Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and several artificial intelligence companies signed a commitment at the White House on Wednesday to assume the cost of new electricity generation to power their data centers.
The deal is intended to help ease concerns that Big Tech’s data centers are driving up U.S. electricity costs for homes and small businesses at a time when Donald Trump’s administration seeks to curb inflation.
“This means that technology companies and data centers will be able to get the electricity they need, all without increasing electricity costs for consumers,” the president said at the pledge signing event. “This is a historic victory for countless American families, and we will also make our electric grid stronger and more resilient than ever.”
The so-called “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” was first announced by Trump in his State of the Union address, and comes as communities and state lawmakers increase scrutiny of rapidly proliferating data centers.
Data centers consume large amounts of electricity to run server racks and cooling systems for the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence.
“Some data centers were rejected by communities because of that, and now I think it will be the opposite,” Trump said, referencing projects canceled or postponed in recent months in several states due to local opposition.
The commitment includes a commitment by technology companies to bring in or purchase electricity supplies for their data centers, either from new power plants or from existing plants with expanded production capacity. It also includes commitments from Big Tech to pay for upgrades to power delivery systems and enter into special electric rate agreements with utility companies.
The effort is aimed at gaining support from towns and cities that would otherwise oppose the projects, said the Trump official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“No new data center will be developed without local communities reading and understanding what this commitment is,” the official said.
Oracle, xAI and OpenAI were also in attendance to sign the pledge.
The initiative launches ahead of the November midterm elections, when voters are increasingly concerned about energy affordability and increased pressure on the country’s power grids due to data centers.
The companies represented at the White House include some of the biggest names in the technology sector, which are investing billions in new AI computing capacity that consumes large amounts of electricity.
Trump has urged those companies to build or secure dedicated electric capacity to meet demand rather than rely solely on regional grids, as part of a broader effort to balance technological competitiveness with political and economic concerns about energy costs.
However, it is not clear that the effort will build new electricity supplies quickly enough to relieve pressure on grids, said Jon Gordon, senior director at Advanced Energy United, a clean energy trade group that includes some data centers.
This is partly due to Trump’s policy focus on increasing natural gas and other fossil fuels for data centers, rather than faster-building sources like solar and wind, he added.
“The real problem is the inability to bring generation online quickly enough to meet data center demand,” Gordon said. “Hyperscalers who pay for generation don’t bring it online faster.”
Advocates and critics alike will be watching closely to see whether the pledge produces concrete commitments or remains largely symbolic, as lawmakers and consumer groups have called for stronger protections to prevent increases in utility bills tied to the construction of data centers.
