President Donald Trump on Thursday had governors and electricity companies join a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers. The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water, and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires.
Concerns about Data Centers
Concerns about data centers cross party lines, with voters worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools, and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable. Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners.
The White House said that nearly 200 additional stakeholders, including utilities, data center developers, and governors, have committed to the pledge. The pledge would cover 80% of all power delivered to U.S. households and businesses. A slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and creating national security risks.
Opposition to Data Centers
Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue, with opposition spreading into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and leading to frustration with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump’s nonbinding pledge. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election.
Already, dozens of state legislatures or utility commissions have moved to put in place requirements that data centers pay the cost of their electricity, including new power plants or transmission system upgrades. Tech companies are pushing growth of data centers, with Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out.
Original reporting: 40/29 / KHBS (NW Arkansas) — read the source article.
