Governors from states in the PJM regional grid will visit the White House to sign an agreement aimed at limiting surging electricity costs tied to a rapid expansion of data centers. The pact would impose two-year price caps on upcoming PJM capacity auctions and require major cloud operators to shoulder more grid-expansion costs. Officials will also push to speed power-plant interconnections and to trigger PJM's reliability backstop to create a separate auction for new generation.
Governors to Sign White House Pact Aimed at Curbing Rising Power Bills Driven by Data Centers
A view shows The White House building as the preparations continue for the U.S. Army's 250th Birthday Festival and Parade in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Governors from states within the PJM regional grid will travel to the White House on Friday to sign an agreement with the Trump administration designed to curb rising electricity costs tied to a surge in data center construction, two sources with direct knowledge of the plans said.
The proposed pact would place two-year price caps on upcoming capacity auctions in the PJM grid, which serves roughly 67 million people across mid-Atlantic and inland states. It would also seek to require large new data center operators, including major cloud providers, to assume a greater share of the costs associated with expanding the grid to meet sharply higher electricity demand.
The White House event comes as the administration looks to address consumer price pressures that could affect political support ahead of November's midterm elections. The governors attending are drawn from the 13 states in the PJM footprint and include Democrats Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Wes Moore of Maryland, and Republicans Mike DeWine of Ohio and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, the sources said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly.
Requests for comment to representatives of the governors' offices and to the White House received no response. A PJM spokesperson said the grid operator did not plan to send representatives to the event.
Measures To Speed Interconnection And Bolster Reliability
Officials plan to unveil several guiding principles for how PJM should operate, according to the sources. Those include measures to expedite the interconnection of power plants so PJM can secure sufficient capacity to meet surging demand, and a call to trigger PJM's reliability backstop mechanism to create a separate auction specifically for new generation.
Data centers are among the largest consumers of electricity, and their construction has accelerated to support expanding artificial intelligence and cloud services. Rising power bills in the PJM region over the past year have produced political backlash; some governors have even threatened to exit the regional grid. Last summer, nine governors sent an open letter to PJM's board of managers criticizing the operator for not doing more to address what they called an escalating electricity affordability crisis.
“Americans are already struggling to make ends meet – they shouldn’t have to foot the bill for big corporations’ massive expansion of data centers,” U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a press release announcing the "Power for the People Act," legislation he introduced to rein in rising electricity costs linked to data center energy use.
The governors’ White House visit signals a bipartisan effort at the state level to curb power-price pressures and to ensure grid planning accounts for rapid, concentrated growth in data center demand. How PJM and federal regulators respond will affect utilities, large cloud operators and millions of ratepayers across the region.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Washington and Tim McLaughlin in Boston; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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