By Jarrett Renshaw and Laila Kearney
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) – The White House plans to bring together utility companies and data center developers to make a voluntary pledge designed to ensure that rapid growth in electricity demand from artificial intelligence does not drive up power bills for households and businesses, according to three people familiar with the plans.
An event to announce the initiative is expected in the coming weeks, with several companies taking part and vowing to protect current ratepayers from shouldering all the costs of AI expansion. The guest list is still being finalized, the sources said.
Surging demand from power-hungry data centers has prompted regulators, consumer advocates and lawmakers in several states to warn that households could end up subsidizing grid upgrades needed to serve some of the world’s largest technology companies, raising questions over whether the pledge will deliver concrete commitments or remain largely symbolic.
As President Donald Trump’s administration pushes to accelerate the expansion of AI infrastructure, it hopes to avoid a political backlash over rising electricity bills.
Earlier this year, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI signed a voluntary “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” at a White House ceremony, committing to finance the electricity infrastructure needed for their AI projects rather than passing those costs on to existing utility customers.
The companies agreed to help pay for new power generation, grid upgrades and other costs tied to their data centers, including unused reserved capacity. The White House said the commitments were designed to prevent households from subsidizing the growth of AI infrastructure.
“President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge has been so impactful that additional stakeholders also want to sign it,” a White House official told Reuters.
The new event is expected to broaden those commitments by bringing together electric utilities, companies that build and operate data centers on behalf of Big Tech, and governors of states leading the expansion of the power infrastructure needed to accommodate the expected surge in electricity demand, the people familiar with the plans said.
The White House has argued that the United States can win the global AI race only by rapidly expanding electricity generation and transmission, while maintaining that consumers should not bear the financial burden of that buildout. Administration officials have cast the initiative as an effort to reassure voters that AI investment and lower energy costs can coexist.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Laila Kearney; additional reporting by Courtney Rozen and Sergio Non; Editing by Nia Williams)
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