OPINION:
In May, for the first time in American history, solar generated more electricity than coal.
This should be a dream come true for architects of the Green New Deal, Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat.
Instead, they are trying to kill the very artificial intelligence boom that has driven much of that growth with a bill effectively outlawing data center construction.
This exposes an uncomfortable truth: The modern environmental movement wants clean energy only if it gives them power to reshape the economy. When private companies deploy clean energy, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez want to destroy it.
That is the only explanation for their hostility to one of the biggest environmental success stories in recent memory.
In May, solar supplied a record 12.8% of U.S. electricity, up from 5.4% five years ago. Meanwhile, coal fell from 20% to 12.2%.
Some of the biggest shifts happened most recently. In the first quarter of 2026, solar and battery storage accounted for 91% of all new energy generation capacity.
This surge is directly attributable to AI hyperscalers. In 2025, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft together accounted for nearly half of all global corporate clean energy purchase agreements.
It is all a matter of math. Building a data center takes 12 to 24 months. Getting a traditional grid connection can take three times longer.
Solar and battery storage can be deployed fast and at scale, and can be co-located with the data centers themselves. That is why Google is powering its Texas data centers with 875 megawatts of American-made solar, and Microsoft and Meta are making unprecedented investments in renewables.
It is not to win green brownie points, but rather because the economics make sense.
This is how markets work: When the incentives align, private industry moves faster and further than any government program.
That is exactly what makes Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez so angry. To them, private industry is evil, and only the government can “save the planet.” They are furious because they have been proved wrong on both points.
Nothing shows this more than the Inflation Reduction Act. Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez championed it as the most important climate legislation ever passed. It directed nearly $370 billion in taxpayer money toward green energy. Yet the most dramatic acceleration in solar deployment came not from the legislation, but from the AI boom that followed it.
Still, the Inflation Reduction Act worked exactly as intended, as long as you remember that government subsidies are designed to enrich friends, not improve industry. Of the $27 billion in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund created by the legislation, $20 billion was awarded to eight nonprofits with Democratic ties, some of which failed basic compliance.
Power Forward Communities — a coalition led by Rewiring America, which boasts the well-connected former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams as senior counsel — received $2 billion just six months after its establishment. The $27 billion in government-directed climate spending bought a slush fund for Democratic apparatchiks.
This makes the success of AI hyperscalers even more infuriating to the left. It is not just that tech companies are deploying clean energy more effectively than the government; it is that they are doing it outside of the control of elected Democrats and their political cronies.
It is also happening in free, red states where leaders prioritize construction, investment and economic growth. Texas has become the nation’s clean-energy powerhouse.
States governed by the environmental left, meanwhile, have spent years layering on permitting delays, regulatory hurdles and litigation that make it difficult to build a highway overpass, much less the solar farms, manufacturing facilities and data centers powering the AI boom.
All this makes environmentalists unable to stomach contemporary environmental successes. I would be surprised if Gaia worshippers read the Bible often, but they seem to accept one verse: “The wages of sin is death.” For the sin of independence from politicians and environmental activists, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are trying to send AI to an early grave through their Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act.
The bill would immediately halt construction of every new data center in America until Congress passes sweeping AI regulations — a process that, by any honest assessment, will never happen. Mr. Sanders framed the legislation as an attack on “a handful of billionaire Big Tech oligarchs.”
His tired tirade masks the truth: A ban on AI data centers is really a ban on clean energy investments, results be damned.
Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will not stop AI or the environmental victories of private industry, but they have shown their cards. What matters to them and other left-wing environmentalists is not clean energy or the climate. It is control.
• Chris Johnson is the founder and president of the American Energy Leadership Institute.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.