‘Aimless’ theatre? As tech giants pledge to protect taxpayers in DC, some question real-world impact

Data center titans Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are headed to the White House next week to sign a bond to fund their energy infrastructure costs, CNBC reported today.

The deal, teased by President Trump during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, comes as the massive demand for artificial intelligence power becomes a sticking point for voters frustrated by rising utility bills.

“Tonight, I am pleased to announce that I have negotiated a new promise to protect taxpayers,” Trump said in his speech. “We are telling the big technology companies that they are responsible for providing their own electricity. They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no human costs will increase…”

Microsoft and OpenAI last month made commitments to cover their electricity bills and act as good neighbors in the communities where they build data centers that power the Internet and artificial intelligence. On Monday Amazon announced a $12 billion data center project in Louisiana where the company vowed to pay its own way for power and other infrastructure.

While the pledges are intended to allay public concerns, some industry veterans say they are solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

“All these announcements about data centers paying for their energy costs are nonsense,” said Brian Janous, former vice president of energy at Microsoft and founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a startup helping to secure clean energy for data centers and other industries.

“They don’t mean anything because data centers have been paying their own way since day one,” he said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday. “You know who else pays for them? Supermarkets. And shopping malls. And car factories. And homeowners. Everyone pays for themselves in their own way.”

Janous argued that electricity rates are designed to ensure that customers bear their fair share of the cost of using electricity, and that adding large customers to the grid actually helps lower prices as they can subsidize system upgrades. “Trying to stop datacenter expansion in the name of reducing the rate of redundancy will only make the problem worse,” he added.

Others disagreed, noting that the country’s aging grid requires long-delayed, expensive upgrades that data centers can’t really afford, especially given the speed at which large amounts of new power need to be deployed.

Another irony is that the Trump administration has blocked wind and solar projects, which are the cheapest sources of new electricity, and is working to weaken federal energy efficiency standards for utilities and equipment. Inflation and higher interest rates also increase energy costs.

What really needs to happen, Janous said in an interview with GeekWire, is that the grid needs to be more efficient in order to meet the increased demand for energy. That is possible without building dozens of new power plants, but it is technically complex and requires cooperation and communication between utilities and their customers.

“It’s hard, but it’s possible,” he said.

While the White House has directed voluntary pledges from Big Tech, Washington state leaders are moving toward a more controlled approach. The state Senate is currently weighing House Bill 2515, which would:

• Direct resources to create pricing or policies that protect taxpayers from short- or long-term financial risks associated with data center energy use.
• It requires companies to issue water, energy and pollution reports on facility operations.
• Set rules for using renewable energy in data centers.

The measure has its next public committee hearing tomorrow.

Rep. Beth Doglio, D-Olympia, is the bill’s lead sponsor and recently testified in favor of statewide standards to ensure “we’re building data centers right in this state.”