Tech giants sign AI pledge at White House, vowing to pay for energy costs

WASHINGTON - Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and several artificial intelligence companies signed a pledge at the White House on March 4 to bear the cost of new electricity generation to power their data centres.

The agreement is meant to help mitigate concerns that Big Tech’s data centres are driving up US electricity costs for homes and small businesses at a time the administration of President Donald Trump is seeking to curb inflation.

The so-called “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” was first announced by Mr Trump in his State of the Union Address, and comes as communities and state legislators increase scrutiny of rapidly proliferating data centres.

Data centres consume vast amounts of electricity to run server racks and cooling systems for the development of technologies like artificial intelligence.

“They need the hearts and minds of Americans,” one Trump administration official said of the data centre industry, which has cancelled or postponed projects in recent months across several states following local opposition.

The pledge includes a commitment by technology companies to bring or buy electricity supplies for their data centres, either from new power plants or existing plants with expanded output capacity. It also includes commitments from Big Tech to pay for upgrades to power delivery systems and to enter special electricity rate agreements with utilities.

The effort is aimed at drawing support from towns and cities that otherwise oppose the projects, said the Trump official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“There will be no new data centre development that’s going to happen without the local communities reading and understanding what this pledge is,” the official said.

Oracle, xAI and OpenAI were also due to sign the pledge.

Voters concerned about energy bills

The initiative is being launched ahead of the November midterm elections, with voters increasingly concerned about energy affordability and the increased strain on the country’s power grids from data centres.

Companies expected at the White House include some of the biggest names in the tech sector, which are investing billions in new AI computing capacity that draws vast amounts of electricity.

Mr Trump has urged those firms to build or secure dedicated power capacity to meet demand rather than relying solely on regional grids, part of a broader effort to balance technological competitiveness with political and economic concerns about energy costs.

It is not clear, however, that the effort will get new supplies of electricity built quickly enough to ease pressure on grids, said Mr Jon Gordon, who is a director at Advanced Energy United, a clean energy trade group that includes some data centres.

That is in part due to Mr Trump’s policy focus on increasing natural gas and other fossil fuel-fired power for data centres, instead of quicker-build sources like solar and wind, he added.

“The real problem is the inability to get generation online fast enough to meet the data center demand,” Mr Gordon said. “Hyperscalers paying for the generation doesn’t get it online any 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 utility bill increases tied to data centre build-outs. REUTERS