Tech companies, Trump sign pledge to protect consumers from rising electricity costs

President Donald Trump unveiled a voluntary pledge with major tech companies on Wednesday that the administration said will protect consumers from rising electricity costs spurred by artificial intelligence development.

At a White House roundtable — another attempt to assuage voters’ affordability concerns ahead of the 2026 midterms — Trump and CEOs of seven big tech companies signed a so-called “ratepayer protection pledge,” where companies pledged to build or buy the vast amount of electricity needed to power data centers, as well as the infrastructure needed to connect the power to the grid. Companies pledged to pay a different rate for electricity than a regular consumer as part of the agreement.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon signed on to the agreement, which Trump said would help keep utility bills down “very substantially.”

“(It’s) going to have a tremendous impact on electricity costs; we’re bringing down all of the costs,” Trump said.

Electricity rates in the US are rising for several reasons, but some political backlash has focused on vast data centers that power artificial intelligence. Data center buildout in some regions of the country is using more electricity than is available – causing prices to rise sharply. Ratepayers in Mid-Atlantic states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia have seen spikes driven in part by the world’s largest cluster of data centers in Virginia.

But one expert told CNN that Wednesday’s voluntary commitment from companies doesn’t have teeth.

“The White House has the bully pulpit but no legal authority to impose new rate structures that ensure data centers pay their full costs of service,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Law School’s electricity law initiative, said in an email. “The burden should be on utilities and utility regulators to address these issues.”

Administration officials admitted Wednesday that enforcement of the pledge would have to come from states and state utility regulators — the bodies that approve electric rate increases. Several states are starting to adopt regulations and pass laws that would ensure consumers don’t pick up the tab for data center power, but there is no such federal regulation in place.

“This is an agreement between the president and the technology companies for a nationwide framework, and that’s why negotiating separate rate structures with the state utilities is so important,” an administration official told reporters.

Peskoe said the announcement itself is a sign that the White House and companies are feeling public pushback on the issue.

“The noteworthy element here is both the White House and the companies conceding that large-scale data centers can raise everyone’s power bills and someone needs to do something about it,” he said.