This week, Donald Trump gathered the heads of the largest US tech companies at the White House to sign the «Taxpayer Protection Pledge.»
This is a voluntary commitment by companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI to build, finance, or purchase their own power plants and cover all costs of upgrading the infrastructure associated with their data centers, so that these costs are not passed on to ordinary American households.
In this way, the government is trying to reduce the growing political responsibility of the Trump administration, which insisted on increased investment in artificial intelligence and the development of data center infrastructure.
As a result, average electricity prices in the US have risen by more than 6%, and in states like Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio, where large numbers of data centers are concentrated, rates have risen by 12-16% over the past year.
Companies will now negotiate separate rate agreements with utilities and state governments and agree to pay those rates for the electricity and associated infrastructure connected to serve their data centers, whether they use the electricity or not.
While Trump’s supporters are praising his initiative, some experts are questioning the wisdom of the agreement. Ari Pescow, director of the Electric Power Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, stated that the White House is «placing this responsibility on the wrong people.»
Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, noted that the voluntary agreement contains no enforcement mechanisms and provides taxpayers with no way to verify whether companies are fulfilling their obligations. The climate group 350.org called the pledge «a theatrical stunt with no enforcement mechanism.»