Gop Governors, Utilities Join Trump Data Center Pledge

President Donald Trump is expanding his data center pledge to include some Republican governors and several large utilities, according to state officials and industry executives.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe have all signed the White House’s so-called Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a set of principles committing data center developers to pay for their fair share of energy and water use, along with electric grid improvements and maintenance, according to officials in each state. Electric utilities are also expected to sign the pledge, according to seven people familiar with the plans.

The White House declined to confirm the signatories, but said the pledge was drawing new support. “There is nothing to announce at this time, but President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge has been so impactful that additional stakeholders also want to sign it,” a White House official said in a statement.

It's the Trump administration's latest attempt to quell public concerns over artificial intelligence and rising energy prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average electricity prices have risen 4 percent in the last 12 months, outpacing overall U.S. inflation, although the increase in power bills cooled last month. Federal forecasts say the cost is expected to rise even further in the coming years.

The participation of GOP governors alongside Trump, which has not been previously reported, underscores the political liability that data centers have posed to elected officials across the country.

Staffers for several Democratic governors said the White House did not reach out to Democrats to sign the pledge. A White House spokesperson declined to comment when asked about contact with Democratic governors.

A spokesperson for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who signed an executive order Tuesday to pause most new hyperscale data center construction in the state, accused the White House of politicizing a matter that has galvanized elected officials from both parties.

“It’s unfortunately no surprise that this Administration would play partisan politics on such a critical issue,” spokesperson Ken Lovett said in a statement. “While Washington Republicans play politics and make pledges they won’t keep, Governor Hochul is taking real action to keep the lights on and costs down for New Yorkers.”

The nonbinding pledge was originally signed at a White House event in March by the heads of seven tech companies, who committed to cover the full costs associated with powering their data centers. An event for the latest iteration of signatories scheduled for this week has been delayed, according to four people familiar with the plan who were granted anonymity to discuss the non-public planning.

Those people, along with three other people aware of the plans, said large utilities are expected to sign the pledge. The utilities, such as Southern Co., Duke Energy and Exelon, operate in regional grids that have some of the highest data center saturation in the nation, which has raised worries over ballooning power prices.

Dani Marx, a spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute lobbying group that represents investor-owned utilities, referred questions about its members’ participation to the White House.

Some of the new signees have gotten ahead of the White House: Gianforte announced last week that he had signed the pledge. Gordon and Kehoe have also both signed it, according to spokespeople from their offices.

The office of one Democratic governor, Jared Polis of Colorado, said there had been no outreach from the White House, even though Polis agrees with its merits.

“With or without this pledge, the Governor’s north star has always been that any data center development must lower energy costs for Coloradans and save people money on energy,” said spokesperson Eric Maruyama.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein also had not received any word from the Trump administration, spokesperson Kate Schmidt said in an email. She said the White House pledge aligns with Stein’s Energy Policy Task Force and that the Democratic governor believes data centers “need to pay their way so that North Carolina residents don’t bear the costs of their massive energy consumption.”

Member states of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of mostly-Democratic governors, have enacted policies and made commitments that exceed Trump’s pledge, said Nikki Burnett, a spokesperson with the group. She cited Hochul’s action along with initiatives in Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Some Democratic governors have answered the Trump administration’s calls to address cost issues together. In January, Trump and a bipartisan group of governors directly called on the PJM Interconnection, the largest power grid operator in the United States, to hold an emergency auction for tech companies to buy power in a bid to tame skyrocketing prices in the region.

In March, executives from the tech companies including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft signed their own pledge to pay the full cost of electric infrastructure for their data centers. That pledge also saw companies commit to working with grid operators to contribute to reliability and offering backup power to prevent blackouts.

While the framework seeks to protect customers from electricity rate increases amid skyrocketing energy demand, in part prompted by data centers, enforcement of its provisions largely falls to state legislatures and utility commissions.

Tech companies under the pledge were also tasked with negotiating rate structures with utilities and state governments.

Lawmakers in the House are seeking to codify the president’s pledge into law. Some Democratic lawmakers, however, have sought to go further, including calls for a nationwide data center moratorium.