President Donald Trump promised to lower electricity bills in his State of the Union address, though with AI data centre construction ramping up, this could be more easily said than done.
During his address to Congress on Tuesday, Mr Trump sought to address concerns from many Americans seeing a spike in electricity bills driven by several factors, including energy-guzzling data centres.
"I’m pleased to announce that I have negotiated the new ratepayer protection pledge," he said. "We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs."
Mr Trump said data centre companies, as well as technology firms building their own data centres, could "build their own power plants", which in turn might cause electricity prices to "go down for the community".
Recent polls indicate Mr Trump's words are likely to be met with scepticism and even opposition due to US sentiment about data centres and AI.
According to Echelon Insights, 41 per cent of those surveyed said they'd be less likely to support the construction of a data centre in their community if they knew it would be used to support AI infrastructure, while only 18 per cent said they'd be more likely to support it.
Those numbers come months after a report from the non-partisan Pew Research Centre showed that Americans have been paying increasingly higher prices to keep the lights on in recent years. The same report cites a Carnegie Mellon University study that predicts data centres could be a factor in “an 8 per cent increase in the average US electricity bill by 2030".
Regardless of what's behind the souring of US public sentiment on AI and data centres, it seems the Trump White House is well aware of the concerns. On paper, the electricity ratepayer protection pledge is not a bad one.
But making a pledge about electricity generation and actually getting companies to sign on to it are two different things. So far, the White House has not said if any data centre or tech firms have agreed to always build their own power plants.
Microsoft president and chairman Brad Smith, a strong proponent of AI and data centre investment, praised the pledge but seemed to stop short of fully committing to it.
"The ratepayer protection pledge is an important step," he told ABC News. "We appreciate the administration's work to ensure that data centres don't contribute to higher electricity prices for consumers."
And while it might be easy to insist that technology and data centre companies supply their own power needs, it's not always financially feasible for them to do so.
Microsoft's announcement that it would help restart the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania might seem like an illustration of what Mr Trump is talking about. But the plan is actually part of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy, who, along with taxpayers, will share the burden of operating the reactor.
Just hours before Mr Trump promised to lower electricity costs, Paula Glover, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, said power costs are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of opposition to data centres.
"Communities are saying these [data centres] will take our land, our water, and yes it's going to make our energy more expensive, and it's already expensive by the way, so we don't want this thing," she told a panel discussion about the US energy grid at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. "We're at a tipping point, and to ignore that reaction is not smart," she added.
Proponents of data centres say fears about water consumption, noise and land use are overblown. Ross Snare, who serves as chairman of Prince William County, Virginia's Chamber of Commerce, said there are plenty of upsides to having data centres.
"Last year alone Prince William County made about $294 million off of data centre taxes," he explained during an interview with The National. "That revenue means that we're going to have critical investments in schools, in our infrastructure and public safety, along with parks and recreation and things like that."
With more than 600 data centres within its borders, Virginia is considered by many to be the data centre capital of the world. Yet even Mr Snare said he empathised with residents' expressions of concern about noise and electricity bills in recent years.
"The big issue that I think people need to realise is that the industry is willing to work with residents. I mean, that's going to be the biggest thing coming out of this, is the industry wants to address those problems, and they want to be good neighbours," he said, referring to regulations in Prince William County which sought to minimise noise problems.
More broadly, however, the complexity of the energy industry and utilities throughout the US probably means that simple pledges and lofty platitudes like those mentioned in Mr Trump's address will need more attention over time.
