Policymakers and some members of the public are blaming AI and data centers for recent electricity-price increases, but startups say the same technology can cut costs and speed clean-energy deployment. Everstar’s Gordian platform automates nuclear compliance, cutting major deliverable times by 30–40% and producing regulatory reports in days or overnight. Tapestry’s Grid Planning Tool and GridAware reduce interconnection simulation time from weeks to days and cut physical inspection times from 45 to about five minutes per asset. Advocates warn that moratoria or heavy-handed regulation could block these efficiency gains.
AI Could Make Power Cheaper and Cleaner — If Regulators Don’t Block It
These Companies Want To Use AI To Make Cheaper and Cleaner Energy—If the Government Lets Them
Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail to halve electricity prices within 18 months of taking office. With more than half of that period now elapsed, that goal appears increasingly unlikely: in October, the latest month with available data, the annual price of residential electricity rose 5.2 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
While a range of factors — including trade policy and global energy markets — have helped push prices higher, policymakers and parts of the public have singled out AI and data centers as culprits. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a federal moratorium on new data-center construction, and Senator Elizabeth Warren has opened an investigation into whether data centers are driving up electricity costs. Public sentiment reflects those concerns: an October poll from Arbor found nearly two-thirds of respondents believe AI is contributing to higher utility bills, and an Associated Press–NORC survey in September reported that more than 70 percent of Americans worry about AI’s environmental impact.
AI Is Also Delivering Solutions
Blaming AI alone risks overlooking technologies that could help lower costs and speed the transition to cleaner energy. Several startups are using AI to remove bureaucratic delays and get more generation online faster — interventions that can have a direct effect on prices and emissions.
Fixing Nuclear Paperwork With Everstar
Everstar aims to reduce one of nuclear power’s least glamorous but most consequential barriers: paperwork. Reactor license applications frequently exceed 10,000 pages and can undergo up to two years of review. Minor errors in documentation can force costly remedial filings and lengthy re-reviews. Everstar’s CEO Kevin Kong says a single "typo" once forced a client to file a formal License Amendment Request that cost tens of thousands of dollars in consultant and engineering time and delayed the project by months.
Everstar’s AI platform, Gordian, automates compliance checks, technical documentation, and regulatory navigation for the nuclear sector. Since launching earlier this year, Gordian has produced measurable efficiencies. After Last Energy received federal funding in August to test an advanced reactor, it partnered with Everstar to prepare a 50-page environmental assessment — a task that would normally take eight weeks but was completed in one week. The platform also produced a revision of a 200-page ecology report overnight. Kong says clients have cut 30–40% of the time spent on major regulatory deliverables, savings that can determine whether projects remain economically viable.
Speeding Grid Connections With Tapestry
Clearing regulatory approval is only half the battle; developers also must interconnect new generation to the grid. Interconnection processes can take years — sometimes up to five — keeping large amounts of potential capacity offline. Tapestry, a Google X spinout, has built a Grid Planning Tool designed to shrink simulation and approval timelines. Grid operators routinely run long-range simulations before approving interconnection requests; Tapestry’s tool can cut that work from weeks to days and helps identify the most affordable, reliable, low-carbon resources. PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest grid operator, is deploying the tool to accelerate approvals.
Tapestry’s GridAware product automates physical inspections of grid assets such as poles and conductors. Automation improves reliability, prevents outages, and lowers maintenance costs that would otherwise be passed to customers. In New Zealand, GridAware reduced inspection time for the country’s largest utility from about 45 minutes to roughly five minutes per asset.
Policy Trade-Offs
AI is easy to blame when bills rise, and scrutiny of data centers reflects real concerns about local impacts. But broad moratoria or overly restrictive regulation could also block tools that speed approvals, reduce administrative waste, and get low-carbon generation online faster. Policymakers face a trade-off: address legitimate environmental and grid-impact concerns while allowing beneficial applications of AI to scale.
Bottom line: AI and automation are already shortening regulatory and operational timelines for energy projects — but restrictive government action could prevent those savings from reaching consumers and slowing the deployment of cleaner power.
