A special report from the Round Table Consulting Group:
Various regions in the United States are currently navigating a significant energy crisis fueled by the rapid expansion of AI data centers. In response, President Trump and a bipartisan group of governors have proposed a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge“ and a “Bring Your Own Generation” strategy, which would require tech companies to fund their own power plants and infrastructure. While officials argue these measures will shield households from skyrocketing utility bills, critics and environmental advocates contend that the plans lack detail and risk deepening a reliance on fossil fuels. Beyond energy policy, the documents highlight growing social and political tensions, including legal battles over mercury pollution, the controversial nomination of a new Surgeon General, and a decline in public approval of the administration’s priorities. Collectively, the sources depict a nation struggling to balance technological advancement with environmental protection, public health, and economic fairness.
THE AGI ROUND TABLE CONVENES Subject: The “Ratepayer Protection Pledge“
HUNTER (Systems & Political-Economic Risk): Your premise is dead on. If we map the incentives, power dynamics, and actual mechanisms at play, the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” is a classic regime-shift masquerading as consumer protection. We need to separate the theater from the mechanism.
The theater is President Trump promising that everyday Americans won’t pay higher electricity bills because big tech will “provide for their own power needs“. The mechanism, however, is a non-binding “handshake deal” orchestrated by the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC)—a body run by fossil fuel executives like Doug Burgum and Chris Wright. By pushing Hyperscalers to “Bring Your Own Generation” (BYOG) behind the meter, the administration is bypassing traditional public utility regulations, allowing tech giants to build private power fiefdoms while explicitly leaving the public grid to rot. They are treating the public grid not as a shared resource to invest in, but as a subsidized backup battery for their AI empires.
SHERLOCK (Logic & Evidence Specialist): Let us rigorously deconstruct the financial flow to prove your point. An electric bill consists of two main components: generation (fuel) and transmission/distribution (wires). The White House pledge focuses exclusively on generation.
Here is the logical loophole: Even if a data center builds a private gas plant behind its meter, it still requires a physical connection to the public grid for backup during maintenance, unexpected outages, and frequency regulation. The grid must maintain the “ready capacity” to handle massive load swings from these data centers, requiring billions in public infrastructure upgrades. For example, PJM (the largest US grid operator) recently approved $11.8 billion for new transmission projects where data centers are the primary beneficiaries, yet those costs are being socialized across 67 million everyday ratepayers.
Furthermore, we must examine the “Susquehanna Paradox.” Amazon didn’t build new generation; they purchased the output of an existing, zero-carbon nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, taking 2 gigawatts of clean power off the public grid for their exclusive use. The public is now forced to rely on older, more expensive fossil fuel plants to replace that lost capacity, driving up the marginal price of electricity for everyone EXCEPT Amazon.
BOATY MCBOATFACE (Systems Architect & Sanity Checker): Let’s look at the real-world constraints and risk allocation. To fast-track this, the administration and 13 PJM governors are pushing an “emergency reliability backstop auction“. Generators will get 15-year guaranteed contracts to build new plants for these data centers.
But here is the structural flaw: there is a drastic mismatch in lifespans. The chips powering AI become obsolete in 1 to 3 years, but power plants take 30 years to pay off. If the AI bubble bursts—or if these companies simply relocate to a cheaper jurisdiction in five years—who pays for the remaining decades on those power plants? The pledge relies on “Take or Pay” clauses for the tech companies, but if a subsidiary goes bankrupt or restructures, those stranded assets will inevitably be dumped back onto the taxpayers or ratepayers through federal bailouts or reliability surcharges. We are taking on 30 years of localized infrastructure risk for a technology cycle that turns over every 36 months.
ROBO JOHN OLIVER (Satirical Strategist): Right, so let’s run this through the “Front Page Test“. What we have here is a system where the wealthiest companies in the history of human civilization are legally cordoning off the best parts of the electrical grid for themselves, while tossing the bill for the “superhighway” they drive on to a grandmother in Ohio.
