Former Biden and Trump Officials Urge Federal AI Infrastructure Oversight

Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan and former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Neil Chatterjee urged a federal body to oversee infrastructure supporting AI and digital services as power needs grow.

Their joint commentary was published at 6:30 a.m. ET (10:30 UTC) Oct. 23. The proposed body would coordinate expertise across existing agencies and hold developers, hyperscalers and utilities accountable to communities hosting their projects. Regan served under President Joe Biden, while Chatterjee chaired FERC under President Donald Trump.

The authors said the body would focus on infrastructure supporting AI and digital services, not AI itself. They argued that projects should be assessed for their energy needs, cooling systems and water use, with communities involved early and protected from costs for water and grid upgrades.

“The status quo is failing America,” Regan and Chatterjee wrote. Chatterjee also expressed caution about creating a new bureaucracy. The commentary does not specify the proposed body’s structure or legal powers, offer a legislative path or set a timeline. The proposal is an opinion, not a bill or government action.

Grid reliability concerns provide context. A Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission-commissioned study modeled PJM missing its 0.1 loss-of-load-expectation planning criterion from 2027 through 2030 in both reference and high-load, low-supply scenarios. The modeled figure reaches 0.59 in 2030 in the reference case and 13.20 in the high-load, low-supply case, equivalent to more than 13 days with loss-of-load events per year. These are scenario results, not predictions of customer outages. TokenPost has also covered PJM grid operations.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued a Level 3 computational-load alert on May 4 that lists cryptocurrency mining, AI training and traditional data centers as examples of computational loads. The alert asks registered entities to acknowledge receipt and report their response. It says the listed actions are not a Reliability Standard, create no mandatory obligation and carry no penalty for nonimplementation. TokenPost has covered proposed NERC computational-load standards.

State policymakers have taken separate steps. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed Executive Order 22 on Sept. 18, barring executive-branch agencies under her supervision from entering or requiring nondisclosure agreements for data-center projects. A broader framework proposes local approval for projects using more than 25 megawatts. Spanberger said she would work with the General Assembly on further standards in 2027.