $25 billion for data centers in northeast Pennsylvania and a partnership with PPL Corporation to build new power plants.
“You can co-locate the data centers directly next to the source of power,” Blackstone President Jonathan Gray said at the summit, calling co-location the “special sauce” and praising the bipartisan effort to bring investments to Pennsylvania.
Numerous other projects are detailed in a fact sheet provided to Straight Arrow News by Sen. McCormick’s office.
CoreWeave committed $6 billion for a 300-megawatt facility in Lancaster, while PA Data Center Partners and Powerhouse Data Centers revealed plans for a $15 billion, three-campus hub near Carlisle. Energy Capital Partners announced a $5 billion data center at the York II Energy Center.
On the power generation side, Homer City Redevelopment announced an agreement to purchase $15 billion of natural gas to support over 4 gigawatts of generation. Frontier Group plans to invest $3.2 billion in transforming the former Bruce Mansfield coal plant into a natural gas facility.
FirstEnergy announced $15 billion to expand power distribution infrastructure across 56 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Constellation Energy announced a $2.4 billion investment to upgrade the Limerick plant, adding 340 megawatts of capacity.
What are Trump administration officials saying?
The Trump administration used the energy summit as an opportunity to double down on support for coal, natural gas and nuclear power.
“You need the natural gas or coal infrastructure in order to provide these massive AI data centers the power that they need,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright used the summit to criticize what he called the previous administration’s “energy crazy train,” arguing that former President Joe Biden joined with the “corporate ESG movement” in policies “discordant with the facts.” Wright also said the U.S. needs to reform the permitting process in order to accelerate the process of building new power plants, data centers and transmission lines.
“We really hurt our country by making it hard to build things here,” Wright said.
What was left out of the energy summit?
In an interview with Straight Arrow News, John Quigley, a former cabinet secretary for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, questioned whether all the projects touted at the energy summit would be built and said the panelists “glossed over” numerous potential downsides.
“(The summit) was essentially a cheerleading session,” said Quigley, who is now a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Quigley described how the reliance on coal and natural gas will accelerate climate change and harm public health through increased pollution.
He also said solar paired with batteries can be built twice as fast as natural gas power plants and cited a recent study showing that renewables can reliably power large data centers. Natural gas is also becoming more expensive, and Quigley added that tariffs will slow down construction of new power plants.
“There are smarter and cheaper ways to allow for the growth of the industry without harming consumers or the environment,” he said.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
