Several key tech companies signed a nonbinding pledge at the White House on Wednesday that the Trump administration claims will ensure that tech companies do not pass the cost of data centers on to consumers’ utility bills.
“Data centers … they need some PR help,” President Donald Trump said at the event. “People think that if the data center goes in, their electricity is going to go up.”
He was flanked by representatives from Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, Google/Alphabet, Oracle, and Amazon.
Bipartisan anger about data centers and their potential impact on consumers’ electric bills has exploded over the past year. As the White House goes all in on AI, the pledge marks a significant salvo by the Trump administration to assure voters that they will not be affected by rising costs.
But electricity experts and industry insiders threw doubt on how much power the White House actually has to create meaningful consumer protections.
“This is theater,” says Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. “This is a press release designed to make it seem like they are addressing this issue. But this issue can only really be addressed by utility regulators or Congress. The White House doesn’t really have a lot of moves here, and I don’t think the tech companies themselves are the most important parties on cost issues.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Data centers played a key role in last year’s elections in certain states, including Georgia and Virginia, and are factoring into other races playing out across the country this month. A recent poll conducted by Heatmap News shows that fewer than 30 percent of American voters would support a data center being built near where they live. A number of states have introduced moratoriums on data centers into their state legislatures this year, while others have bills that would seek to help offload the cost from the consumer to the companies building and operating the facilities.
Over the past few months, some big tech companies—including Microsoft and Anthropic—have rolled out various pledges around their data center construction and operation. These pledges follow multiple reports that the president was seeking assurances from tech companies to help take the costs of data centers off American consumers.
In late January, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that Democrats were to blame for high electricity costs and that he was “working with major American Technology Companies” to ensure “Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their POWER consumption, in the form of paying higher Utility bills.” Less than a month later, he said during his State of the Union address that he would introduce a “ratepayer protection pledge.”
“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” he said. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up and, in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially then.”
The pledges made independently by key tech companies this year, and the one signed Wednesday, reiterate a lot of promises and initiatives that some tech companies have already been working on. In a blog post published by Google highlighting its commitment to the pledge, the company lists several ongoing initiatives, including investments in nuclear and geothermal energy as well as agreement frameworks with electric utilities and pledges to invest in job creation.
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