Trump Says Data Centres Must Make Their Own Power

Donald Trump has told the companies building America’s largest data centres to bring their own electricity and to pay the towns around them. In a Truth Social post in the early hours of Wednesday, the president said new and large data centres were “mandated by me to make their own electricity”, and should “give or sell any excess back to the local community, or grid”.

The post reads like an instruction, but it is not yet policy. No executive order, rule or other formal action on data-centre power had appeared on the White House’s presidential actions page by Thursday morning, and the post itself gives no size threshold, timeline or enforcement mechanism.

What the post says

Trump said he had been watching data centres “very closely” and had come to “a very strong conclusion”, according to the text of the post, published at 01:37 EDT (06:37 BST) on 21 October. He tied self-generation to household bills: as written, the sentence about prices appears to drop a word, but he went on to say that “there could be a substantial decrease” in electricity prices.

The second half of the post was about money for communities. He wrote that companies wanting their data centres to be popular should “pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend'”. He said he had seen unpopular projects become “extremely popular when a financial deal is struck”, and finished: “MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!”

Industry finds part of it workable

Executives at Nvidia’s GTC Berlin conference were open to the dividend idea, CNBC reports. Nebius chief revenue officer Marc Boroditsky said the company was “100% in principle” having discussions about investing in communities.

“A dividend is being paid in different forms — investing in education, job development, overall economic development,” Boroditsky told CNBC. “The concept that the president identified… it’s not crazy to consider something like that.” He said there could be “some sort of way where the rewards are actually funneled back to the community”, beyond the tax revenue projects already bring. “I could see something like a benefit of some sort that’s more direct economic opportunity for the community as well,” he said.

Power was the harder subject. “Energy is always a bottleneck, and trying to find powered land and areas that we can build large-scale AI factories is a big focus for us,” Chase Lochmiller, chief executive of Crusoe, told CNBC. He added that there is “increasingly” a lot of policy permitting and work with local communities needed to bring sites online. CNBC did not report either executive addressing the electricity mandate directly.

A political flashpoint before the midterms

The post lands as data centres become an election issue. CNBC says opposition to the buildout has grown ahead of November’s midterm elections, with multiple states considering moratoriums, and that some experts have warned the AI boom will push up electricity prices. Hyperscalers have, in some cases, agreed to help pay for grid upgrades, the broadcaster notes. It describes access to power as a major constraint on the sector, with grids in the US and Europe overwhelmed by connection requests from large users such as data centres, and says some facilities can act as flexible loads that adjust their demand to help stabilise the grid.

Local fights are already shaping projects. In Memphis this week, the city council voted for a 135-day pause on new data-centre applications after an 18-month ban failed on a tie. Some large buyers already pay for dedicated generation: Google has agreed to buy power for 20 years from a planned 702MW fuel-cell plant that utility AEP intends to build near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

What Trump’s word “mandated” will mean in practice is unclear. Until an order or rule is published, developers have a presidential preference to weigh, not a legal requirement to meet.