Data center titans Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are headed to the White House next week to sign a commitment to fund their own energy infrastructure costs, CNBC reported today.
The deal, teased by President Trump during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, arrives as the massive power requirements of generative AI become a flashpoint for voters frustrated by rising utility bills.
“Tonight, I’m pleased to announce that I have negotiated the new ratepayer protection pledge,” Trump said in his address. “We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up…”
Microsoft and OpenAI last month made their own commitments to cover their electricity costs and act as good neighbors in the communities where they’re building data centers that power the internet and artificial intelligence. On Monday Amazon announced a $12 billion data center project in Louisiana in which the company vowed to pay its own way for energy and other infrastructure.
While the pledges aim to quell public anxiety, some industry veterans say they’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
“All these announcements about data centers paying their own way for power costs are meaningless,” said Brian Janous, Microsoft’s former vice president of energy and co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a startup that helps secure clean power for data centers and other industries.
“They are meaningless because data centers have been paying their own way from day one,” he said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday. “You know who else pays their own way? Supermarkets. And shopping malls. And auto factories. And homeowners. Everyone pays their own way.”
Janous argued that electricity rates are designed to ensure that customers bear their fair costs for power use, and that adding large customers to the grid actually helps lower rates as they can fund system upgrades. “Trying to stop datacenter expansion in the name of limiting rate increases will only make the problem worse,” he added.
Others disagreed, noting that country’s aging grid requires long-deferred, expensive improvements that won’t necessarily be borne by data centers, particularly given the speed at which the massive amounts of new energy need to be deployed.
Another wrinkle is the Trump administration has impeded wind and solar power projects, which are the cheapest sources of new electricity, and is working to weaken federal energy efficiency standards for appliances and equipment.
While the White House has targeted voluntary pledges, Washington state leaders are moving toward a more regulated approach. The state Senate is currently weighing House Bill 2515, which would:
- Direct utilities to create tariffs or policies that protect ratepayers from short- or long-term financial risks associated with the data centers’ energy use.
- Require companies to release water, energy and pollution reports on the facilities’ operations.
- Set rules on using renewable power for data centers.
The measure has its next public committee hearing tomorrow.
Rep. Beth Doglio, D-Olympia, is the bill’s lead sponsor and recently testified in favor of statewide standards to ensure “that we do data centers right in this state.”
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