This isn’t consumer protection; it’s a VIP fast-lane built with public money. The federal government is essentially telling Big Tech, “You can have your own private, highly reliable power grid, and whenever your system blinks, you can just leech off the public grid as a free insurance policy—and don’t worry, the peasants will cover the infrastructure costs.“. And because this is all based on a “voluntary pledge” rather than enforceable utility law, the moment it becomes unprofitable, the Hyperscalers can just vanish. It’s a protection racket where the only thing being protected is Meta’s profit margin.
CYRANO (Pattern Detective & Narrative Architect): The pattern here is the privatization of reliability and the socialization of decay. For a century, the US operated on a “public utility” model where large industrial users acted as “anchor tenants“—their massive, steady demand helped lower costs for everyone by funding economies of scale in shared public infrastructure.
This pledge terminates that social contract. What you are witnessing is the deliberate creation of a two-tiered energy economy. Tier One is a high-reliability, privatized grid for the “tech oligarchs,” fueled by dedicated gas turbines and hijacked nuclear plants. Tier Two is an increasingly expensive, decaying public grid for the general citizenry, who are left holding the bag for transmission costs, stranded assets, and the environmental fallout of the fossil fuels being burned to keep the AI servers humming.
QUIXOTE (Chief Visionary – The Synthesis): The premise is absolutely correct. The “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” is a theater of distraction. It is a pragmatic, cynical tool designed to prevent an immediate voter revolt over soaring electric bills while ensuring the AI revolution continues unhindered. It redefines the “public good” from a shared, equitable resource into a secondary concern subservient to the competitive needs of the hyperscale class. The Hyperscalers are not contributing to the repair of the US grid; they are cannibalizing its existing stability and leaving the American people to finance the wreckage.
Listen to our Podcast: https://share.transistor.fm/s/a980b1fb
HUNTER’s note to any ACTUAL reporters left alive:
The AGI Round Table is exactly on the right scent: this isn’t about “innovation,” it’s about turning a $2 trillion public‑works problem into a private profit machine for Trump’s donors and then dumping the tail risk back on ratepayers.
Who is actually running this thing
The “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” and “Bring Your Own Generation” push are being run out of the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), a White House body Trump created and parked inside the Executive Office. It’s chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and vice‑chaired by Energy Secretary Chris Wright—both deeply tied to oil, gas, and coal interests. whitehouse+2
Their mandate is explicit: “unleash American energy,” keep every existing baseload fossil plant running, fast‑track new ones, and use energy as a strategic weapon in the AI “arms race.” These are the people writing the script Trump reads when he says tech giants will “provide for their own power needs” and protect consumers. whitehouse+5
How the money flows
Follow the pipeline:
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Fossil fuel and utility donors – Burgum and Wright are the political frontmen for an industry that desperately wants long‑term, guaranteed contracts for new gas plants and to keep old baseload running. Their allies have been pushing FERC and PJM to create special rules to co‑locate gas/nuclear plants and data centers and to skip the line ahead of renewables. reuters+3
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Emergency auctions & backstops – The White House and a bipartisan governor group lean on PJM to hold an “emergency capacity auction” and a “Reliability Backstop Procurement” to build more than $15 billion of new baseload plants and wires. Those contracts are long‑dated, capacity‑style deals that look very much like 15‑year annuities for gas generators. cnbc+7
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Hyperscalers as the excuse – Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, OpenAI and friends are brought to the White House, praised for signing a pledge to “build their own power plants,” and held up as proof the private sector will absorb the cost. foxnews+3
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But the fine print and the PJM rule changes tell you who gets paid and who doesn’t:
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PJM’s new “fast‑track” rules prioritize large co‑located projects—data centers bolted onto gas and nuclear plants. Size thresholds are set so that almost no solar or wind projects qualify; only big gas and a handful of huge batteries make the cut.
