Trump Expands Ratepayer Protection Pledge as AI Data Centers Drive Electricity Costs Higher

Utility companies are promising to spare us from AI's energy bill

In the face of backlash to concerns the AI boom will increase consumer electricity bills, the largest utility companies and data center developers in the US are now promising to do something about it. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly 200 organizations have signed President Donald Trump's "rate payer protection pledge" that's meant to safeguard consumers from footing the AI bill. Trump is expected to announce the new signatories on Thursday, which includes NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Equinix, and Digital Realty, according to a list obtained by The WSJ. An unnamed White House official told the publication that those who have committed to the pledge now account for about 80 percent of all power delivered to homes and businesses across the US. The rate protection pledge was introduced in March, and includes several vague commitments for AI providers to front the costs of new infrastructure required to train and run generative AI models. It was signed by leaders from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI, Amazon, and xAI upon announcement, with Trump saying during the event that tech companies "need some PR help" to quell backlash around data center projects and rising electricity rates. Now, energy companies have joined the effort to try and mitigate some of the ire, but the pledge has done little to soothe public and bipartisan concerns so far. Some data center projects have been downsized or blocked in response to the backlash, and the largest US electrical grid operator PJM is now expected to add $6.3 billion in additional costs for consumers across 13 states due to data center demand. Enforcing the pledge will be a challenge as energy prices are typically set by state regulators and electricity traders, not the federal government. The pledge is also voluntary and carries no penalty for non-compliance, making this little more than a pinky promise for consumers to have faith in.

President Trump expands AI data center 'ratepayer protection pledge' to include state governors and utility companies -- White House claims this will make electricity more affordable

Tech companies are reportedly resisting efforts to turn the promise into law in California, though. 23 state governors and 187 utility companies and data center developers have signed President Donald Trump's "ratepayer protection pledge," which is Washington's way of trying to control spiraling electricity costs driven by the massive power demand of AI data centers. According to The Associated Press, some of the signers include utility companies NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Southern Co., and Pacific Gas & Electric, and data center developers Equinix, Digital Realty, and Prologis. Trump first revealed this promise in late February during the State of the Union address and then hosted some of the biggest AI hyperscalers -- including Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI -- in the White House a week later to force them to spend on their own power requirements. This was supposed to help bring electricity costs down, with Energy Secretary Christ Wright saying back in March that it "will deliver more affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the American people." The president repeated this promise during the event, saying, "Electricity bills for American families will actually come down. They're going to have a lot of electricity left over, and they'll put that into the grid." Unfortunately, the March promise had little to no effect on electricity rates across the country at the moment. Despite the White House's promises that the pledge would lower utility bills, PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest power grid operator, slapped Maryland with a $2-billion bill for upgrading its grid to accommodate out-of-state AI data centers. Monitoring Analytics, an independent watchdog monitoring PJM Interconnection, also said that the 75.5% increase in power costs in the U.S.'s largest power region has been directly caused by data centers. It's unclear if these cost increases are the long-term effects of the AI build out even before the White House pledge, but it seems the administration is doubling down on it by asking states, utility companies, and data center developers to commit to it, too. Trump has been pushing for the acceleration of the adoption of AI tools and the infrastructure needed to support them, believing that it needs to win in the "AI race" to maintain its global supremacy, especially as China is neck-and-neck with the U.S. when it comes to the technology. However, the American public is pushing back against these developments, especially as issues impacting electricity costs, water quality, noise pollution, and more that were caused by data centers are widely reported. It has gotten to the point that several jurisdictions have applied temporary bans on data center developments, including Seattle (which plays host to Amazon and Microsoft) and the state of New York. These developments threaten to derail the current administration's AI policy, which has ordered grid operators to expedite AI data center applications. The ratepayer protection pledge will supposedly allow the U.S. to have its data centers without punishing the common American with excessive electricity cost increases, but its critics say that it's just a promise and cannot be legally enforced. The Associated Press says that California is trying to pass legislation that will codify these promises into law. Oregon is the only state at the moment to have passed a law that forces developments that use more than 20 megawatts of power to pay their fair share. The POWER Act, which was passed in April 2025 -- almost a full year before Trump announced the ratepayer protection pledge -- forces the power bills of large electricity consumers to "reflect the true costs of their electric service." Because of this, Portland General Electric (PGE), the state's largest power supplier, has increased the data center power bills by 30% while also cutting residential costs by 1.3%. It's unclear if any of the states that have signed the pledge have similar legislation underway, or what steps the data center developers will take to follow through on their promises. Still, the U.S. president is adamant that states should support data center development within their borders. "You have to convince your community. You can't fight it. You have to go with it," Trump said. "If you don't take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves." Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Trump pledge on data center power supplies draws skepticism

WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump announced a non-binding pledge by U.S. power producers and data centers on Thursday to fund or build energy infrastructure that would meet massive AI-related power needs while shielding consumers from high electricity costs. Consumer advocacy groups and other administration critics, however, dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers as Trump tries to balance his support for power-guzzling data centers against public anger over rising utility bills. Trump has been pushing an aggressive build-out of AI-related infrastructure, as part of an economic agenda that includes winning the AI race against China. But data centers' demands on overloaded transmission lines, compounded by the power sector's labor shortages and plant retirements, have made rising energy costs a volatile issue for ⁠voters going into November's midterm elections. "Under this groundbreaking plan, America's largest tech companies have formally committed to fund or build all energy infrastructure required to meet the demand they are placing on the grid," Trump said at an Environmental Protection Agency event attended by Republican governors, power sector CEOs and data center developers. "So they're going to be funding all of those electric needs, and we're giving them the right to build their own power plants." Average annual residential electricity prices are predicted to rise by 5.1% in 2026 and 2.4% in 2027, before inflation, the Energy Information Administration said. Community meetings in many states have lasted into the wee hours as residents oppose development of data centers they view as noisy, bad for the environment and a factor in rising electric bills. Trump's take was more positive. "You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly those are the smart communities," he said. Critics, meanwhile, have questioned whether the voluntary pledge will prevent higher bills as AI power demand accelerates. Jesse Lee, senior adviser at advocacy group ⁠Climate Power, criticized the pledge's lack of enforcement triggers, calling it a "pinky promise." "Instead of allowing affordable, scalable clean energy onto the grid, Trump has actively pressured tech companies to power their data centers with fossil fuels that will increase utility costs and expose Americans to toxic pollutants," Lee said. Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, defended the industry, which he said powers essential services such as telehealth appointments, digital classrooms, secure banking systems and air traffic control networks. Republican governors from Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Nebraska attended Thursday's event, along with chief executives Drew Marsh ⁠of Entergy Corp (ETR.N), opens new tab and Chris Womack of Southern Co (SO.N), opens new tab. Marsh and Womack are among a group of CEOs at the 15 largest U.S. power companies sitting on nearly $1 billion in stock-based pay, according to a Reuters analysis. That value is poised to keep rising as firms invest to fix the U.S. electrical grid. At the center of the political battle over data centers is PJM ⁠Interconnection, the largest U.S. grid operator. "PJM is the face of a national problem," according to analysts at Siebert Williams Shank, who cited its struggle to withstand unprecedented power consumption, along with power plant retirements, transmission line congestion and construction bottlenecks. "AI data centers did not create every challenge facing electric systems, but they have amplified nearly all of them." PJM ⁠is battling escalating costs on several fronts as it manages the flow of electricity for 67 million people from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. In PJM's latest capacity-market auction, which secures power from generating sources for peak demand times, data centers accounted for $6.3 billion of capacity-market charges, or nearly 40% of the total. Those charges ultimately show up in customers' monthly bills. Reporting By Tim McLaughlin in Boston, Jacob Bogage in Washington and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Timothy Gardner and Edmund Klamann Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

