FACT SHEET: Trump’s Bans on Clean Energy Will Doom Data Centers and Our Utility Bills

As Big Tech meets with Trump on his latest empty promise around data centers, Trump is blocking the only real solution: expanding clean energy, the cheapest and quickest way to add energy supply

Trump’s Pledge is a Toothless Political Stunt that Will Raise Your Bills

In his State of the Union address, Trump announced that he would ask tech companies to “pledge” to provide their own energy for data centers. This is just a desperate attempt at damage control, and it won’t lower anyone’s utility bills because Trump is blocking the only energy sources that can match data centers’ exponential increase in demand.

• Trump promised to cut energy costs in half in his first year. Instead, utility costs have spiked by as much as 13% under his watch.
• Meanwhile, Trump has canceled 354 clean energy projects since he took office, gutting the fastest, cheapest source of new power.
• What Trump isn’t telling the public: he is pushing tech companies to rely exclusively on coal, oil, and gas, which means dirtier air and water, and higher bills.

Big Tech Leaders Know Clean Energy is the Solution

The very CEOs sitting across from Trump have spent years publicly championing clean energy for their data centers. Tech companies specifically lobbied against the clean energy cuts in the Republican budget bill, saying, “Energy is the pacing challenge of our industry.” In their words:

• Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO said: “We need to move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.”

• Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO said: “We are in every form of renewable energy — in fact, we may be the biggest buyers of renewable offtake… grid power and stable base power is going to be the most important thing.”

• Elon Musk, xAI CEO said: “100 miles by 100 miles of solar is enough to power the entire United States… Unfortunately, tariff barriers for solar are extremely high.”

• Sundar Pichai, Google CEO said: “Every search you do, every YouTube video you watch, every Gmail you send will be powered by clean energy — wind, solar, and geothermal. Our goal is to do all this by 2030.”

• Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO said: “Solving the clean energy problem is an essential part of building a better world. We won’t be able to make meaningful progress on other challenges without secure energy and a stable climate.”

The American People Are Clear: Clean Energy, Not Fossil Fuels

New polling from Climate Power and Blue Rose Research shows Americans are deeply alarmed about the costs and pollution risks of data centers, and they don’t trust Trump or Big Tech to protect them.

• Respondents are deeply concerned about the impact of data centers on increased utility costs and energy consumption: asked to select the more concerning issue in randomized head-to-head matchups against various data center-related issues, utility costs were selected 64% of the time, and energy consumption was selected 59% of the time.
• When asked whether they support the construction of data centers powered by fossil fuels, respondents opposed by a 16-point margin.
• However, when asked about data centers powered by clean energy, respondents supported their construction by a +25-point margin.

Trump’s “Ratepayer Pledge” is political theater. Americans are paying higher utility bills every month, and they know who’s to blame. As the Washington Post reported this week, more and more of Trump’s allies are supporting solar as they acknowledge solar’s “crucial role in powering AI and keeping utility bills in check.” Clean energy is faster and cheaper to build than fossil fuels – but Trump has gutted these homegrown American industries, all to benefit his oil and gas donors.

The tech CEOs in the room have already made their choice: they know clean energy is the only viable path to power AI. The question is whether Trump will let them build it, or keep forcing American families to foot the bill of his fossil fuel agenda.