President Donald Trump on Thursday expanded his nonbinding plan to curb consumer impacts of power-guzzling data centers as electricity and fuel prices jump ahead of the midterm elections.
Hundreds more companies and almost half the nation’s governors — all Republicans — signed Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which calls for limiting electricity price increases on homeowners amid the data center boom.
“We know that the data centers and AI are dramatically increasing the demand for electricity,” Trump said during an event at EPA headquarters. “It’s only fair that the cost of building the new infrastructure required to meet this demand should be borne by the corporations themselves, not by the American consumers and the American patriots.”
Domestically, opposition to data centers has been steadily growing. A POLITICO Poll this month found that more people now oppose nearby data centers than support them, according to surveys conducted by the independent polling organization Public First. The new poll found that 41 percent of Americans would oppose a data center being built within 3 miles of where they live. That’s up from 28 percent in a January survey, while the number supporting those projects dropped during the same period, from 37 percent to 24 percent.
