Republican lawmakers welcomed President Donald Trump’s plan, announced during his State of the Union address Tuesday, to protect ratepayers from footing the bill for energy hungry data centers.
The president, facing blowback from rising power prices in certain parts of the country, said tech companies would be signing a pledge to pay for the electricity costs of their data centers.
“This is a good thing. We ought to put that into law,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “I’m sure these big companies that are willing to pledge that they’re not going to raise electricity rates, they’ll build their own power supply — I would support legislation to do that.”
The data center news stood out in a speech that was otherwise sparse with details on energy policy, even if Trump did nod to lower gasoline prices and briefly mentioned Venezuelan oil.