As A.I. Backlash Grows, Trump Says Firms Should Pay More for Electricity

More than 200 companies and politicians, including some of the country's largest utilities, have signed a voluntary pledge to prevent A.I. data centers from driving up electricity costs for millions of Americans, President Trump said on Thursday. The pledge is largely symbolic, and experts have said it could be difficult to enforce because power prices are often determined by state regulators. But it underscored the extent to which rising energy bills have become a top concern for voters -- and a potential liability for Republicans -- ahead of the midterm elections. Mr. Trump first announced the initiative, which he called a "ratepayer protection pledge," during his State of the Union speech in February. The following month, the White House secured promises from tech companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft to pay a greater share of the enormous costs associated with delivering electricity to new data centers. During an event at the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, Mr. Trump said the pledge had attracted new signatories including utilities like NextEra Energy, Southern Company and Duke Energy that supply electricity to millions of households. "We know that the data centers and A.I. are dramatically increasing the demand for electricity," Mr. Trump said. "It's only fair that the cost of building the new infrastructure to meet this demand should be borne by the corporations themselves, not by the American consumers and the American patriots." In addition to the utilities, the new signatories include major data center developers like Equinix and Digital Realty. Twenty-three Republican governors also signed on. The White House did not reach out to Democratic governors about joining the pledge or attending Thursday's event, according to three people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. No Democratic governors have signed the Trump administration pledge. Many Democratic governors have announced their own plans to prevent data centers from increasing energy costs in their states. Mr. Trump has been a major booster of artificial intelligence, which he has said is essential to winning the technology race against China. The E.P.A. has taken several steps to make it easier to build data centers, such as loosening limits on smog-causing pollution from the gas turbines that often power the facilities. Many communities around the country have begun strongly opposing the behemoth projects. A recent Gallup poll found that Democrats and Republicans alike would oppose the construction of a data center in their neighborhood, with many citing concerns about the potential noise, pollution and energy and water usage. "They need some P.R. help," Mr. Trump said of tech companies in March, when he initially announced his ratepayer-protection pledge. Trump Administration: Live Updates Updated July 23, 2026, 3:43 p.m. ET7 minutes ago New York last week became the first state to enact a moratorium on new data centers. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an executive order pausing the construction of the largest data centers for one year while the state assesses their energy use and effects on the environment. More than a dozen other states have considered similar action, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. On Thursday, Mr. Trump made the case that communities would benefit from accepting data centers. He noted that teachers in Richland Parish, La., recently received $50,000 bonuses as a result of an increase in sales tax revenue generated by a Meta data center under construction. Other utilities have claimed that lucrative data center deals have allowed them to lower rates for other customers. "You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly, those are the smart communities because it means tremendous numbers of jobs and very little actual disruption," Mr. Trump said. He said that people opposed to data centers were "radical left communists" who "would not lower your electricity bills. But they would actually increase them very substantially because you wouldn't have this money pouring in." While Mr. Trump campaigned on a pledge to cut power prices in half, average U.S. residential electricity rates have risen nearly 18 percent since he returned to office, according to the most recent available data from the federal government. While data centers aren't primarily responsible for the increase in electricity prices, they do have the potential to push up costs in some places, experts said. Many of the giant facilities being built to train cutting-edge A.I. models need as much electricity as a small city. That means they can require billions of dollars' worth of new power plants, transmission lines and other upgrades to connect to the local grid. If the electric bills paid by data centers don't cover all those costs, other customers have to make up the shortfall. Demand from data centers can also outstrip supply, driving up prices. At PJM Interconnection, which as the nation's largest grid serves 65 million people in the Mid-Atlantic, wholesale electric capacity prices have skyrocketed in recent years, leading to rising bills in places like Maryland and Pennsylvania. Some analyses have blamed those increases on a surge of new data centers arriving just as older power plants are retiring. Across the country, elected leaders have tried to get the companies behind data centers to pay more for electricity. But doing so can often be difficult in practice. Under Mr. Trump's ratepayer protection pledge, tech companies have said they would willingly pay higher rates to cover any power plants or grid upgrades needed for their data centers. Yet many of those details are determined by complex rules set by state regulators, local utilities and regional grid operators. And it's hard to track how well the pledges have translated into changes on the ground. "The pledges are clearly symbolic and a lot of theater," said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. "What matters is what actually happens at the utility level." The White House has urged PJM to devise a plan that would allow data centers to pay for new power plants in the region. But PJM is still haggling with companies and state regulators and the plan remains in limbo. Increasingly, many tech companies are also building and paying for their own off-grid power plants, largely fueled by natural gas, as Meta is doing with a data center in El Paso, Texas. Mr. Trump has encouraged those efforts, which have less of an effect on the grid, although they can add to air pollution. In a recent interview with CBS News, Gov. Hochul questioned whether the companies that signed Mr. Trump's pledge would follow through on their promises. "Asking these companies to keep their word on how much they're going to consume -- I'm more realistic than that perhaps," she said.

