The White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge Passes 300 Signers as Prime Data Centers Joins, but It Is Still Voluntary
The White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which asks data center builders to pay for the power and grid upgrades they need instead of passing the bill to households, now has more than 300 signers. Dallas-based developer Prime Data Centers added its name on November 10. The list on whitehouse.gov now spans four groups: state governors, hyperscalers and AI companies, utilities and cooperatives, and the developers who put up the buildings.
The pledge has grown fast since March. It still carries no penalty for breaking it.
From seven companies to four groups
President Trump announced the pledge by proclamation on March 4, 2026. That day, seven companies signed: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon. The proclamation said hyperscalers and AI companies would “build, bring, or buy” the new generation they need and pay for all new power delivery upgrades to serve their data centers.
The core commitments:
- Pay for all new transmission and distribution upgrades a data center requires, including network upgrade costs.
- Negotiate separate rate structures with utilities and state governments wherever they build, and pay those rates for the power and infrastructure brought online for them whether they use the electricity or not.
- Invest in the communities that host the sites, and make backup power available to the grid in emergencies.
In the summer the White House widened the pledge to utilities, electric cooperatives and governors. It said at the time that signers would cover about 80% of the power delivered in the country, a figure that comes from the administration.
What Prime signed up for
Prime builds hyperscale and custom data centers for large tenants. It says it will apply five principles across its US portfolio, including dedicated rate structures that make it pay for the power and infrastructure built for its sites regardless of how much it uses, and local hiring and workforce programs. It plans to work out the details utility by utility.
Developers matter here because they often sign the grid interconnection deals before a tenant is named. A pledge that only bound the tech giants would miss the companies that actually ask utilities for capacity.
The enforcement gap
The pledge is a promise, not a rule. Electricity rates are set by state utility commissions, and the federal government doesn’t set retail prices. Whether data centers really pay their way gets decided in rate cases, special tariffs and interconnection agreements, state by state. That’s why the White House brought governors in.
Some in Congress want more than a promise. Senator Marsha Blackburn has backed putting the pledge into law as part of a broader national AI strategy. No such bill has passed.
The federal side is also pushing the other way: speeding up power for data centers. DOE has used emergency orders to keep older plants running and is offering federal land for AI sites, as covered in our post on DOE’s 202(c) orders and our post on the Genesis Mission. More supply helps. Who pays for it is the question the pledge leaves to the states.