By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-07-23 21:01:36 | Updated at 2026-07-23 21:52:23
1 hour ago
President Donald Trump on July 23 announced an expansion of his administration’s previous energy infrastructure build-out pledge, aimed at preventing the construction of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers from increasing Americans’ home energy bills.
Trump first unveiled his Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March, which brought together tech titans—including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI—under a voluntary and nonbinding pledge to compel companies building data centers to front the costs for new energy generation and grid infrastructure.
While the president’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge remains voluntary, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that nearly 200 additional stakeholders had signed on since March, significantly increasing participation in the program.
The entities include energy utilities, data center developers, public energy authorities, co-ops, and state governors, she said.
“As a result, the pledge now covers 80 percent of all the power delivered to American homes and businesses.”
Speaking alongside Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin at the agency’s headquarters on Thursday, Trump said the entities building data centers should pay for the costs needed to power these massive facilities.
“We know that the data centers and AI are dramatically increasing the demand for electricity. It’s only fair that the cost of building the new infrastructure required to meet this demand should be borne by the corporations themselves, not by the American consumers and the American patriots, American citizens, and I think everybody agrees to it,” Trump said.
“Under this groundbreaking plan, America’s largest tech companies have formally committed to fund or build all energy infrastructure required to meet the demand they are placing on the grid. So they’re going to be funding all of those electric needs, and we’re giving them the right to build their own power plants.”
This project has inspired similar efforts in Congress, with the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy subcommittee first considering the Ratepayer Protection Act last month. The committee advanced the bill by a 52–0 vote on Tuesday.
If passed, the Ratepayer Protection Act would mandate state public utility commissions to consider a plan to compel data centers to pay for energy and grid infrastructure costs, rather than passing the expenses onto consumers.
“The Ratepayer Protection Act will ensure that data centers pay their own way, instead of passing costs onto hardworking families,” House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said in a statement.
The AI data center boon has sparked debate across the political spectrum. Data centers made up roughly 4.4 percent of U.S. annual electricity consumption in 2023, according to a May congressional report, which noted that the number could double or triple by 2028.
An estimate released this month by the Kansas Health Institute projects that number to increase by 133 percent by 2030, climbing past 10 percent of the nation’s annual energy use.
But that number could get even higher as time goes on, according to BloombergNEF, which recently estimated that data centers would account for 20 percent of all U.S. annual energy consumption by 2035.
Critics argue that data centers overload power grids in vulnerable communities with aging infrastructure, sometimes increasing household energy bills for those who live near the large facilities.
Others point to the unremitting noise that is sometimes heard around the clock in the immediate vicinity of many data centers, created by humming cooling systems and rumbling diesel generators.
Proponents of data centers, including the Trump administration and many tech companies, believe the facilities are necessary to outpace China in the AI race, arguing that resistance to fast-tracking data center construction would prevent America’s AI industry from growing.
