Big tech executives met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to sign a nonbinding pledge to address consumers’ growing concerns about electricity price hikes amid the nationwide data center boom.
The White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge calls on tech companies to generate the energy required by their data centers, pay for the infrastructure upgrades necessary to increase the electricity grid’s capacity, negotiate rates with utility companies and hire local labor to help the local economy, Michael Kratsios, Trump’s lead science and technology adviser, told reporters ahead of the meeting.
“Data centers, they developed a little bit of a bad … they need some PR help, because people think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up,” Trump said Wednesday.