Trump's data centre power pledge draws scepticism from energy experts

The expanded Ratepayer Protection Pledge now covers most of the US grid. It carries no penalties and no way to make anyone comply. On July 23, President Donald Trump stood in the White House and promised that electricity bills for American families would "actually come down," even as power-hungry AI data centres spread across the grid. T he vehicle was an expanded version of the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary scheme first unveiled in March. What energy analysts noticed was mostly what it left out. The pledge asks the companies building data centres, among them Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, to fund or build the power infrastructure their facilities demand rather than passing the cost to existing ratepayers. The administration had already signalled it would widen the scheme to the utilities, and the new version reaches, by the White House's own count, nearly 200 additional signatories, including NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, rural cooperatives, and a group of Republican governors. Trump claimed the commitment now covers roughly 80% of the power delivered to US homes and businesses, and that companies given the right to build their own plants could sell surplus energy back to the grid, nudging rates down. He offered no capacity targets, no timelines, and no measurable milestones. That silence matters, because the strain on household bills is already well documented. AI data centres have pushed up power bills across parts of the industrial Midwest, and in the PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator, data centres accounted for $6.3bn of the $16.4bn in charges from the most recent capacity auction, roughly 38%, according to the grid's independent market monitor. "PJM is continuing to act like it's business as usual," Joseph Bowring, the monitor's president, said of the shift. "You have to open your eyes and recognise that it is really a paradigm shift, and failing to do that imposes costs on other customers." The pledge is not binding, and that is the central objection. It carries no penalties and no compliance oversight, and a quirk of federal rules may stop signatories honouring it even where they want to. Current interconnection tariffs socialise grid-upgrade costs across all customers, and as FirstEnergy argued in a 2026 filing to regulators, existing rules can prevent a company from covering its own infrastructure costs even if it chooses to. Consumer advocates were blunt. Jesse Lee of the campaign group Climate Power called the pledge a "pinky promise," and a Consumer Reports survey found that 75% of American adults lacked confidence that large developers would truly cover all their costs. Researchers at the Brookings Institution added that federal statutes "cannot readily override" the state public utility commissions that actually set residential rates. There is a further wrinkle. Some of the same companies signing the pledge have fought state-level rules that would force them to deliver on it, consumer groups say, which makes the voluntary version look less like generosity than like the softer of two options. The White House has cast the plan as proof that the AI build-out can proceed without punishing households. The forecasts are not reassuring either. The consultancy ICF has estimated that data centres could lift US electricity demand by 25% by 2030 and add as much as 40% to monthly bills over five years, and utilities are planning some $1.4 trillion in capital spending by the end of the decade to keep up. Louisiana, for its part, projects $2.6bn in ratepayer savings over 15 years from its deal with Meta, a reminder that the local arithmetic can cut both ways. Congress has taken its own run at the problem, with the House advancing a bill on data centre energy costs, though nothing on the books yet compels the hyperscalers to pay. The one body that could give the pledge teeth is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has already begun to fast-track grid connections for large loads. In June, it ordered six regional grid operators to justify or reform how they charge those users, with a deadline in August. Until those rules change, the pledge remains what its critics say it is: a promise made in a room, with no one obliged to keep it.

Trump set to expand power cost pledge on data centers

July 22 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is set to unveil on Thursday a pledge backed by governors, lawmakers, utilities and data center developers aimed at shielding households from electricity costs tied to the AI boom, as he pushes to make the United States the global leader in artificial intelligence. It extends Trump's original Ratepayer Protection Pledge from March to ensure the companies building and using data centers ⁠pay above and beyond normal rates so that costs are not passed on to average households. Trump will be joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and several of the state governors who signed the original pledge, according to a White House official. Protecting electricity customers from data center demands is no easy task, however, as the country's patchwork system of regional electric grids is already under severe strain. Massive congestion on transmission lines, for example, surged 81% to $3.2 billion in 2025 in the PJM Interconnection, the largest regional electric grid that serves 67 million people. Last week, the latest annual power auction ⁠at PJM pushed up prices to record levels. On Thursday, energy regulator FERC will meet to discuss the precarious future of PJM in light of its ongoing supply and demand imbalance. "Today's electricity system forces almost everyone, from homeowners to hyperscale data centers, to depend on the same network," Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies ⁠at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, recently wrote. "That one-size-fits-all model increasingly does not serve either group well. Large customers may wait a decade or longer for service, while ordinary ratepayers worry that expanding the grid for ⁠massive new industrial loads will ultimately increase their own bills." Data center advocates say the industry's rapid expansion is driving long-overdue investments in America's electric grid and cite other factors driving up costs, including ⁠power-plant retirements and transmission constraints. The White House says the pledge, which is nonbinding, will now cover 80% of all the power delivered to U.S. homes and businesses. Reporting By Tim McLaughlin in Boston; Laila Kearney in New York and Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Timothy Gardner and Nia Williams Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Off-grid data centers aren't the panacea that some AI firms hoped

Why it matters: If giant projects stumble, trillions of dollars in AI investment and the industry's plans to rapidly expand data centers could be at risk. The big picture: In an effort to speed AI development, some companies are building data centers powered mainly by onsite generation rather than waiting years to connect to the electric grid. * There are 59 data centers with a combined capacity of about 90 gigawatts that plan to build their own power "behind-the-meter" using sources like gas turbines, generators and fuel cells, according to a report from research firm Cleanview. * A smaller subset is trying to run large campuses mostly on behind-the-meter power as a way to move more quickly than the local utility and the grid can. * Infrastructure risk analysis firm Occam Edge tracks 12 projects where onsite power is the primary serving supply, representing about 10.6 GW of announced capacity. State of play: Recent hiccups are highlighting the challenges that come with bypassing the grid. * Earlier this month, New Mexico's top land official rejected a gas pipeline meant to supply onsite fuel cells for Oracle's 2.5 GW "Project Jupiter" data center campus, part of Oracle and OpenAI's Stargate initiative. * The regulatory set back could contribute to a years-long delay. * A week later, a much smaller off-grid data center in Virginia, saw its onsite gas turbines knocked offline for 24 hours, forcing it to run on dirty backup diesel generators during already bad air quality from the Canadian wildfires. Local residents complained of burning lungs and 60-decibel level noise, and a supervisor called for new laws to regulate generators. Catch up quick: Chief developers of this off-grid approach include OpenAI, and its partners Oracle and Crusoe, which have worked on OpenAI's Stargate campuses. * A Stargate project in Abilene, developed by Crusoe, reportedly went offline for days at a time due to issues with power and cooling equipment. * Another off-grid player is Elon Musk, who rattled the energy world when he built xAI's Colossus 1 using mobile gas turbines in just a few months. While it was initially off-grid, it's now grid-connected and selling compute to Anthropic. * Despite a lawsuit from the NAACP over Colossus 1, Musk is now using gas turbines to power Colossus 2 (with compute sold to Google), and earlier this month bought a mobile gas turbine company. What they're saying: Critics argue off-grid data centers could prove slower and more costly to deploy, less reliable to run, and more expensive than expanding the electric grid. * "This is a flimsy way to deploy AI," says energy investor Jigar Shah, who predicts much of the bullish off-grid deployment figures won't materialize. * Power engineers are worried that off-grid data centers won't meet reliability targets, says Occam Edge founder and CEO Christian Okoye, who compares "Dark Gigawatts" to the "Dark Fiber" of the dotcom bust. * "It's a time of desperation," says Josh Wong, founder and CEO of ThinkLabs AI, which helps utilities find more capacity on their current grids. "The [off-grid] business model is bolt-on." Follow the money: Investors are lacking insight into the reliability of off-grid data centers, says Okoye. * Investors faced with the uncertainties of off-grid data centers could decide not to underwrite them. * S&P Global Ratings recently downgraded Oracle's long-term issuer credit rating to BBB- from BBB, just one step above junk status, due to its massive data center spending, which includes investment in onsite power infrastructure. * Trillions of dollars are riding on whether large off-grid data centers can work as advertised, justify their added cost and win local support. What's next: More high-profile problems building and running off-grid data centers could lead to a reckoning that the AI boom will be a lot more grid-powered than many AI companies hoped.

