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electricity
Poll Shows Most in US Know Corporate Greed Is to Blame for Energy Affordability Crisis
Sixty percent of respondents blamed the energy demand of large users like AI data centers for higher household electricity costs.
Mar 18, 2026
It's been two weeks since Big Tech companies gathered at the White House to sign a nonbinding pledge saying they will not pass on higher utility costs to consumers as the rapid build-out of energy-intensive artificial intelligence data centers sends electricity bills skyrocketing—but polling out Wednesday showed a majority of Americans reject President Donald Trump's plan to leave corporations responsible for tackling the affordability crisis.
Those same companies, said most respondents to a survey by Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative, are responsible for higher costs that have hit households across the country, and can't be trusted to ensure life is more affordable for families.
Instead, said 61% of respondents, "cracking down on price gouging" from both utility and energy companies would be the most effective way to lower the cost of electricity. In comparison, just 35% said building more energy infrastructure to meet demands was the answer to high costs.
While Trump has been forced in recent weeks to acknowledge that "energy demands from AI data centers could unfairly drive up" people's energy costs, as he admitted in his State of the Union address while announcing AI companies would sign his "ratepayer protection pledge," the president has largely deflected blame regarding the affordability crisis—or denied its existence altogether.
Trump claimed at a rally in Kentucky last week that "the economy is roaring back," even as his $1 billion-per-day, unprovoked war on Iran inflamed tensions across the Middle East and drove up oil prices.
Groundwork said in its analysis of the poll that following Trump's announcement of the ratepayer protection pledge, "Americans reject this reliance on corporations to do the right thing."
Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy for Groundwork Collaborative, said that "utility prices are up and consumers know the truth: These price increases are being driven by corporate greed and unchecked AI data center growth."
Trump has pushed to accelerate the construction of new data centers by fast-tracking the permitting process.
Two-thirds of those surveyed said their monthly electricity payments have gone up in the past year, with nearly a quarter of respondents saying they had increased by "a lot." More than 40% of people said they are now paying between $101-$200 per month for electricity.
As Common Dreams reported last November, Trump's demand for AI companies to build massive, energy-sucking data centers in communities across the US has been linked to rising costs of consumers, with the average overdue balance on utility bills surging by 32% in the last three years and states with high concentrations of AI data centers seeing electricity prices skyrocket by as much as 16% from 2024-25.
Sixty percent of respondents told Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative that the energy demand of large commercial users like AI data centers is to blame for higher consumer prices, and the same percentage of people also blamed high compensation for utility company executives. Sixty-three percent of those polled said high profits for utility companies and their investors were to blame.
Joint Economic Committee Democrats revealed Tuesday that the average annual US electric bill increased by $110 last year.
A 2022 analysis by Accountable.US found that the nine largest US energy utility companies raked in nearly $14 billion in combined profits in the first three quarters of that year and handed out $11 billion to shareholders while tens of millions of households struggled with rising utility bills.
Nearly 60% of the 1,149 people polled by the two progressive think tanks also said the public sector must take a leadership role on providing energy, "because the public sector doesn't collect profits and can pass on savings to customers," and 60% said the public sector should be responsible for upgrading and modernizing the electric grid because it is a "public resource that should serve all Americans equally, not generate profits for shareholders."
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy for Groundwork and a former Biden administration official, said the poll revealed that "the people believe in public power."
The groups also polled respondents on their opinions of "energy superusers," including cryptocurrency companies, AI data centers, and AI firms.
Crypto companies were the least popular, with 54% disapproving compared to 26% who approved. Voters disapproved of AI data centers by a 16-point margin and AI companies in general by an 8-point margin.
Nearly two-thirds said they believe new AI data centers would raise their energy costs, and voters across the political spectrum opposed new data centers in their communities.
Grassroots efforts have taken off in states including Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Jersey as community members have rejected the construction of data centers on the grounds that they would consume massive amounts of water as well as electricity, threaten jobs, and take up space that could otherwise be used for affordable housing and small businesses.
"Voters feel ripped off by the corporations who hold their utilities hostage and are calling on lawmakers to put an end to the profiteering racket," said Pancotti. "It’s time for regulators and policymakers to answer the call to protect working families from predatory utility corporations and Big Tech.”
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Trump's AI Data Center 'Ratepayer Protection Pledge' Derided as Unenforceable, 'Theatrical Stunt'
"These pledges are nothing more than desperate damage control for companies who only now realize that voters see them as the villains of this story," said one progressive advocate.
Feb 25, 2026
Climate action advocates and energy experts alike said Wednesday that President Donald Trump's "ratepayer protection pledge," introduced during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, will do little to alleviate rising household electricity costs brought on by the White House's mandated artificial intelligence expansion and the construction of thousands of hulking data centers across the country.
During his address, the president acknowledged that many Americans are "concerned that energy demands from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills," as they already are.
A CNBC analysis published last November found that in addition to average electricity prices rising by more than 6% across the country, according to the Energy Information Administration, households in states with high concentrations of data centers—including Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio—have seen their rates climb by as much as 16% in the past year.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association also said last year that about 21 million American families were behind on their utility bills, with the average overdue amount about a third higher than it was in 2023.
Trump said Tuesday that he had negotiated a deal with major tech companies, ensuring they "have the obligation to provide for their own power needs and can build their own power plant as part of their factory, so that no one's prices will go up."
Energy industry experts told Politico on Wednesday that if enforced, the pledge—which Trump and the White House offered few details about—would still only partially address rising household costs associated with the AI expansion, which are being caused by the AI industry's rapidly growing demand for power lines, fuel, natural wind turbines, and other energy needs to run massive data centers.
