Trump announces mandate forcing AI data centers to pay energy dividends to the local community

retained text

Trump announces mandate forcing AI data centers to pay energy dividends to the local community — says excess energy should be given or sold back to prevent increases or even bring down costs
Excess electricity generated could also make its way to the local community.
President Donald Trump has issued a call for data center builders and AI hyperscalers to pay communities a dividend in order to overcome energy-related price hikes, or even to reduce prices, in order to make data centers more palatable to local communities. In a post on Truth Social post, he warned that data centers would be mandated not only to make their own electricity, as he has previously stated, but also to give or sell excess energy back to the local community.
Local communities all over the United States have protested against AI data centers, often owing to their outsized impact on local communities. Rising electricity costs, noise pollution, water shortages, air pollution, deforestation, and more are the things that small communities have to deal with because of these companies.
To ease the pain of local communities, Trump is demanding that these large companies provide the communities they affect with something that will hopefully make their presence more acceptable. The Trump Administration is keen to stay ahead of China in the AI arms race and is looking for solutions to win back some favor by making the data centers pay something back to the affected communities; how that will practically transpire is yet to be seen. Considering the electricity-focused post, the dividend might be in the form of partially paying rising electricity costs to alleviate a pain point that directly affects many homes within the vicinity of data centers. The Trump Administration had ordered these companies to make their own electricity, as we’ve covered previously. Excess electricity from their generation could be used to further lower the electricity cost for the locals, including a recently passed act that orders data centers to shoulder the cost for grid upgrades to avoid taking it from the taxes of local communities.
“Data Centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck.” Trump further says in his post, aiming to have more data centers built, “MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!," the President said in closing.
Whether the dividends will be enough to win over communities is yet to be known, as the economic aspect is only one facet of the problem. There are still plenty of problems to face; enormous water consumption, ecological damage, and pollution are still major challenges that make AI data centers a hard sell anywhere they’re located.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Jhet Borja is a serial hobbyist who was taking apart toys from childhood and sketching inventions. He now loves doing DIY projects ranging from designing custom 3D-printed parts, building PCs and keyboards, all the way to woodworking. If he's not getting his hands dirty, he's probably brainstorming his next project.
- bit_user Calling it a "dividend" raises interesting questions. Companies normally pay those only when they're profitable, which new datacenter builds presumably won't be, for at least a while, since the construction costs first need to be recouped.
Also, about this:
The article said:The Trump Administration had ordered these companies to make their own electricity, as we’ve covered previously. Excess electricity from their generation could be used to further lower the electricity cost for the locals, including a recently passed act that orders data centers to shoulder the cost for grid upgrades to avoid taking it from the taxes of local communities.
The kind of power generation that datacenters are installing in the short-run is primarily using noisy, polluting, and inefficient gas-powered generators (as reported on this site). So, I think that's probably not such a "win" for locals, particularly if they live very nearby, when you compare it to the electricity they usually get from conventional power plants.
Just about anything else that datacenters do for power generation is going to take quite a bit longer to come online. So, that's definitely not a near-term fix. Reply
- thestryker Much like everything to this point companies will say what they need to while doing whatever they want to. Without actual requirements companies have no incentive to go outside the path of least resistance.Reply
- John Kiser bit_user said:Calling it a "dividend" raises interesting questions. Companies normally pay those only when they're profitable, which new datacenter builds presumably won't be, for at least a while, since the construction costs first need to be recouped.
Also, about this:
The kind of power generation that datacenters are installing in the short-run is primarily using noisy, polluting, and inefficient gas-powered generators (as reported on this site). So, I think that's probably not such a "win" for locals, particularly if they live very nearby, when you compare it to the electricity they usually get from conventional power plants.
Just about anything else that datacenters do for power generation is going to take quite a bit longer to come online. So, that's definitely not a near-term fix.The data centers themselves could be so long as they house multiple companies. AI companies themselves on the other hand are frequently losing money Reply
- LordVile A mandate he has no power to issue or enforce. Which he will immediately backtrack on in two weeksReply
- derekullo What stops companies from buying up land and vacant housing near data centers to farm this "dividend"?Reply
- bit_user derekullo said:What stops companies from buying up land and vacant housing near data centers to farm this "dividend"?The dividend probably won't be big enough to make that a profitable endeavor. Reply
- COLGeek The "mandate" is really a gesture with little actual benefit to anyone. @bit_user 's thoughts are spot on, in my opinion. The choice of words suggests a benefit that will likely never be achieved, thus no dividends/payments of any sort (not even accounting for corporate bookkeeping).
The depreciation of assets and operating costs will ensure a "zero sum" outcome.
These notions should also be applied to the idea of AI companies offering shares to the US (any country for that matter) government. Some gifts come with strings attached, especially once taxpayers have a stake in the outcome. Reply