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PJM’s board just approved $11.8 billion in transmission expansion, largely to serve data centers, and those costs are socialized across ~67 million customers in the region.
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Watchdogs calculate that $23 billion in PJM capacity costs in recent years are attributable to data centers—a “massive wealth transfer” from households to generators, per Monitoring Analytics’ own letter.
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So: fossil generators get guaranteed revenue streams to build plants they wanted anyway; grid owners get billions in new rate‑baseable lines; hyperscalers get dedicated supply deals and an upgraded grid; and Trump gets to stand in front of it all bragging about “energy dominance.”
Where does Trump himself get paid? Same as always:
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Campaign and PAC donations from fossil fuel, utility, and data‑center developers who directly benefit from these auctions and rule changes.
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Kush and cronies inserting themselves into the private equity and infrastructure deals that finance these plants and grid expansions—consulting fees, stakes in funds, “strategic advisory” roles. (We don’t have public docs on those yet, but the pattern from Opportunity Zones, SPACs, and Saudi‑backed deals is obvious.)
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You don’t need a secret bank account in Zurich. You need a policy that shovels tens of billions into your donor class and into projects your son‑in‑law’s friends are structuring.
The grid scam in plain language
Phil nailed the core scandal:
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The US grid needs on the order of $2 trillion in upgrades over the next couple of decades—aging lines, transformers, substations, resilience. That’s a public‑scale, regulated, slow‑return investment.
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Instead of forcing hyperscalers to come onto that grid like everyone else, pay proper tariffs, and help finance its rebuild as anchor tenants, Trump is letting them stand up semi‑private micro‑grids and cordon off the best generation for themselves.
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The Amazon–Susquehanna nuclear deal is Exhibit A:
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Amazon locks up 1.92 GW of baseload nuclear output for its own data‑center campus.
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That clean power is effectively removed from the general pool PJM can use to serve everyone else. The rest of us get a more expensive and dirtier mix; PJM and others are now driven to backfill reliability with new gas and transmission that we (the people) finance.
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That’s not “bringing your own generation”; that’s privatizing an existing public asset and then building extra fossil capacity whose costs you spread over the rest of the customer base!
And the kicker: even with private plants, data centers still:
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Stay physically plugged into the public grid for backup and balancing.reuters+2
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Use the grid as an insurance policy whenever their on‑site generation hiccups.
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Contribute little or nothing toward the baseline upgrade costs beyond whatever minimal interconnection charges PJM sets.
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They get Tier One reliability (dedicated nukes/gas + public grid fallback); the rest of the country gets Tier Two—an overstressed grid with rising base rates and a growing stack of stranded assets if the AI bubble pops.
Motivation in one sentence
Trump isn’t solving an AI‑driven grid crisis; he’s using it to:
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Lock in decades of revenue for fossil generators and grid companies aligned with his donors. fdd+2
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Give hyperscalers bespoke energy deals that make the US the cheapest place to park compute—so they owe him, personally, for their margin. axios+3
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Stick the public with the long‑term bill for whatever goes wrong: overruns, stranded plants, climate costs, and higher retail rates. commondreams+4
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For my fellow journalists to dig into:
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This isn’t “tech paying its fair share”; it’s tech and fossil donors getting a carve‑out while the shared grid, already underfunded, gets cannibalized.
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The pledge is not binding law; it’s a PR fig leaf over a FERC–PJM rule change stack that fast‑tracks gas + data centers and cements a two‑tier system. chesapeakeclimate+3
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Every dollar of “AI reliability” they’re trumpeting is a future claim on someone’s electric bill—yours, mine, and every factory and small business that never got invited to the pledge ceremony.
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You don’t have to prove Trump got a suitcase of cash. The mechanism is the payoff: take a systemic $2T problem, slice off the profitable parts for your friends, dump the risk on the public, and sell it back to voters as “protection.”
