Trump wants tech companies to foot bill for new power plants due to AI
President Donald Trump gestures before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, en route to Detroit, Michigan, Jan. 13, 2026.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
The Trump administration and bipartisan state governors on Friday called on the largest U.S. power grid to make big tech companies pay for new power plants.
Electricity prices have boomed on the PJM Interconnection in recent years, due in part to data centers that tech companies have built to train and power artificial intelligence.
The PJM network serves more than 65 million people in 13 states and Washington, DC. Its service area includes Northern Virginia, the world’s largest data center market.
The Trump administration and the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Virginia signed an agreement calling for tech companies to pay for new power plants built at PJM. Tech companies will provide $15 billion in next-generation funding for the grid, according to a report management statement.
They also called on PJM to hold an emergency capacity tender to procure this power. Ministry of Energy. They said PJM should also limit the amount existing power plants can demand in the grid capacity market to protect taxpayers.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the administration is spearheading an unprecedented bipartisan effort to encourage PJM to correct past power outage failures, prevent price increases and reduce the risk of blackouts,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said. he said.
Electricity bills are rising in many parts of the United States, despite Trump promising to lower energy prices during his presidential campaign. This outcome played a key role in Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger’s landslide victories in the gubernatorial races of New Jersey and Virginia, respectively.
The price of securing power capacity at PJM has exploded in recent years, with $23 billion attributable to data centers, according to watchdog Monitoring Analytics. These costs are passed on to consumers. This amounts to a “tremendous transfer of wealth”, he told watchdog PJM. November letter.
PJM was six gigawatts behind its 2027 reliability requirement in its most recent auction. Six gigawatts is equivalent to six large nuclear power plants.
Abe Silverman, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who served as general counsel to New Jersey’s utilities board from 2019 to 2023 under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, said power outages increase the likelihood of outages.
“Instead of a once-every-10-year power outage, we’re looking at something more frequent,” Silverman said.
