Data centers have been driving up electric bills. Now, some tech companies are working to change that.
At a White House event with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, representatives from several major tech firms signed the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”
“They’re going to be making their own electricity,” Trump said of the tech companies. “They’re not going to be taking from the grid.”
Tech leaders in the room included Google President Ruth Porat, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, and Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX, which is in the midst of a merger with xAI.
According to Trump, the pledge includes five commitments, including:
- Providing or paying for all power generation and electricity needed for their AI projects, including building new power stations;
- Covering the costs of upgrading existing power delivery infrastructure;
- Negotiating separate rate structures with utilities;
- Providing workforce development and jobs in local communities;
- Using their infrastructure to contribute backup power to local grids.
Trump originally previewed the plan during his State of the Union address last week.
“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said at the time.
As tech companies have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, massive data centers have popped up in communities across the country.
While that new construction has brought jobs and other economic opportunities, it’s also led to higher electric bills in many instances.
“They need some PR help, because people think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up,” Trump said at the event.
Some companies have already started building their own energy-generating facilities at data centers, and companies like Microsoft have already announced steps to reduce consumer electric bills.
During the event, leaders from some of the companies detailed ways in which they were seeking to comply with the pledge.
Shotwell said that xAI was committing to developing 1.2 gigawatts of power at the company’s supercomputer site near Memphis, Tennessee, and that the facility would provide enough backup energy to power the city of Memphis. She also said that xAI would build “state-of-the-art water recycling plants.”
“Ultimately, this is not a negotiation where one side wins and one side loses,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at the event. “We have the same interests.”
Jill Tauber, Vice President of Litigation for Climate and Energy, at EarthJustice, asserted that more needed to be done to address “increasing costs and pollution for communities across the country” caused by data centers.
“More than a pledge, we urgently need strong policies and protections to ensure that data centers pay their way, disclose and mitigate their impacts, and are powered by clean energy,” Tauber said.
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