President Trump has expanded his "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," a voluntary scheme intended to stop household electricity bills rising because of the boom in AI datacentre construction. Announced at a speech at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, the expansion adds power companies, datacentre developers, cooperatives and state governments to a pledge originally signed only by seven major tech firms, addressing criticism that those firms don't actually set the electricity rates consumers pay.

The original pledge, launched earlier this year, was signed by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI, who agreed to cover the extra costs of resources needed to meet their energy demands. The White House says more than 200 additional utilities, developers, cooperatives and states have now joined, claiming coverage of roughly 80 percent of power delivered to American homes and businesses and protection for 263 million people near datacentres. Trump also said many datacentre operators would generate their own on-site power, though the pledge's text still contains no enforcement mechanism or penalties for signatories who fail to prevent bill rises.