The 'Powering Up America' theme has primarily focused on the surge of AI data centers being plugged into the nation's electric grid to fuel chatbots and the digital economy. But what's often overlooked are other major electrification trends, like on-shoring massive aluminum smelters, that will soon compete with AI data centers for power on strained grids. 

Emirates Global Aluminium plans to break ground next year on a $4 billion smelter in Oklahoma with an annual capacity of 600,000 tons. The project, expected to take four years to complete, would mark the first new aluminum smelter built in the U.S. in 45 years—aligning with President Trump's 'America First' agenda to re-shore critical mineral supply chains.

On-shoring and increasing production capacity for critical mineral supply chains are wonderful, especially aluminum, which is used in everything from consumer products to defense weapons. Yet aluminum smelters are among the most energy-intensive industrial plants in the world. 

According to the U.S. Aluminum Association, producing one metric ton of aluminum takes nearly 15,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. A modern smelter with a capacity of 750,000 tons, or about the size of the new Oklahoma smelter that will be online at the end of the decade, consumes more electricity than Boston. 

Reuters spoke with Matt Aboud, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Century Aluminum, who explained that the problem for new smelters is locking in long-term competitive power contracts. 

Last week, Aboud told attendees at the CRU Aluminium Conference in London that new smelters must secure long-term power contracts to lock in profitability and recoup billions of dollars in construction costs. 

Estimates from the Aluminum Association indicate that a new U.S. smelter brought online this decade would need a 20-year power contract with prices locked in around $40 per MWh for the business to be viable. 

The push to build new aluminum smelters aligns with broader on-shoring trends and the electrification of American industry. But it's now colliding with the explosive growth of AI data centers (see: 'The Next AI Trade'), intensifying the battle for power demand on the nation's strained grid.

"Any smelter project is in a race with Big Tech, which is on the same hunt for energy to power its next-generation artificial intelligence data centres," Reuters noted. 

Aluminum Association said that Microsoft paid around $115 per MWh to lock in a long-term power deal with Constellation Energy to restart Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant. 

The group added that even reactivating shuttered aluminum lines in the four U.S. states hosting smelters would raise power prices to north of $70 per MWh. 

Emirates Global has said the smelter's construction is contingent on securing a favorable long-term power deal with a local utility in the state. 

What's colliding on the grid—whether from new smelters or AI data centers—is the battle for affordable, reliable power. And that's why Trump just did this...