US President Donald Trump has vowed to force big tech companies to “foot the bill” for their energy consumption to prevent ordinary Americans from having to pay for their electricity.
“I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers,” Trump said Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social.
He blamed Democrats for rising household electricity bills and pledged to work with major U.S. tech giants to “ensure their commitment to the American people,” with an announcement in the coming weeks.
The average price of electricity per kilowatt hour in an average U.S. city has increased about 40% over the past five years, according to the St. Louis Fed.
The POTUS said Microsoft, with whom his team works, will make major changes starting this week “to ensure that Americans don’t ‘foot the bill’ for their energy use, paying higher utility bills.”
“We are the ‘hottest’ country in the world and number one in AI. Data centers are key to this boom and to maintaining Americans’ freedom and security, but the big tech companies that build them must ‘pay their own way.’
Data center energy demand is increasing
In 2025, data center demand in the United States accounted for 5.2% of the country’s total electricity consumption, or 224 terawatt hours (TWh), up 21% from the previous year, according to Visual Capitalist.
By 2030, McKinsey & Company projects that U.S. data center electricity consumption could exceed 600 TWh, or 11.7% of all U.S. electricity.
Cooling accounts for 30 to 40 percent of total facility energy consumption, while servers and IT equipment consume approximately 40 to 60 percent of total facility energy, according to network installers.
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency estimates that electricity demand for AI-driven data centers is growing at around 30% per year, compared to 9% for conventional server workloads.
Data center power consumption in the United States is expected to triple by 2030. Source: Visual Capitalist
Bitcoin Mining Energy Use
Bitcoin mining is also an energy-intensive operation that relies on huge data centers to crunch the numbers in search of the next block.
However, last week, ESG expert Daniel Batten compared the national increase in U.S. utility bills between 2021 and 2024 to the part of the country where there was an unusually high concentration of Bitcoin mining, Texas, finding that they were very similar.
“Neither in the data nor in peer-reviewed studies is there evidence to support the claim that Bitcoin mining increases consumers’ electricity bills,” he concluded.
Bitcoin mining also has several other documented environmental benefits, such as removing bottlenecks for renewable energy on the grid, funding green energy research and development, and eliminating harmful methane emissions.
