oh well if they pledge it's okay then!
You can read the actual pledge at [0]. The executive order regarding it is at [1].<p>There's some speculation in the comments about what is or isn't in the pledge. I recommend reading it yourself.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge/" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protec...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge-proclamation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/rate...</a>
It is important to remember that clarifying the legal implications of "pledge" is entirely different than supporting and/or defending this instance of its usage.<p>One can do the former whilst repudiating the latter and remain logically consistent.
It all seems like a backdoor to let tech companies build power generation on site without all the red tape and sell the excess power to consumers. This indirectly allows them to offload some of the fixed operational costs onto consumers.<p>We just approved the first nuclear plant in 20 years to a company owned by Bill Gates and in a state that has basically nothing but farmland and a Microsoft datacenter.<p>This absolutely cannot backfire. /s
This is USA so we all know that those techs companies won't pay a cent back at the end, but the population will.
The tech companies don't really have any issue paying for the capacity, this is a negligible cost compared to the compute capital, they just want streamlined regulatory approvals to bring the plants online.
Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)?<p>Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.
The only realistic way to "bear the cost" of CO2 emissions is paying for getting atmospheric carbon back into the ground. Right now that seems difficult to do at scale. The best way I know is making charcoal and burying it. Offsetting 1kWh needs on the order of 200g of wood turned into charcoal and buried.
Sound and particulate pollution too.
There are no such things as CO2 emissions in this administration. Your AI chatbots will be powered by clean coal and you'll enjoy it!
While we're at it, water use is another externality.
Strange downvotes for a relevant question.
We're all gonna end up paying for this and everyone involved knows it.
"The invisible hand" of free markets has become truly invisible...
Stealing from the people; enriching myself
I've read so many of these pledges before.... tl'dr: no, they won't
Non-binding and voluntary = a bunch of lip service
It feels like ordinary people are becoming increasingly unnecessary. With AI, data centers, and big corporations, they don’t really need ordinary people anymore apart from their own employees. Capitalists only need robots and artificial intelligence to serve them, and ordinary people could just be put in zoos for display.
As long as they promised. Their word is golden
I find the whole thing a little odd. They’re basically pledging to pay their electricity bills. So what? So does every business.<p>Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generation and teleportation was ever an option.
An actual problem was them trying to avoid paying.<p>They'd ask the utilities to make Gigawatts of energy available over the next two decades and the utilities would say "No problem, just sign here and agree to pay for us building out the grid to support that".<p>Then the AI companies said "No we only want to pay for energy if we actually use it, if we go bust or decide not to use the energy in a couple of years we want you to charge all the others consumers to recoup that cost".<p>No idea if that's addressed here. I'm assuming not.<p>It was never clear if that reflected uncertainty about future demand or of they just like shifting costs and risk onto other people whenever possible.<p>edit: the pledge references this problem, whether it actually solves it I don't know.
They are pledging to not only pay for their own bills but rather increase the supply of electricity itself. This will reduce retail electricity prices.<p>This mean retail consumers are paying less for electricity than what they would have paid if not for the pledge.
What if they pay own bills (why is this even a subject of discussion?), increase supply (formally), but electricity prices still go up anyway? Just curios if scenario from my descrition even possible...
Like trickle down economics? Fool me once ...
Some towns in my state are already complaining about the noise from turbines supplying on-site power to a data center that's been built here. They're keeping people up at night. I'm broadly supportive of a "techie go home" movement.
The only people who believes corpo jackoffery these days are either boomers or people investing their remaining money in big line go up
Do they pledge the costs of noise pollution and damage to water sources? Let’s be honest - these pledges are theater that reflects an agreement between tech oligarchs and the Trump administration. The pay the bribes via donations or whatever, and get back this deceptive theater show.
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Trump helping tech bros sell more data centers. A pledge is moronic. You pay for what you use since time immemorial. Don't need to redefine existing words with new meaning.
Even if the pledges are in good faith, people are being naive about how utilities work.<p>The general goal for utilities has been to pursue the next “thing” and work toward some sort of regulation to lock in demand, which can be used as a lever to seek price increases and consolidate.<p>If there’s margin to be had, the utilities will find a way, and prices will go up either way.
Wait a “pledge”? What are the legal protections of a “pledge”?<p>Claude:<p>“To your main question — is a pledge a legal document?