200 US utility firms join Trump electricity pledge as data center electricity use expected to quadruple by 2035 -- but does the President's pledge have the teeth to regulate electricity pricing?

Companies pledge not to pass on cost of data center electricity usage while passing on the cost of data center electricity usage * US data center electricity usage is expected to quadruple by 2035 * There has been a surge in signups for Trump's Ratepayer Protection Act * Residential electricity rates have risen by 25% over the past four years US data centers are expected to use four times more electricity by 2035 than they currently use, bringing the total consumption to one fifth of the country's electricity production. In an attempt to quell the national dissatisfaction with AI and the data centers needed to support capacity, over 200 entities have joined President Trump's pledge to not pass on rising electricity costs to consumers. But Trump's pledge is entirely voluntary, and has little control over electricity pricing which is decided by state regulators and electricity buyers and sellers - and in some states with huge data center buildouts electricity pricing has already risen significantly. Electricity consumption set to quadruple A new report by BloombergNEF seen by TechCrunch predicts that global AI compute will rise to as much as 200 gigawatts over the next decade, with most of it concentrated in the US. Additionally, many already strained power grids across the US will struggle to handle new data center connections without huge infrastructure buildouts. Current infrastructure buildouts have seen the US government seize private property from landowners using eminent domain. The PJM Interconnection across Virginia and Illinois is expected to see 34% of its electricity go to data centers over the next decade. In the same timespan, Texas' ERCOT will have to divert 22% of its electricity to data centers. There is one caveat, however. The BloombergNEF report is likely a conservative estimate. Compared to a report released in December, BloombergNEF's new electricity usage estimates are 83% higher than the previous prediction. The strain caused by the buildout of AI data centers is even causing a rift between utility companies and grid operators. American Electric Power threatened to pull out of the PJM interconnection due to the supply-demand imbalance causing prices to rise by as much as 76% in the last year. Trump pledges to stop electricity price rises caused by big tech According to exclusive WSJ reporting, there has been a huge surge in signups to Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which is a voluntary commitment to not pass on the rise in electricity prices caused by AI data center buildouts to consumers. The pledge encourages private companies to "build, bring, or buy" new electricity sources. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI were among the first to sign up back in March 2026, but since then the nation's biggest utilities and data centers developers have also joined the pledge, including NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Equinix and Digital Realty. New commitments for the Ratepayer Protection Pledge are expected to be announced by Trump at an event by the Environmental Protection Agency, but Trump's track record on environmental protection has been less than stellar. New fossil fuel energy production facilities can now expedite their application process, and Trump's "drill, baby, drill" policy has significantly reduced funding and support for clean and renewable energy sources, which are far cheaper than their fossil fuel counterparts. Despite the pledge not to pass on the rising costs of electricity to consumers, there have already been significant consumer electricity price increases across the US. According to ElectricChoice statistics, average US residential electricity rates are up 7.4% year-over-year, with Ohio alone seeing a 19.4% increase in the same period. 13 US states have seen double digit increases in year-over-year electricity pricing, while only 5 states have seen pricing stay the same or decrease. In the past four years, residential electricity rates have risen by 25%, with grid modernization investments and record data center construction cited as two of the main reasons for the rapid growth in pricing. According to Cleanview, the US currently has 1,214 operating data centers with a further 1,714 planned or in construction. A bill that seeks to actually hold tech companies responsible for their contributions to the increase in consumer electricity prices has been introduced to congress, called the Ratepayer Protection Act. The bipatisan bill looks to introduce a "large load standard" requiring tech companies to bear the cost of the energy they use, alongside upgrades to the local grids they connect to. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

The AI boom's hidden electricity bill -- and why you're paying it | Fortune

For the third auction in a row, the price of keeping the lights on across a 13-state swath of the country slammed straight into the ceiling. On July 14, PJM Interconnection -- the largest grid operator in the U.S., serving roughly 67 million people from Illinois to Virginia and Washington, D.C. -- announced its capacity auction for 2028-29 cleared at $325 per megawatt-day, the maximum allowed under its price cap, even as supply fell about 6.8 gigawatts short of what the grid needs to stay reliable. It's the clearest sign yet that America's AI buildout has a bill attached, and increasingly, ordinary ratepayers are the ones paying it. Moody's Ratings, in a July 22 sector report, didn't mince words about why: "the current system lacks adequate mechanisms to ensure that the cost of building new supply is borne by the new entrants and instead socializes new build costs across all customers." In plainer terms, when a data center activates hundreds of megawatts of new AI computing load, the cost of building power plants to serve it doesn't land on a hyperscaler's bill -- it gets spread across every household and small business on the grid. What makes the finding notable is the source. Moody's exists to price risk dispassionately for bond investors, not to editorialize about fairness. Yet the agency explicitly flagged that "other power markets in the U.S. require new large-load customers to secure power under direct supply contracts that recoup cost of new generation and associated infrastructure over time," implying PJM's rules are, by comparison, out of step. The numbers behind the squeeze Total new generation capacity that cleared this auction fell to just 525 megawatts, roughly half of what cleared six months earlier, according to Syso Technologies' auction analysis, despite PJM seeing a peak electricity demand record high of 168.2 gigawatts on July 2, nearly 3 GW above a record set almost two decades earlier. Data centers are the primary driver of that demand growth, according to PJM's own market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, which found that of the $16.4 billion in total capacity charges from this auction, about $6.3 billion is directly attributable to data center demand -- and $29.4 billion over the last four auctions combined, per The Hill. Without the price cap in place, PJM's simulation shows the region's unconstrained capacity price would have hit $554.72/MW-day -- and $776.69/MW-day in the Chicago-area zone served by Exelon's ComEd utility -- underscoring that scarcity stress extends well beyond any single state. This is playing out well beyond spreadsheets. Consumer Reports has documented individual cases, including an Ohio resident whose bill hit $281 this past January. Why utilities say one thing and bills say another But utilities are promising investors and regulators that ratepayers won't be stuck with AI's tab, even as watchdogs point to cases shifting exactly those costs onto residential bills. Harvard Law's Electricity Law Initiative has identified two distinct cost channels: utilities spreading new infrastructure costs across all ratepayers, and market-based capacity prices rising simply because supply hasn't kept pace with data center-driven demand. Both mechanisms are visible in PJM's July auction. Separately, Reuters reported that households and businesses in PJM territory could face rate hikes of up to 60% over the next five years as Big Tech's data center buildout accelerates, citing projections by the global consulting and technology services firm ICF. The backlash has reached multiple state legislatures, where lawmakers are moving against what consumer advocates call outsized utility profits layered on top of rising bills. Meanwhile, PJM is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to hold an emergency "backstop" capacity auction in September -- an unusual step that amounts to an acknowledgment that the normal market isn't producing enough new power fast enough. Some analysts have proposed requiring hyperscaler data center operators to sign long-term contracts for new generation, an idea explored in Latitude Media's coverage of a Mid-Atlantic governors' proposal, though critics warn it may not close the gap fast enough and risks distorting the broader market. But adoption remains uneven, and PJM still lacks the direct-contract requirement that other markets already use. For now, Moody's technical language and the swelling monthly bills of PJM's tens of millions of residential customers are describing the same phenomenon from opposite ends of the transaction: someone is paying for the AI revolution's power hunger, and increasingly, it isn't the companies building it. For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

