The US’ biggest technology companies have promised to absorb the soaring energy costs of artificial intelligence data centres.
Technology firms, including Google and Meta, have said they will shoulder the costs associated with powering AI data centres, even as the expansion of the sector places a growing strain on the US electricity grid.
US President Donald Trump has been positioning the AI industry as central to America’s economic future. Yet the rapid growth of data centres has intensified pressure on power infrastructure, while utility bills have become a key cost-of-living concern.
At a White House meeting on Wednesday, senior technology executives signed what the administration has termed a “ratepayer protection pledge”, first unveiled by Trump last month. However, details of how the commitment would be enforced remain unclear.
Seven major technology companies—Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon—have signed the pledge. The firms have agreed to build, finance or procure new power generation capacity for their data centres.
They have also committed to funding new power infrastructure upgrades, negotiating rate structures with utilities at the state level, and hiring locally in communities where data centres are constructed.
“These commitments will help keep down utility bills very substantially,” Trump said at the meeting, while acknowledging it would “take a little bit of time to get there”.
Trump also conceded that technology companies “need some PR help” amid growing backlash in communities across the country where data centres are being developed.
Energy analysts have raised doubts over how effective or enforceable the pledge may prove. John Quigley, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told the BBC that the involvement of regulators, grid operators and state authorities complicates the initiative.
Beyond pressure from data centre expansion, higher natural gas prices have also contributed to rising bills. Natural gas accounts for nearly half of US electricity generation, and increased exports—driven by strong global demand—have pushed up domestic prices.
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