Generally, no. A pledge is a public commitment or statement of intent, not a binding legal contract. The agreement doesn’t appear to carry any concrete, binding commitments. There’s no penalty mechanism or enforcement structure the way a contract would have.“
Using Claude to provide a legal definition of "pledge" is unconvincing at best.<p>> What are the legal protections of a “pledge”?<p>To answer that question is to first agree upon the legal definition of "pledge":<p><pre><code> pledge
v. to deposit personal property as security for a personal
loan of money. If the loan is not repaid when due, the
personal property pledged shall be forfeit to the lender.
The property is known as collateral. To pledge is the same
as to pawn. 2) to promise to do something.[0]
</code></pre>
Without careful review of the document signed, it is impossible to verify which form of the above is applicable in this case.<p>> A pledge is a public commitment or statement of intent, not a binding legal contract.<p>This very well may be incorrect in this context and serves an exemplar as to why relying upon statistical document generation is not a recommended legal strategy.<p>0 - <a href="https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1544" rel="nofollow">https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1544</a>
Wait, we know it’s not your definition, because it’s inapplicable.
Your answer is less useful and thought out than the Claude response. Claude actually answers the question in the context in which it's being asked.
> Your answer is less useful and thought out than the Claude response.<p>"Less useful" is subjective and I shall not contend. "Less thought out" is laughable as I possess the ability to think and "Claude" does not.<p>> Claude actually answers the question in the context in which it's being asked.<p>The LLM-based service generated a statistically relevant document to the prompt given in which you, presumably a human, interpreted said document as being "actually answers the question". This is otherwise known as anthropomorphism[0].<p>0 - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism</a>
The AI slop is still slop in any context.
Is it the same kind of pledge as alluded to in the Amber Heard trial?
Pledges are somewhere between a pinky swear and a high five.
It's a PR exercise that makes both the companies and the administration feel good. Not more. There will be no or just cosmetic change.
> Wait a “pledge”? What are the legal protections of a “pledge”?<p>That's the boring part until you look at what they're promising to do.<p>It's not as if existing data centers were getting power by sending a masked rogue to climb the utility pole, tap the lines and bypass the electric meter. Paying for electricity is the thing they were going to do anyway.<p>Likewise, paying for "new generation capacity" is the thing they were probably going to do regardless, because colocating large data centers with power plants saves the expense of power transmission which lowers their costs.<p>And as the article alludes to, the real question is <i>when</i>? In general you can build a data center faster than you can build a power plant, which is exactly the reason data centers can cause short-term electricity prices to increase. They temporarily cause demand to exceed supply until supply has time to catch up. So on the one hand the whole issue is kind of meh because it was only ever going to be a temporary price increase anyway, and on the other hand having them build power plants at the same rate anybody else is building power plants doesn't actually change anything or address the temporary shortfall. (If you really want to solve it, find a way to build power generation capacity faster.)<p>And then it doesn't matter if you can <i>enforce</i> the promise because they're just promising to do things they were going to do anyway.
considering how we uphold treaties im not sure the terminology matters one way or the other
Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. It's certainly possible, we don't need to be cynical.
The thing about the old days is, they’s the old days.<p>And yes this particular group of professional liars provide every reason to be cynical.
> <i>Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken.</i><p>You're looking at the the conditional the wrong way. You want to look at how often pledges lead to "company civic greatness" (or even, you know, anything net positive) to start guessing at the value of a given pledge.
You can just use a traditional search engine for this. I have no interest in reading your LLM output.
I'd be cautious about using Claude, given that they're designated as a supply chain risk by the US Government. Why not use the approved and officially certified ChatGPT instead?
I don't think there's any mechanism in US law for anyone to make a <i>binding</i> promise about terms they plan to include in contracts they might sign with unspecified local governments in the future.<p>Congress could pass a new law requiring it, of course, but I think we all understand that this would not accomplish the administration's real goal of letting Trump prove he's the specialest boy and everyone has to give him what he wants.
| Congress could pass a new law requiring it, of course, but I think we all understand that this would not accomplish the administration's real goal of letting Trump prove he's the specialest boy and everyone has to give him what he wants.<p>... plus it would require "tech firms" to actually modify their behaviour and that would never do.