The Fraught Politics of Powering AI

Sitting at the Environmental Protection Agency with a mix of CEOs and cabinet officials, President Trump announced this week that a group of more than 200 stakeholders including governors, utility companies, and data center developers had signed up for his Ratepayer Protection Pledge, vowing to protect consumers from the rising costs of electricity. The announcement is an attempt to hold off the growing anxiety over electricity bills, which are on the rise in part because of the AI-driven infrastructure buildout. The anxiety has quickly become a liability for industry and politicians alike. Recommended Stories But there's also little doubt that the pledge, which is voluntary with no enforcement mechanism, is just tinkering around the edges of the issue. And the slower policymakers are to take decisive, substantive action, the more likely it becomes that today's targeted fixes give way to demands for wholesale restructuring. Two days before Trump launched his updated pledge, I moderated a panel at the Aspen Ideas Climate summit in Chicago addressing issues of rising electricity costs and reliability issues on the grid. The most interesting exchange came over the needed scale of solutions. Allison Clements, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, argued that states and utilities should move quickly to insulate customers from the cost of data centers, citing a range of regulatory tweaks. University of Chicago economist Michael Greenstone pushed back, suggesting that instead policymakers should use this moment to rethink the country's fundamentally inefficient electricity system, reimagining how rates are designed to begin with and giving federal regulators greater authority to build transmission. "One should not waste a crisis," he said. In today's political environment, Greenstone's call for bold thinking can seem a bit out of touch. Congress can barely keep the government open. It's hard to imagine the body taking on the extremely complex and politically fraught job of reforming the country's power system. And yet there is a case for thinking bigger -- or at the very least laying the groundwork for bigger thinking. Right now, the affordability agenda is front of mind and elected officials are responding. In PJM, the Mid Atlantic part of the U.S. grid, officials have implemented a price cap when utilities bid for electricity, even as critics warn the move could discourage new investment. In Indiana, the governor removed the head of the state's public utility commission after it approved a rate increase. Across the country the political incentive is to keep bills down today even if doing so complicates tomorrow's reliability challenge. The system is holding together now. But it's easy to imagine extreme weather -- whether a catastrophic heat wave or deep winter freeze -- creating more demand than the system can handle. If demand outstrips supply, rolling blackouts would create a new wave of political anger. "I can tell you with absolute certainty that if a grid operator has to choose on the hottest day of summer, whether to send power to a data center to run AI 24/7 or to a residential household that needs air conditioning, it's going to that data center," says Neil Chatterjee, a former FERC commissioner. "And that's where the pitchforks come out." As alarming as pitchforks may be, they also create an opening for a big picture rethinking of how we produce and distribute electricity in the U.S. Indeed, major infrastructure reforms are more likely to happen because the status quo is intolerable than because someone diligently explained the benefits. With that in mind, a crisis could unlock much-touted but still elusive permitting reform that makes it easier to build energy infrastructure. It could make the case for a muscular FERC. And I've even heard the suggestion that the present moment creates an opportunity to revise the bedrock federal laws that have created challenges in this moment, including the Federal Power Act, the century-old law that governs interstate power transmission. The implications of such a move are dramatic. If done right, such reform could be a win for efforts to tackle climate change, given how much clean power has been hampered by a lack of transmission. (And climate advocates could end up being a powerful part of a reform coalition). It would also threaten the utility business model, long dependent on monopolies and state policy. It could be a boon for AI companies that want to move faster, though obviously not everyone would support that. A true crisis may be coming soon. It's unclear who is ready to use it. To get this story in your inbox, sign up to TIME's Future Proof newsletter here.

Trump expands AI data center ratepayer protection pledge

When Trump first issued the pledge as a proclamation in March, it specified that AI companies "will build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their energy demands, and pay for all new power delivery infrastructure upgrades to service their data centers," The Hill reported. The pledge is nonbinding. The expansion comes as opposition to data centers has grown into a bipartisan concern. Electricity prices were up 4% year-over-year in June, and increased demand from data centers could push monthly utility bills up 15% to 40% by 2030, according to a recent analysis by consulting firm ICF. Twenty-three Republican governors have signed the pledge, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott $ABT, whose state has seen rising frustration over data center growth.

Trump promises cheaper power from data centers. Analysts say bills could jump 40% | Fortune

The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires. It's unclear, with electricity demand already growing, whether consumers would see genuine savings. Trump is doubling down on the pledge at a time when the broader social contract is being rewritten by AI, a technology that is evolving so quickly in its capabilities that governments are struggling over how to provide oversight. The president, in remarks about the pledge at the Environmental Protection Agency, called on the gathered executives and governors to sell the public on data centers, stressing that the cities and towns that do have them will be "rich." "You have to convince your community," Trump said. "You can't fight it. You have to go with it." The president added: "If you don't take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves." Concerns about data centers cross party lines The president promised that electricity prices would drop because of the nonbinding pledge, saying there would be a surplus of power. It's not clear that data centers generating their own electricity will be sufficient to overcome the rising demand for electricity, but that did not deter Trump from saying that utility bills -- a major concern for voters -- will be lower. "Electricity bills for American families will actually come down," Trump said. "They're going to have a lot of electricity left over, and they'll put that into the grid." The White House said Thursday the pledge has been signed by 23 governors and at least 187 companies, including 55 utilities and 27 data center developers. Signers include some of the nation's biggest utilities such as NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Southern Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric. Data center developers that have signed the pledge include Equinix, Digital Realty and Prologis. A slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and create national security risks. But AI's increasing ability to perform basic tasks -- such as driving, analyzing spreadsheets and writing software -- also potentially threatens millions of jobs. That has created mounting public resistance as tech companies concentrate historic levels of wealth in the hands of a select group of tycoons. The increased electricity demand could cause monthly utility bills to rise by 15% to 40% by 2030, according to a recent analysis by ICF, a consulting and technology services company. Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue. Voters are worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable. Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners. The opposition has spread into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and led to frustration with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump's nonbinding pledge. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election. "They are owned by the richest men in the world," she said of data centers. "We're all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the Wild West of data centers." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an order to ban construction of large server warehouses in her state for a year. In May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law that he said would prevent utilities from passing along energy costs from data centers to residential and small-business customers. Already, dozens of state legislatures or utility commissions have moved to put in place requirements that data centers pay the cost of their electricity, including new power plants or transmission system upgrades. But it's not Tech companies are pushing growth of data centers In California, however, the industry opposes legislation designed to protect consumers from electricity price increases attributable to data centers, said Matthew Freedman, a staff attorney for the Utility Reform Network. "It is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that the same tech companies signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge are simultaneously opposing efforts at the state level to force them to deliver on their promises," Freedman said. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose computer chips are enabling the AI revolution, said America's weakness is a lack of power generation for further developing the technology. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon are among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration's "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out. Despite the pledge, there are challenges on addressing issues with electricity prices. The White House has complained that PJM Interconnection, which oversees electric power in 13 states from Virginia to Illinois, can't ensure adequate electricity supplies at reasonable prices in the AI-driven boom. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Thursday that PJM -- - the nation's largest grid operator -- has failed to implement a bipartisan statement of principles signed by the Trump administration and all 13 governors in the region. "The Trump administration strongly advises PJM and its member companies to proactively reform its stakeholder process, reform its board governance, and implement the Statement of Principles before it is too late," Rogers said. There are efforts to formalize Trump's pledge as law, with the House Energy and Commerce Committee approving a bipartisan bill. The bill would require data centers to bear the costs of grid upgrades. __ Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

