Trump And Ai Leaders Tout His ‘build Your Own Power Plant’ Pledge

President Donald Trump joined leaders of several of the nation’s most powerful tech companies Wednesday in sending a message to cost-weary voters: The U.S. can win the artificial intelligence race without straining Americans’ wallets.

But the “ratepayer protection pledge” that Trump touted in the White House, alongside executives from companies including Amazon, Google and OpenAI, is unlikely to protect ordinary consumers from all of the electricity price increases driven by the rapid expansion of AI data centers, energy experts have told POLITICO. Trump’s effort to promote his energy-affordability message is also running up against the massive public attention focused on his war in Iran, a conflict that has inflamed concerns about the cost of living.

Even so, Trump said the commitments will help lower electricity bills for Americans and provide “some PR help” to calm local opposition that has stalled and scrapped data center projects.

“We're here this afternoon for a historic signing that will help keep down utility bills very, very substantially and electricity prices for millions of Americans,” Trump said from the White House event, where he was joined by GOP lawmakers and tech leaders. “They're not going to be going up. They're going to be actually going down.”

While Trump boasted prices would fall, he acknowledged, “Unfortunately, it will take a little time to get there.” But he contended that the pledge the companies signed would more than cover the supplies and cost of delivering electricity their data centers use.

Speaking alongside Trump, Energy Secretary Chris Wright emphasized that the tech companies represented at the roundtable were on board with the administration’s push to lower energy costs for consumers.

“These companies are smart, they're powerful, they're strong,” said Wright. “All of them have spent money to these noble causes.”

The pledge these companies agreed to — including a promise to build or provide their own electricity supplies — mirrors steps that companies like Microsoft, Anthropic and Google have previously committed to as they seek the electricity to power hundreds of planned data hubs across the country. Some big data center developers have already announced plans to build power plants or pay to reopen old ones as they seek to dominate the future of AI.

And the pact leaves it to tech companies, utilities and state officials — outside the control of the federal government — to determine how to assign a range of costs to the broader power grid that show up in customers’ electricity bills.

“We're committed to continuing to invest to add capacity where we build," Google President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat said at the event. "To protect American rate payers, we're committed not only to pay for 100 percent of the energy we use, but very importantly, the infrastructure to support that growth, whether or not we end up using that energy."

Experts in the energy markets have cautioned that the pledge doesn’t address some key ways in which the fast construction of data centers threatens to raise people’s power bills. Those include increased competition for power plant fuels such as natural gas and components such as gas turbines, as well as Trump’s tariffs on commodities.

Administration officials also acknowledged Wednesday that the companies’ pledge is voluntary, even though Trump told reporters last week that “I made it mandatory where they have to build their own electric power plant.”

Besides Amazon, Google and OpenAI, executives from Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Elon Musk’s company xAI attended Wednesday’s White House event. So did Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who is leading the effort with Wright, flanked by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio). White House artificial intelligence “czar” David Sacks, who largely wrote Trump’s executive order blocking states from regulating AI, was also in attendance.

The attendees did not include Anthropic, an AI startup that plans to spend $50 billion on AI infrastructure build-outs and is in the middle of a fierce dispute with the Trump administration over ethical guidelines for its work with the Pentagon.

“Data center infrastructure is a foundation of the internet and essential to maintaining America’s edge in artificial intelligence,” Kratsios told reporters Wednesday. Building out the infrastructure needed to unleash AI dominance globally is a cornerstone of Trump’s July AI Action Plan, which expressed concern about stagnated energy capacity in the U.S. compared with China’s decades-long grid modernization strategy.

The pledge attempts to reverse the rising costs that have driven up residential electricity rates nationwide an average of six percent nationwide in December compared with one year earlier, partly due to surging AI-driven power demand.

To that end, the signers agreed to build, buy or bring new electricity generation and pay the full cost of infrastructure upgrades needed to serve their data centers.

The companies also said they would negotiate with power companies and grid regulators so that the data centers would pay different rates than residential and industrial customers; agree to pay for power even if they don’t use it; hire and train local workers near the data centers; and invest in a more durable grid by contributing resources for backup power generation.

The effort follows on several similar commitments tech companies like Microsoft and Anthropic made to bring additional electricity generation online and pay for grid upgrades to support their data centers. Administration officials said elements of those firms’ earlier announcements emanated from months of dialogue with the administration about consumer electricity rates.

Executives from several tech companies said the White House pledges offer a boost to their existing undertakings. “Amazon is signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to reinforce our commitment to paying our full energy costs and ensuring our data centers do not increase electricity bills for consumers,” Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, said in a statement issued before the signing ceremony.

While acknowledging the market realities facing the promises, administration officials said local communities could hold tech companies accountable for their now-public commitments.

And they expressed hope that a separate statement of principles that 13 governors from the East Coast and Midwest signed in January would get their state regulators playing by similar rules.

“We're not worried about people going rogue or cowboy on it,” a senior White House official told reporters. The official was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speculate publicly on the terms of the deal.

Taken together, the public vows are an attempt to blunt consumer backlash to data centers over the perception that the energy-hungry facilities are driving electricity prices higher. A POLITICO Poll conducted in January found Americans tagged rising power costs as the top drawback to building new data centers.

Tamping down electricity prices motivated Trump’s actions, White House National Energy Dominance Council senior adviser Nick Elliot said at a Tuesday event in Washington. Cost-of-living concerns have imperiled Trump and Republicans’ hold on Congress in the November midterm elections: The POLITICO Poll showed slightly more Americans believe the Democratic Party ismore likely to protect them from higher energy bills, rather than Republicans.

“It's easy to sell fear. And unfortunately, we have a lot of fear salesmen. The opposition party right now is very good at selling fear,” the senior White House official said. “What we're trying to do is not just sell reassurance, but bring reassurance.”