The pledge by President Donald Trump and seven technology giants to shield energy ratepayers from data center costs is facing an immediate test in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions.
Trump administration officials this week said artificial intelligence and cloud computing companies signing the “ratepayer protection pledge” — Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon — will pay for the electricity generation and power lines feeding their hulking computing hubs.
Turning that promise of consumer protection into a reality could be impossible for the 67 million people from northern Virginia to Chicago served by the regional grid PJM Interconnection.
One project helps tell that story. Project 237 — a proposed $1.7 billion super-high-voltage transmission line — will deliver power across 221 miles from West Virginia into central Pennsylvania. It’s part of $11.8 billion in newly approved transmission line construction in PJM, most of it for data centers.