Trump Pledge on Data Center Power Supplies Draws Skepticism

By Jacob Bogage , Jarrett Renshaw and Tim McLaughlin WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump announced ⁠a ⁠non-binding pledge by U.S. power producers and data ⁠centers on Thursday to fund or build energy infrastructure that would meet massive AI-related power needs while shielding consumers from high electricity costs. Consumer advocacy groups and other administration critics, however, dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers as Trump tries to balance his support for power-guzzling data centers against public anger over rising utility bills. Trump has been pushing an aggressive build-out of AI-related infrastructure, as part of an economic agenda that includes winning the AI race against China. But data centers' ⁠demands on overloaded ⁠transmission lines, compounded by the power sector's labor shortages and plant retirements, have made rising energy costs a volatile issue for voters going into November's midterm elections. "Under this groundbreaking plan, America's largest tech companies have formally committed to fund or build all energy infrastructure required to meet the demand they are placing on the grid," Trump said at an Environmental Protection Agency event attended by Republican governors, power sector CEOs and data center developers. "So they're going to be funding all of those electric needs, and we're giving them the right to build their own power plants." Average annual residential electricity prices ⁠are ⁠predicted to rise by 5.1% in ⁠2026 and 2.4% in 2027, before inflation, the Energy Information Administration said. Community meetings in many states have lasted into the wee hours as residents oppose development of data centers they view as noisy, bad for the environment ⁠and a factor in rising electric bills. Trump's take was more positive. "You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly those are the smart communities," he said. Critics, meanwhile, have questioned whether the voluntary pledge will prevent higher bills as AI power demand accelerates. Jesse Lee, senior adviser at advocacy group Climate Power, criticized the pledge's lack of enforcement triggers, calling it a "pinky promise." "Instead of allowing affordable, scalable clean energy onto the grid, Trump has actively pressured tech companies to power their data centers ⁠with fossil fuels that will increase utility costs and expose Americans to toxic pollutants," Lee said. Josh Levi, president of the ⁠Data Center Coalition, defended the industry, which he said powers essential services such as telehealth appointments, digital classrooms, secure banking systems and air traffic control networks. Republican governors from Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Nebraska attended Thursday's event, along with chief executives Drew Marsh of Entergy Corp and Chris Womack of Southern Co. Marsh and Womack are among a group of CEOs at the 15 largest U.S. power companies sitting on nearly $1 billion in stock-based pay, according to a Reuters analysis. That value is poised to keep rising as firms invest to fix the U.S. electrical grid. At the center of the political battle over data centers is PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. grid operator. "PJM is the face of a national problem," according to analysts at Siebert Williams Shank, who cited its struggle to withstand unprecedented power consumption, along with power plant retirements, transmission ⁠line congestion and construction bottlenecks. "AI data centers did not create every challenge facing electric systems, but they have amplified nearly all of them." PJM is battling escalating costs on several fronts as it manages the flow of electricity for 67 million people from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. In PJM's latest capacity-market auction, which secures power from generating sources for peak demand times, data centers accounted for $6.3 billion of capacity-market charges, or nearly 40% of the total. Those charges ultimately show up in customers' monthly bills. (Reporting By Tim McLaughlin in Boston, Jacob Bogage in Washington and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Timothy Gardner and Edmund Klamann)

23 governors sign Trump's cost pledge for data centers, backbone of AI

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is set to announce 23 governors have signed his pledge that seeks to protect households from absorbing utility costs tied to data centers, the sprawling and rapidly expanding facilities that power artificial intelligence across the country. The governors, all Republicans, are among nearly 200 stakeholders ‒ major utility companies, data center developers, public power and co-ops ‒ who have signed Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge. The pledge was first put forward by the White House in March. Trump, who has defended data centers as they face resistance in many communities, is expected to tout the growing coalition at a July 23 event at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters. Four of the governors are scheduled to be there. Companies that sign pledge agree to "protect American consumers from price hikes due to data center energy and infrastructure requirements, and lower electricity costs for consumers in the long term." Although non-binding, the pledge includes an addendum for the governors committing them to "implement the principles established in the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, to the greatest extent possible in our respective positions." Who has and hasn't signed the pledge? Governors who signed the pledge include Republican Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Greg Abbott of Texas, Bill Lee of Tennessee and Spencer Cox of Utah. Kemp, as well as Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and Idaho Gov. Brad Little, are set to attend the event. No Democrats signed the document, and three of the nation's 26 Republican governors have not either: Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a new state law this year that implemented strict regulations for data centers. Data centers, which house computer networks and servers that enable digital information and services, are becoming increasingly vital for tech companies as technology expands, particularly in artificial intelligence. But residents in many communities have protested the construction of the centers, which take up enormous space, produce noise and bring few direct benefits to their neighborhoods. The facilities require considerable electricity, water, and other utilities that critics say spike costs for people who live near them. The support of the 23 governors builds on an effort that began with seven of the world's largest tech companies ‒ Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon ‒ signing the pledge in March. "President Trump is expanding the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to governors, legislators, developers, and power providers to ensure everyone involved in building and powering data centers covers their own costs instead of passing them on to American families," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement. "The President's bold action is turning data centers into engines of growth for local communities, while cementing America's dominance in the global AI race." Trump hailed data centers as "big, strong, bold, and Money Machines" in a social media post last week, while calling it a "terrible decision" for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, to sign an executive order issuing a one-year pause on the construction of data centers in her state. Trump said companies that operate data centers are sought by "red states" such as Alabama, Florida, and Texas. Yet recent fights over data centers have popped up in both Democratic- and Republican-leaning states, from Nashville to the Virginia suburbs outside Washington, DC, to rural Utah and small towns in New Jersey. Even Palm Beach, Florida, home of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, has fiercely debated a new artificial intelligence data center planned there. Trump has expressed concerns about states creating barriers slowing the advancement of AI technology as the United States competes with China for the lead globally in AI innovation. Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison .

