Tech Bosses to Meet at White House, Pledge Their Data Centers Won’t Boost Electricity Bills

by Jacki Thrapp, The Epoch Times.com, February 26, 2026

Leaders in big tech are expected to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House next week to pledge that their data centers will not increase the energy bills of Americans living near the facilities.

“Major tech companies will join President Trump at the White House next week to formally sign the Rate Payer Protection Pledge that he announced during his historic State of the Union address,” a White House official told The Epoch Times on Feb. 25.

The March 4 event will include representatives from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI.

The initiative will require massive companies to build, bring, or buy their own power supply for new artificial intelligence data centers in order to avoid causing Americans’ electricity bills to skyrocket.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring American AI dominance while simultaneously lowering costs for working families,” the White House official added on Wednesday.

Trump first revealed the plans during his wide-ranging and record-breaking State of the Union address at the Capitol on Feb. 24.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said on Tuesday night. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up and, in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down.”

In July 2025, Trump issued an executive order aimed at streamlining data center projects in America.

“These plans include artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and infrastructure that powers them, including high‑voltage transmission lines and other equipment,” the executive order said. “It will be a priority of my administration to facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure by easing federal regulatory burdens.”

Any data center project must have more than “100 megawatts (MW) of new load dedicated to AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic data generation,” the order stated.

Surging electricity bills caused by data center development was one of the key issues in the November gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

Customers in New Jersey paid an average of 19 percent more for energy in 2025 compared with 2024.

Virginia customers who already experienced 30 percent hikes from 2020 to 2023 will likely see rate increases up to 21 percent by 2027.

Big tech is planning a series of data center projects, including a 400 megawatt natural gas plant by Meta in New Albany, Ohio, while Energy Northwest and Amazon plan to build a Cascade Advanced Energy Facility near Richland, Washington.
 

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