Report Shows How Trump's Fossil Fuel Agenda Is 'Making Everyone's Lives More Expensive'

As President Donald Trump's push for artificial intelligence data centers sends demand for natural gas soaring, a report released Tuesday projects that wholesale prices will likely double by the late 2030s if his energy and AI policies continue, driving up household energy bills.

The report from the climate activist group Oil Change International, which argues for an end to reliance on fossil fuels, found that recent surges in wholesale natural gas prices are being driven by Trump's so-called "energy dominance" agenda, which has cranked up natural gas exports.

In his second term, Trump has resumed and accelerated approvals for new natural gas export terminals following a pause on permits under the Biden administration.

Nearly 90 million metric tons of new annual liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity reached a final investment decision as of June, on top of 60 million that had already been under construction, the report found. Combined, the researchers predicted that these projects could double US LNG exports by the early 2030s.

While pursuing energy dominance, Trump is also pursuing "AI dominance," which has included the breakneck development of data centers specifically built to run on fossil fuels, including natural gas.

His administration has fast-tracked federal permits for data center developers, loosened environmental review processes, and directed his agencies to provide incentives to finance the data center boom.

Gas is expected to power much of the near-term energy use from these data centers. The facilities, which operate 24/7, are being constructed faster than transmission lines can keep up, meaning that new gas plants are being proposed as an alternative.

The report finds that the demands of the AI data center boom could increase gas consumption by 17% by the early 2030s. With the cheapest gas being rapidly depleted, more demand will require producers to expand drilling in parts of the country where it's significantly more expensive to operate, like the Haynesville shale region of Louisiana and East Texas.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have gutted federal support for wind power construction and other renewable energy sources, which will further increase dependency on gas.

In addition to pumping more planet-heating greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the report finds that this increased demand will likely cause prices to soar for consumers.

Citing fluctuations in the Henry Hub gas price benchmark, the report projected that between 2026-40, the average wholesale price of gas could be 80% higher than during the past decade of US LNG exports, which it notes was "a decade when energy price volatility was already causing hardship in the US and LNG-importing countries."

"Trump's policies are making everyone's lives more expensive while Big Tech and the fossil fuel industry cash in. Our research shows that the cost-of-living crisis will only escalate in the coming years if Congress and government agencies don’t intervene," said Lorne Stockman, research director at Oil Change International.

"Our leaders must stand up to Trump, phase out LNG exports, stop the reckless data center build-out, and transition the US economy off of fossil fuels to make energy affordable again," he added.

Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, argued in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Tuesday that Oil Change's report, as well as another recent report demonstrating how the fossil fuel industry had hidden the climate damage caused by natural gas from the public for more than half a century, showed that it's long past time to "make gas a dirty word" in a similar fashion to oil.

"Politicians locking us into natural gas are guaranteeing that our kids will spend much of their lives paying far more for energy than they should—and far more than people in the rest of the world will be spending," he wrote.

McKibben noted recent reporting in The New York Times detailing how, in the wake of Trump's war in Iran, which has caused LNG prices to soar across Europe and Asia, nations are beginning to "unshackle" themselves from it as an alternative fuel source. Not so in the US.

"The natural gas industry," he wrote, "is destroying the climate, and destroying people’s lungs, and it’s trying to lock us into this expensive practice for decades to come."