Trump pledge on data center power supplies draws skepticism

President Donald Trump announced a non-binding pledge for energy infrastructure. Power producers and data centers will fund massive AI-related power needs. Critics dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers. Rising energy costs are a volatile issue for voters. The pledge aims to balance AI infrastructure with public anger over utility bills. President Donald Trump announced a non-binding pledge by US power producers and data centers on Thursday to fund or build energy infrastructure that would meet massive AI-related power needs while shielding consumers from high electricity costs. Consumer advocacy groups and other administration critics, however, dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers as Trump tries to balance his support for power-guzzling data centers against public anger over rising utility bills. Trump has been pushing an aggressive build-out of AI-related infrastructure, as part of an economic agenda that includes winning the AI race against China. But data centers' demands on overloaded ⁠transmission lines, ⁠compounded by the power sector's labor shortages and plant retirements, have made rising energy costs a volatile issue for voters going into November's midterm elections. "Under this groundbreaking plan, America's largest tech companies have formally committed to fund or build all energy infrastructure required to meet the demand they are placing on the grid," Trump said at an Environmental Protection Agency event attended by Republican governors, power sector CEOs and data center developers. "So they're going to be funding all of those electric needs, and we're giving them the right to build their own power plants." Average annual residential electricity prices are predicted to rise by 5.1% in 2026 and 2.4% in 2027, before inflation, the Energy Information Administration said. Community ⁠meetings in many states have lasted into the wee hours as residents oppose development of data centers they view as noisy, bad for the environment and a factor in rising electric bills. Trump's take was more positive. "You have communities that really want the data ⁠centers, and frankly those are the smart communities," he said. Critics, meanwhile, have questioned whether the voluntary pledge will prevent higher bills as AI power demand accelerates. Jesse Lee, senior adviser at advocacy group Climate Power, criticized the pledge's lack of enforcement triggers, calling it a "pinky promise." "Instead of allowing affordable, scalable clean energy onto the grid, Trump has actively pressured tech companies to power their data centers with fossil fuels that will increase utility costs and expose Americans to toxic pollutants," Lee said. Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, defended the industry, which he said powers essential services such as telehealth appointments, digital classrooms, secure banking systems and air traffic control networks. Republican governors from Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Nebraska attended Thursday's event, along with chief executives Drew Marsh of Entergy Corp and Chris Womack of Southern Co. Marsh and Womack are among a group of CEOs at the 15 largest U.S. power companies sitting on nearly $1 billion in stock-based pay, according to a Reuters analysis. That value is poised to keep rising as firms ⁠invest to fix the US electrical grid. At the center of the political battle over data centers is PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator. "PJM is the face of a national problem," according to analysts at Siebert Williams Shank, who cited its struggle to withstand unprecedented power consumption, along with power plant retirements, transmission line congestion and construction bottlenecks. "AI data centers did not create every challenge facing electric systems, but they have amplified nearly all of them." PJM is battling escalating costs on several fronts as it manages the flow of electricity for 67 million people from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. In PJM's latest capacity-market auction, which secures power from generating sources for peak demand times, data centers accounted for $6.3 billion of capacity-market charges, or nearly 40% of the total. Those charges ultimately show up in customers' monthly bills.

Trump Expands a Voluntary Pledge to Protect Consumers From High Utility Bills From AI Data Centers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Thursday will have governors and electricity companies join a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers -- a sign of how the artificial intelligence build- out has become a lightning rod of controversy before the midterm elections. The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires. It's unclear, with electricity demand already growing, whether consumers would see genuine savings. Trump described the pledge several months ago as "PR help" at a time when the broader social contract is being rewritten by AI, a technology that is evolving so quickly in its capabilities that governments are struggling over how to provide insight. He plans to discuss the expansion of the pledge at the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday. "The president is ensuring the American people are never left footing the bill so private companies can benefit," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters before the president's remarks. The White House said that nearly 200 additional stakeholders, including utilities, data center developers and governors, have committed to the pledge. The pledge would cover 80% of all power delivered to U.S. households and businesses. A slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and create national security risks. But AI's increasing ability to perform basic tasks -- such as driving, analyzing spreadsheets and writing software -- also potentially threatens millions of jobs. That has created mounting public resistance as tech companies concentrate historic levels of wealth in the hands of a select group of tycoons. The increased electricity demand could cause monthly utility bills to rise by 15% to 40% by 2030, according to a recent analysis by ICF, a consulting and technology services company. Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue. Voters are worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable. Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners. The opposition has spread into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and led to frustration with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump's nonbinding pledge. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election. "They are owned by the richest men in the world," she said of data centers. "We're all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the Wild West of data centers." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an order to ban construction of large server warehouses in her state for a year. In May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law that he said would prevent utilities from passing along energy costs from data centers to residential and small-business customers. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose computer chips are enabling the AI revolution, said America's weakness is a lack of power generation for further developing the technology. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon are among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration's "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out.

Can America Win the AI Race Without Running Dry? Non-Profit Demands Data Center Moratorium, EPA Says US C

Environmental Groups Push For a Pause on Data Center Growth Walsh pointed to research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration that examine the growing energy demands associated with data centers and AI infrastructure. He argued that governments should temporarily halt new projects while regulators assess their long-term impacts. "We need a full moratorium on data centers to put a pause on the out-of-control expansion of this industry," Walsh said, adding that policymakers need time to determine where new facilities are sustainable and adopt protections for public interests and limited water resources. EPA Says AI Leadership And Environmental Protection Can Coexist The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected the idea that AI development and environmental protection are mutually exclusive. In response to the questions asked by Benzinga, EPA argued that American leadership in AI is critical to both national security and economic growth. "The truth is, America can lead the world in AI while equally protecting human health and the environment," the agency said, while criticizing allegations about the industry's environmental impacts. The EPA highlighted its Water Reuse Action Plan 2.0, which encourages collaboration with data center developers to expand water reuse for cooling and reduce dependence on freshwater supplies. It also pointed to its Clean Air Act Resources for Data Centers initiative, which helps state and local regulators navigate air permitting requirements for AI facilities. The agency added that data centers generate more than $727 billion in annual economic impact and support over 4.7 million direct and indirect jobs across the U.S. Utah Group Rejects Foreign Influence Claims The debate has also spilled into local politics. In fact, local opposition to AI data centers gained momentum across the U.S. in the first half of 2026, delaying or halting at least 75 projects valued at roughly $130 billion. Elizabeth Hutchings of Alliance for a Better Utah pushed back after investor Kevin O'Leary alleged that opposition to a proposed Utah data center project was tied to foreign-backed online campaigns. "The only foreign interest in this data center is Kevin from Canada," Hutchings told Benzinga, arguing that Utah residents are simply demanding greater transparency and meaningful public input before projects that could affect their communities for decades move forward. O'Leary did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Data Center Boom Puts Pressure on America's Aging Power Grid Goldman Sachs projects global data center electricity demand will rise 220% from 2023 levels by 2030, with the U.S. expected to account for roughly 60% of that growth. Meanwhile, earlier this month, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) unveiled a temporary halt on new hyperscale data centers requiring 50 megawatts or more of electricity. Trump criticized the policy, calling it a "terrible decision." Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo Courtesy: kwarkot on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Trump Is Expanding a Pledge That Could Stop AI Data Centers From Hiking Your Electricity Bill -- Here's Who

