The growing backlash to data centers, and the rising electricity bills that accompany them, has become difficult for politicians to ignore. 

President Donald Trump is now the latest to address the issue. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump announced what he called a “ratepayer protection pledge,” for which the White House will tell “major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs.”

“We have an old grid,” Trump said. “It could never handle the kind of numbers, the amount of electricity that’s needed.”

Under the agreement, tech companies can build their own power plants, which Trump says will protect community electricity prices from going up. “In many cases,” he added, “prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down.”

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Another empty promise?

To climate experts, though, that pledge sounds like another empty promise from the president, just like his campaign vow to reduce Americans’ utility costs.

One of Trump’s key campaign promises was to slash Americans’ energy bills in half within the first year of his presidency. 

But in reality, electricity bills rose 13% nationally by the end of 2025, according to Climate Power, a climate advocacy organization.

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