Donald Trump announced Thursday that roughly 200 companies have signed a voluntary commitment to shield American consumers from the rising electricity costs tied to artificial intelligence datacenter expansion, marking a significant expansion of a pledge first floated in March.
The so-called Ratepayer Protection Pledge now covers utilities and power providers that serve 80 percent of U.S. households and businesses, according to the White House. Trump made the announcement at EPA headquarters alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, joined by governors including Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Spencer Cox of Utah and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.
Twenty-three Republican governors have now committed to the plan, along with major utilities like NextEra and Duke Energy, datacenter developers, and electricity cooperatives. The original signatories in March included Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon.
"Electricity rates for 80 percent of the power distributed in America are now being kept in check by the plan," Trump said during remarks at the event.
The pledge promises that companies will absorb their own infrastructure costs rather than pass them to ratepayers. Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, framed the commitment as ensuring families see relief while strengthening America's competitive position in artificial intelligence development.
Yet the non-binding nature of the pledge has drawn sharp criticism from environmental groups and lawmakers concerned about rising utility costs. Through June, residential electricity prices climbed 4 percent year-over-year, government data shows.
The backlash reflects broader anxieties about the AI boom and its infrastructure demands, particularly as electricity bills rise heading into midterm elections. More than a dozen states have weighed datacenter moratoriums, and New York became the first state to enact a temporary ban this month. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed federal restrictions, while Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas called for a moratorium on rural datacenter development before joining the pledge himself.
Environmental advocates remain deeply skeptical. Patrick Drupp of the Sierra Club called the announcement a "paper-thin commitment" that fails to address families struggling with soaring bills. Lena Moffitt of Evergreen Action dismissed it as a "photo op with big tech" that won't reduce electric bills, noting that corporations are essentially writing their own rules without real enforcement mechanisms.
Author James Rodriguez: "A voluntary pledge covering 80 percent of the power grid sounds impressive until you remember that 'voluntary' and 'binding' are opposites when families are seeing their monthly bills spike."
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