The expanded pledge is intended to ensure companies building and powering AI data centers cover the costs of the electricity generation and transmission infrastructure needed for their projects instead of passing those expenses on to residential customers. Under the initiative, participating companies also agree to negotiate their own electricity rate structures with utilities and state governments. "President Trump is expanding the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to governors, legislators, developers, and power providers to ensure everyone involved in building and powering data centers covers their own costs instead of passing them on to American families," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement. Rogers said the initiative would help turn data centers into "engines of growth for local communities" while reinforcing U.S. leadership in the global AI race. President Donald Trump is expected to formally announce the expanded initiative Thursday alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) Growing Demand Disclaimer: This content was produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Image via Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Major utilities sign Trump pledge on AI electricity costs- WSJ By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Nearly 200 utilities and data center developers have committed to President Trump's pledge to prevent artificial intelligence energy use from raising consumer electricity bills, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing a White House list. NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Equinix and Digital Realty are among the signatories to the pledge, which Trump plans to announce Thursday at an Environmental Protection Agency event. Republican governors Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Brian Kemp of Georgia also signed and are expected to attend. The commitments now cover about 80% of all power delivered to U.S. homes and businesses, the WSJ report said. The pledges may be difficult to enforce because state regulators and electricity buyers and sellers often determine power prices. The effort represents an attempt by the White House and private sector to address growing opposition to AI energy consumption, the WSJ reported. Concerns about rising electricity prices and resistance to new data centers have worried industry executives. Several U.S. states proposed legislation blocking the construction of more data centers, amid growing public opposition due to their impact on the environment and living standards. In March, technology executives from OpenAI, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, Meta Platforms, Oracle and Elon Musk's xAI, recently acquired by SpaceX, signed the pledge. Trump introduced the commitment in his State of the Union address earlier this year. Additional commitments include negotiating separate rate structures with utilities and states and coordinating with grid operators to prevent blackouts and power shortages. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Trump pledge on data center power supplies draws skepticism

WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump announced a non-binding pledge by U.S. power producers and data centers on Thursday to fund or build energy infrastructure that would meet massive AI-related power needs while shielding consumers from high electricity costs. Consumer advocacy groups and other administration critics, however, dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers as Trump tries to balance his support for power-guzzling data centers against public anger over rising utility bills. Trump has been pushing an aggressive build-out of AI-related infrastructure, as part of an economic agenda that includes winning the AI race against China. But data centers' demands on overloaded transmission lines, compounded by the power sector's labor shortages and plant retirements, have made rising energy costs a volatile issue for voters going into November's midterm elections. "Under this groundbreaking plan, America's largest tech companies have formally committed to fund or build all energy infrastructure required to meet the demand they are placing on the grid," Trump said at an Environmental Protection Agency event attended by Republican governors, power sector CEOs and data center developers. "So they're going to be funding all of those electric needs, and we're giving them the right to build their own power plants." Average annual residential electricity prices are predicted to rise by 5.1% in 2026 and 2.4% in 2027, before inflation, the Energy Information Administration said. Community meetings in many states have lasted into the wee hours as residents oppose development of data centers they view as noisy, bad for the environment and a factor in rising electric bills. Trump's take was more positive. "You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly those are the smart communities," he said. Critics, meanwhile, have questioned whether the voluntary pledge will prevent higher bills as AI power demand accelerates. Jesse Lee, senior adviser at advocacy group Climate Power, criticized the pledge's lack of enforcement triggers, calling it a "pinky promise." "Instead of allowing affordable, scalable clean energy onto the grid, Trump has actively pressured tech companies to power their data centers with fossil fuels that will increase utility costs and expose Americans to toxic pollutants," Lee said. Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, defended the industry, which he said powers essential services such as telehealth appointments, digital classrooms, secure banking systems and air traffic control networks. Republican governors from Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Nebraska attended Thursday's event, along with chief executives Drew Marsh of Entergy Corp and Chris Womack of Southern Co. Marsh and Womack are among a group of CEOs at the 15 largest U.S. power companies sitting on nearly $1 billion in ?stock-based pay, according to a Reuters analysis. That value is poised to keep rising as firms invest to fix the U.S. electrical grid. At the center of the political battle over data centers is PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. grid operator. "PJM is the face of a national problem," according to analysts at Siebert Williams Shank, who cited its struggle to withstand unprecedented power consumption, along with power plant retirements, transmission line congestion and construction bottlenecks. "AI data centers did not create every challenge facing electric systems, but they have amplified nearly all of them." PJM is battling escalating costs on several fronts as it manages the flow of electricity for 67 million people from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. In PJM's latest capacity-market auction, which secures power from generating sources for peak demand times, data centers accounted for $6.3 billion of capacity-market charges, or nearly 40% of the total. Those charges ultimately show up in customers' monthly bills. (Reporting By Tim McLaughlin in Boston, Jacob Bogage in Washington and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Timothy Gardner and Edmund Klamann) By Jacob Bogage , Jarrett Renshaw and Tim McLaughlin

Trump set to expand power cost pledge on data centers

July 22 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is set to unveil on Thursday a pledge backed by governors, lawmakers, utilities and data center developers aimed at shielding households from electricity costs tied to the AI boom, as he pushes to make the United States the global leader in artificial intelligence. It extends Trump's original Ratepayer Protection Pledge from March to ensure the companies building and using data centers pay above and beyond normal rates so that costs are not passed on to average households. Trump will be joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and several of the state governors who signed the original pledge, according to a White House official. Protecting electricity customers from data center demands is no easy task, however, as the country's patchwork system of regional electric grids is already under severe strain. Massive congestion on transmission lines, for example, surged 81% to $3.2 billion in 2025 in the PJM Interconnection, the largest regional electric grid that serves 67 million people. Last week, the latest annual power auction at PJM pushed up prices to record levels. On Thursday, energy regulator FERC will meet to discuss the precarious future of PJM in light of its ongoing supply and demand imbalance. "Today's electricity system forces almost everyone, from homeowners to hyperscale data centers, to depend on the same network," Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, recently wrote. "That one-size-fits-all model increasingly does not serve either group well. Large customers may wait a decade or longer for service, while ordinary ratepayers worry that expanding the grid for massive new industrial loads will ultimately increase their own bills." Data center advocates say the industry's rapid expansion is driving long-overdue investments in America's electric grid and cite other factors driving up costs, including power-plant retirements and transmission constraints. The White House says the pledge, which is nonbinding, will now cover 80% of all the power delivered to U.S. homes and businesses. (Reporting By Tim McLaughlin in Boston; Laila Kearney in New York and Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Timothy Gardner and Nia Williams) By Tim McLaughlin, Laila Kearney and Jarrett Renshaw