Major tech firms including Google, Amazon and OpenAI have signed an agreement with the White House to bear all the costs associated with new energy infrastructure needed to power their ever-expanding data centres.

Large data centres can consume the power equivalent to the needs of tens of thousands of homes every year. As the sector expands, these large, site-specific demands can add pressure to local parts of the grid and create challenges around connecting new developments. 

The rapid growth in the number of data centres across the US, driven by the AI boom, has seen electricity prices for average Americans rise by 6-7% over the previous 12 months. With recent events in the Middle East disrupting oil supply chains, there are concerns that energy prices could rise even further, endangering the electoral chances of Republican candidates already beset with concerns from voters about the cost-of-living crisis.

President Donald Trump met with representatives of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI on Wednesday, who all signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge. The tech giants agreed to cover the cost of all power delivery infrastructure upgrades required for their data centres. But because the pledge is a voluntary agreement and has no legislation behind it, the commitment is largely symbolic, and it has yet to be seen how strictly the firms adhere to the deal.

Under the pledge, the firms will need to negotiate separate rate structures with utilities and state governments, and commit to pay these rates for the power and related infrastructure brought online to service their data centres, whether they use the electricity or not.

“The data centre boom should be leveraged to address affordability and benefit all American households and businesses,” Trump said. “These measures will ensure that Americans are protected from higher energy prices, benefit from grid upgrades and increased grid resilience, and benefit from this technological boom.”

Since taking office, Trump has made efforts to boost oil extraction across US territory and claims to have saved 74 coal power plants, many of which were supposed to shut down due to high carbon emissions and the negative impact on local air quality. But he has also drastically cut subsidies for renewables such as wind and solar, which typically produce electricity at cheaper prices than their fossil fuel counterparts.

In recent years, tech giants have announced plans to invest in nuclear energy as a way to help power their AI efforts. In October, Amazon said it would build a small modular reactor facility in Washington state to provide carbon-free energy for its data centres.