Both the White House and tech industry appear keen to limit the fallout from data centers, with initiatives to bring down electricity prices and recast the sprawling facilities as community players willing to pay their fair share.
While the Trump administration has been broadly supportive of data centers, including through efforts to fast-track their construction, going forward, that support may have limitations.
"We are going to embrace data centers, but not at the price … of raising costs for consumers," a senior White House official told The Hill on Tuesday.
"So if you want to invest and build data centers, you've got to do it in the right way, the way that is not going to pass that cost onto consumers," the official said.
The aide also said hyperscalers — large cloud services providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft — should have to bring their own power sources.
"That's certainly what the president feels as well — that they should have their own generation," the official said.
The White House official said the administration was working with "each of the major hyperscalers and data center operators" to try to find ways to defray costs for consumers. The person declined to name specific companies.
The comments come as data centers face increasing backlash, including because of their potential impacts on high electricity prices, becoming a potential liability for the GOP.
Read more here, from me and The Hill's Julia Shapero.
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