The data centers require energy equivalent to that of 186 large nuclear power plants, according to the data firm Cleanview, and some of them have electricity needs that could power millions of homes.
But Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told Politico that in seeking lower costs for consumers, the White House is "putting this pledge on the wrong entities," as the details of how energy costs are distributed among millions of ratepayers are determined by utilities and state regulators—not tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic, which lauded the president's announcement and announced their own pledges to ostensibly protect households from rising costs.
“Most of today’s cost pressure is coming from transmission, distribution, and system readiness, not energy supply,” Brandon Owens, a grid expert and founder of advisory platform AIxEnergy, told Politico ahead of the speech. “Those costs remain even if a data center self-supplies generation.”
With Trump fast-tracking AI data center expansion, utilities are spending far more than they have previously to set up electricity infrastructure. As Politico reported, PJM, which operates the grid for 13 states in the eastern US, has approved $11.8 billion for new transmission projects, with data centers being the largest recipients of new electricity. About 67 million people in the region covered by PJM will split the cost of the new projects, paying roughly double what they did for the company's last two transmission budgets.
Emily Peterson-Casson, policy director for the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress, said in a statement ahead of the State of the Union address that Trump's ratepayer protection pledge amounts "to worthless pinky swears from the multi-billion dollar corporations who are trying to force us to sacrifice our jobs, our children, our privacy, and our communities for an uncertain, AI-powered future that they can control and we won’t."
Rising electricity costs, she said, are just one of many concerns Americans have expressed about AI in numerous recent polls. One taken by YouGov last week found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the expansion of AI will reduce the number of jobs available to workers, and another by Bentley University and Gallup found 79% of respondents didn't trust companies to use AI responsibly.
"In addition to providing a dubious balm to skyrocketing electricity bills, these pledges do nothing to address out-of-control AI that caused outages at Amazon Web Services, creates sexualized images of minors, and has led teens in need of help to take their own lives," said Peterson-Casson. "These pledges are nothing more than desperate damage control for companies who only now realize that voters see them as the villains of this story.”
The climate action group 350.org also derided the ratepayer protection pledge as a "theatrical stunt with no enforceable mechanism," and said it would only worsen the ramp up of costly fossil fuel production that Trump has overseen by delaying the closure of expensive, polluting coal plants; blocking solar and wind projects; and approving more liquefied natural gas exports.
Trump said the his address that the US is experiencing a "Golden Age," noted 350.org executive director Anne Jellema, but that's true "only for fossil fuel companies that poured $96 million into the Trump administration."
"For the millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay their energy bills, it is like heading back to the dark ages. The Trump administration cannot claim to stand for American consumers while blocking progress in renewables, the cheapest form of energy available today. It cannot champion affordability while doubling down on a highly volatile gas market and driving conflicts that inevitably increase energy prices everywhere,” said Jellema. “Trump’s bravado cannot disguise the fundamental insecurity at the heart of his administration: Fossil fuels are increasingly unviable, and even businesses want to move on. Around the world, people are demanding and building a clean, affordable energy future, with or without the US government."
350.org also pointed to a recent poll by E3G, Beyond Fossil Fuels, and We Mean Business that showed 97% of nearly 1,500 business executives supported a transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, citing "competitive edge and long-term energy security."
Journalist Ray Locker added on social media, "The best way to protect ratepayers is to not shackle them to using fossil fuels to generate electricity."
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Analysis Shows Electric Bills Have Spiked 13% in Trump’s First Year—And His Own Policies Are to Blame
"Donald Trump and Republicans are accelerating their self-inflicted energy crisis with continued project cancellations."
Dec 16, 2025
Americans across the country are struggling to pay higher utility bills, and one clean energy advocacy group is pointing the finger squarely at President Donald Trump.
Climate Power last week released a new report that cited data from the US Energy Information Administration showing that Americans' electricity bills have risen by 13% since Trump took office in January, even though he pledged during the 2024 presidential campaign that he would "cut the price of energy and electricity in half" in his first year.
In reality, Climate Power says, the Trump administration's war on renewable energy projects has helped drive the cost of electricity up by blocking new sources of energy for the US electric grid.
"Trump and Republicans are accelerating their self-inflicted energy crisis with continued project cancellations," argues the report, blaming the administration's policies for hurting "projects that would have produced enough electricity to power the equivalent of 13 million homes."
In total, Climate Power estimates that "companies have canceled, delayed, lost grant funding, or laid off staff" at more than 320 clean energy projects during Trump's second term, resulting in the loss or delay of more than 165,000 new US jobs.
Texas, which has seen 26 clean energy projects negatively impacted this year, has been the biggest loser from Trump's war against renewables, according to the report.
The report also finds that "54% of canceled projects, 40% of delayed projects, and 44.9% of grant cancellations are located in congressional districts represented by Republicans," which means that the GOP is hurting its own constituents with its energy policies.
The cancellation of clean energy products also comes at a time when artificial intelligence data centers are devouring energy, thus putting more upward pressure on electricity prices.
David Spence, a professor of energy law and regulation at the University of Texas, told ABC News on Monday that demand for power is now exceeding supply "by a lot," and he cited factors including data centers, cryptocurrency mining, and electric cars as key factors.
"We're just not able to bring new supply on as quickly as demand is growing, and that's driving prices up," Spence explained.
The Climate Power report builds on findings released by Democratic US senators in October estimating that US electric bills had gone up by 11% since Trump's return to office.
Like Climate Power, the Democratic senators cited Trump's attacks on clean energy as a key factor driving up costs.
"Your administration has no explanations for its failures and no answers for American families that are hit hard by high energy costs, and it continues to actively pursue policies to make this cost crisis worse," wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at the time.
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