President Donald Trump announced yesterday that his administration will expand the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to cover 80% of all power delivered to businesses and homes across the country, something he said will propel an “America-first” energy agenda.
The Ratepayer Protection Pledge, introduced in March, aims to protect American consumers from higher electricity bills by ensuring data center developers pay for the grid infrastructure upgrades needed for its high-energy plans.
“We are here today to continue the incredible progress we're making in communities nationwide to ensure that as new data centers go up…electricity bills for American families will actually come down,” Trump said.
These data centers and electric manufacturing plants, though described by Trump as “incredible,” require nearly double the electricity currently available. This new protection plan, he said, would allow states to empower technological development without worrying about the additional energy costs that come with it.
“You're going to be building your own data centers, and you're going to build your own electric plants,” Trump said. “You're essentially becoming a utility.”
With the rise of new data centers and power plants, Trump said his administration predicts “leftover” energy will be redirected into states’ grids, lowering electricity costs.
“The rates are going to go down,” the president reassured Americans.
President Trump said this plan will also allow American tech companies to build all the energy infrastructure it needs to meet the growing demands state grids are currently handling. Trump said this partnership between companies and states is crucial.
“The American innovators and consumers thrive to win together because we're insisting that AI data centers and big tech companies pay their own way, and that's what they're doing,” Trump said. “And they're happy to do it.”
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright agreed that cooperation is a key part of this protection plan. With Americans feeling the effects of rising energy costs, while also wanting to maintain the country’s lead as a tech superpower, this plan allows them to “have it all,” he said.
“This allows America to maintain our lead in artificial intelligence by driving rapid investment in our country, rapid investment in new power infrastructure and unfettered deterrence with the developers of data centers that have stopped the rises of electricity prices where these investments have been made,” Wright said.
Wright said the states that have prioritized developing new power infrastructure are the ones that have seen the fastest decline in prices because of the safety net provided by the Ratepayer Protection Plan.
“They've allowed data centers to be built, and then the power production that comes with them,” he said. “This has protected their ratepayers and delivered jobs and opportunity and relief from taxes.”
