Trump wants big tech to pay for big beautiful power plants

The Trump administration says it wants big tech companies to take more accountability for the power their datacenters consume in an effort to shield voters from higher power bills at home.

On Friday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and US Interior Secretary (and former Microsoft exec) Doug Burgum met with mid-Atlantic governors to pressure PJM Interconnection - one of the largest grid operators in the country - to hold an emergency auction to address rising energy demand from AI datacenter developments to the tune of $15 billion.

PJM is home to the largest concentration of datacenters in the US. Many new bit barns now exceed 100 megawatts of power capacity, with the likes of OpenAI and Meta already eyeing multi-gigawatt campuses.

These buildouts have sparked fears of higher power bills for local residents, something that hasn't sat well with politicians on either side of the aisle.

Last month, a trio of ...