The White House is preparing to gather electric utility companies and data center developers for a voluntary commitment aimed at preventing the rapid rise in electricity demand from artificial intelligence from driving up power bills for everyday consumers and businesses, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.
An announcement event is expected within the next few weeks, with multiple companies set to participate and pledge that existing ratepayers will not be left footing the bill for AI-driven infrastructure expansion. The list of attendees is still being put together, sources said.
The White House did not respond when asked for comment.
Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and their surging power needs have led regulators, consumer advocates, and state lawmakers across the country to raise alarms that ordinary households could end up covering the cost of grid upgrades that primarily benefit some of the world’s biggest technology companies. That backdrop has fueled skepticism about whether any voluntary pledge will result in meaningful action or amount to little more than a public relations gesture.
President Donald Trump’s administration has been pushing hard to speed up the buildout of AI infrastructure and is eager to sidestep any political fallout that could come from higher electricity bills hitting American families.
Earlier this year, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed a voluntary “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” at a White House ceremony. Through that agreement, the companies committed to paying for the electricity infrastructure their AI operations require rather than shifting those expenses onto existing utility customers. That included contributions toward new power generation, grid upgrades, and costs related to reserved but unused capacity.
The upcoming event is expected to expand on those earlier commitments by pulling in electric utilities, companies that construct and run data centers on behalf of major tech firms, and governors from states that are at the forefront of building out the power infrastructure needed to handle the anticipated surge in electricity demand.
Administration officials have maintained that the United States can only win the global competition in artificial intelligence by rapidly growing its electricity generation and transmission capacity — but that consumers should not be made to pay for that growth. The White House has framed the initiative as a way to reassure the public that expanding AI investment does not have to mean higher energy costs.
