EPA has major role to play in Trump’s ‘AI capital of the world’ plans

Tucked into a fiscal 2027 budget proposal that would halve funding to the Environmental Protection Agency is an eyebrow-raising priority for the department charged with safeguarding the country’s ecological well-being: making America the “AI capital of the world.”

One of five goals listed for the EPA in a budget justification released by the White House last week, the agency would get $202.2 million and 730 full-time positions to “advance AI capabilities,” while seeing its overall funding slashed from $8.8 billion to $4.2 billion. The fiscal 2026 proposal featured a similar AI callout, sans a specific dollar figure.

Supporting infrastructure and encouraging the buildout of AI data centers is at the center of the White House’s new proposal for the agency, moves that it says will “propel EPA and the U.S. to the forefront of global AI leadership.”

“EPA recognizes that the growth of AI technologies and supporting infrastructure must be aligned with environmental stewardship and aims to reduce the impact of rapidly expanding and evolving AI data centers and supporting infrastructure,” the document states. “EPA will prioritize permitting efficiencies and regulatory flexibility to enable data center development that results in more resource-efficient facilities.”

Clearing the way for an accelerated buildout of data centers across the country has been a top goal for EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin since he took the job. In a September 2025 press release following a White House roundtable with AI leaders and data-center operators, Zeldin criticized the Biden administration for “getting in the way” of AI-related projects and promised that under his watch, the EPA would “help speed up progress on these critical developments, as opposed to gumming up the works.”

“We are taking every step possible to make America the artificial intelligence capital of the world,” Zeldin said at the time.

In his Senate confirmation hearing weeks later, Douglas Troutman — now the assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention — attempted to assure lawmakers that chemical reviews wouldn’t be compromised for data centers, pledging to continue a “robust” process.

Pared-down permitting, data center acceleration

Beyond much-promised permitting reform — in part through cutting clean air and water regulations — the White House budget proposal pushes collaboration with industry partners to “encourage the use of clean, American-made energy to power AI data centers.”

Lucero Marquez, associate director for federal climate policy at the Center for American Progress, said in an interview with FedScoop that the reference to clean energy gives her pause due to the fact that President Donald Trump “calls coal ‘big, beautiful coal’” and the administration refers to natural gas as clean energy, too. 

“We’ve seen the EPA do polluter passes, for example,” said Marquez, referring to an agency program that allows companies to request exemptions from Clean Air Act standards. “They have a history of bypassing quite a bit and trying to deregulate. … I don’t think they mean clean energy in the forms of wind and solar, especially when this administration has examples of pausing offshore wind projects and canceling solar permits.”

Kevin Frazier, a senior fellow at the Abundance Institute, said in an interview with FedScoop that he’s “really bullish” on investments into renewables and nuclear to help the country realize its energy needs — “especially when it comes to powering our AI future.” He also pointed to the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, which he said have explored wind, solar and nuclear to “make sure” the U.S. is embracing and growing its AI capabilities in “as efficient a manner as possible.”

“If we can make sure that that development is occurring in partnership with the EPA, and making sure that we’re lowering the regulatory burdens to building out the next wave of sustainable and effective power sources, I think that’s all for the better, and definitely in line with our national vision for AI,” Frazier said.

As part of its regulatory drawdown in service of AI, the EPA last December launched a Clean Air Act Resources for Data Centers webpage that included information for industry on how to “legally avoid requirements” of a Clean Air Act provision known as Limiting the Potential to Emit. An agency spokesperson told FedScoop at the time that the EPA is “committed to following its statutory obligations under the Clean Air Act and helping our state partners do the same.”

In response to a request for comment on the new White House budget proposal and AI objectives, the EPA press office said the agency would continue following those statutory responsibilities and “ensuring a proper balance between the federal government and the states.” It also railed against “radical DEI,” “taxpayer-funded so-called ‘environmental justice’ programs,’” “‘Latinx’ workshops on environmental justice” and “developing school curriculum on woke topics like ‘climate change,’” among other programs.

Beyond those familiar Trump administration punching bags, the EPA said the budget also “prioritizes direct environmental remediation like addressing hazardous contamination, restoring blighted lands, and reducing human health risks to deliver measurable results that improve the lives of American families.”

Marquez, however, cast doubt on the overarching AI goals laid out for the EPA, positing that much of the proposal simply takes the agency too far afield. 

“This is not EPA’s mission. Their mission is to protect environmental and human health,” she said. “It wasn’t to help companies become the [AI] capital of the world.”

Other AI priorities

Though the White House budget justification for the EPA leads with data centers, a good chunk of the $202.2 million request would go toward internal AI uses. Per the proposal, the funding infusion would support “strategic investments” that integrate AI across agency systems, programs and other activities.

Those investments seek to enhance data interoperability and improve environmental assessment accuracy, according to the budget document. They would also consolidate decentralized systems with the goal of cutting IT expenditures and improving data quality.

The EPA’s Information Security Program would get a $19.1 million boost under the AI-category request, a $9.6 million year-over-year jump to the agency unit that supports responsible implementation of AI initiatives and cybersecurity upgrades.

“This funding will allow for the necessary controls to use leading-edge technologies within the environment and prevent malicious actors from leveraging these technologies to disrupt business operations,” the proposal states. 

The EPA’s updated AI inventory includes 29 use cases, though a half-dozen have been retired and nine are still in the pre-deployment stage. Among those that have been deployed by the agency are machine-learning tools to analyze the drivers of water quality, a predictive system to better classify streamflows as part of ecological assessments, and risk scoring of Large Quantity Generators to support inspections. 

Going forward, the EPA envisions AI being leveraged in brownfields and Superfund sites for “greater efficiency in environmental reviews for qualified reuse,” the White House document said, a use that theoretically would result “in sites more quickly being returned to productive use.” Deploying AI in that way “will lead to both environmental and economic benefits for the communities the Agency serves,” the justification notes.

Ultimately, the White House is bullish on AI’s potential to “thrive and provide essential data to support mission needs” at the EPA while upgrading the “precision and speed of environmental assessments” — ostensibly making up for the drastic cuts proposed elsewhere in the agency.

Overall, Frazier said the proposed EPA budget and its embrace of AI reflect “the very real role” the agency has to play in “making sure that the U.S. can build the latest and greatest models.”

“What we’re seeing in that budget is a recognition that AI is going to play a role, not only in helping identify new and novel approaches for powering AI itself, but also identifying ways to do that in a more efficient and straightforward fashion,” he said. “And so if that ends up changing some of the ways that we’ve seen the EPA operate, that would be unsurprising.”