Trump Announces 'Ratepayer Protection Pledge' Expansion Amid AI Datacenter Backlash

Donald Trump has announced that about 200 entities have signed on to his non-binding “Ratepayer Protection Pledge”, expanding a voluntary commitment which claims to ensure US consumers will not bear the cost of the AI datacenter build-out.

Trump delivered remarks on Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters, alongside Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator, and Chris Wright, the energy secretary. Other attenders included governors who signed on to the pledge, including Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Spencer Cox of Utah and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.

The pledge, first announced in March, was initially signed by seven tech companies: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon. It will now cover companies delivering 80% of all power to US homes and businesses, according to the White House.

“We have kept rates down, way down,” said Trump.

Twenty-three Republican governors have signed on to the scheme, Trump announced on Thursday, as have major utilities including Nextera and Duke Energy, datacenter developers and electricity cooperatives.

“Electricity rates for 80% of the power distributed in America are now being kept in check by the plan,” Trump said at a press conference.

The announcement came amid a growing backlash to the artificial intelligence boom and the datacenters powering it, as electricity bills rise ahead of November’s midterm elections. In June, utility prices were up 4% year-over-year, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

On Thursday, Trump said “radical left communists” are the ones who “want to shut down all new development, kill our most successful industries, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, and surrender the AI race to China”.

Yet opposition to datacenters has become a bipartisan issue, with voters concerned about not only utility rates, but also the environmental and social impacts of AI.

More than a dozen states have considered moratoria on datacenters, and New York became the first US state to enact a temporary ban this month. Senator Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a representative, have also proposed a national moratorium. And on Thursday, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, called for a ban on datacenter development in rural Texas; he is now among the governors who signed on to the pledge.

The pledge will “ensure everyone involved in building and powering data centers covers their own costs instead of passing them on to American families”, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, told the Guardian.

“The President’s bold action is turning datacenters into engines of growth for local communities, while cementing America’s dominance in the global AI race,” Rogers said.

Green groups are largely unimpressed with the non-binding pledge.

“The American people don’t care about the weak pledges and empty promises; they need relief from soaring energy bills month after month and real action from these companies to pay their fair share and bring down high costs,” said Patrick Drupp, climate policy director at the national environmental advocacy organization Sierra Club. “Today’s pledge is a paper-thin commitment to families who are struggling to keep the lights on as bills soar. The companies signing on have done nothing to show their work on how they will lower costs.”

Lena Moffitt, executive director of climate advocacy organization Evergreen Action, called Trump’s announcement a “photo op with big tech” that “won’t lower a single family’s electric bill”.

“Trump promised again and again to cut Americans’ energy costs, but instead he’s letting the same corporations driving up demand write their own rules – a voluntary pledge with no teeth and no consequences if they break it,” she said.