WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday will have governors and electricity companies join a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers — a sign of how the artificial intelligence build- out has become a lightning rod of controversy before the midterm elections. The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires. It’s unclear, with electricity demand already growing, whether consumers would see genuine savings. Trump described the pledge several months ago as “PR help” at a time when the broader social contract is being rewritten by AI, a technology that is evolving so quickly in its capabilities that governments are struggling over how to provide insight. He plans to discuss the expansion of the pledge at the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday. “The president is ensuring the American people are never left footing the bill so private companies can benefit,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters before the president’s remarks. The White House said that nearly 200 additional stakeholders, including utilities, data center developers and governors, have committed to the pledge. The pledge would cover 80 per cent of all power delivered to U.S. households and businesses. A slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and create national security risks. But AI’s increasing ability to perform basic tasks — such as driving, analyzing spreadsheets and writing software — also potentially threatens millions of jobs. That has created mounting public resistance as tech companies concentrate historic levels of wealth in the hands of a select group of tycoons. The increased electricity demand could cause monthly utility bills to rise by 15 per cent to 40 per cent by 2030, according to a recent analysis by ICF, a consulting and technology services company. Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue. Voters are worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable. Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners. The opposition has spread into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and led to frustration with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump’s nonbinding pledge. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election. “They are owned by the richest men in the world,” she said of data centers. “We’re all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the Wild West of data centers.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an order to ban construction of large server warehouses in her state for a year. In May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law that he said would prevent utilities from passing along energy costs from data centers to residential and small-business customers. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose computer chips are enabling the AI revolution, said America’s weakness is a lack of power generation for further developing the technology. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon are among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out. Josh Boak, The Associated Press
