The White House wants AI companies to cover rising interest rates. Most have already said they will.

The proliferation of AI data centers connected to the national power grid has increased consumer electricity prices, pushing the national average price of electricity up more than 6% last year.

It’s not a good look for incumbents facing elections this fall, and President Donald Trump addressed the issue in his State of the Union address last night.

“We are telling the major technology companies that they have an obligation to meet their own power needs,” Trump said. “They can build their own power plant as part of the plant, so no one’s prices go up.”

No need to tell the hyperscaler in question. They have publicly pledged in recent weeks to cover their electricity costs by building their own power source, paying higher rates, or both, as part of a broader effort to address public relations issues surrounding data center expansion and win over a skeptical community.

On January 11, Microsoft announced a policy to “ensure that the electricity costs of servicing our data centers are not passed on to residential customers.” On January 26, OpenAI pledged to “pay our own energy costs to ensure that energy prices do not rise as a result of our operations.” On February 11, Anthropic made the same promise, saying it would “cover electricity price increases faced by consumers in our data centers.” Yesterday, Google announced the world’s largest battery project to power a data center in Minnesota.

It’s not yet known what these promises actually mean or who will decide which data centers are responsible for which price increases. The White House has not released the contents of the proposed pledge.

“Handshake agreements with big tech companies on data center costs are not enough,” Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly said on social media. “Americans need assurances that energy prices don’t skyrocket and that communities can have a say.”

White House press secretary Taylor Rodgers said the companies will send representatives next week to formally sign the pledge at the White House. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI are reportedly scheduled to attend. However, no company has confirmed attendance.

Even if technology companies promise to cover electricity costs, on-site power plants may not be a panacea. This could still have a negative impact on the surrounding environment and, depending on how companies power their computing, could put stress on natural gas, turbine, solar power and battery supply chains.