Energy affordability was in the spotlight during President Trump’s lengthy and sometimes rambling State of the Union address Tuesday evening as the president promised to lower energy prices in an effort to ease voters’ concerns about rising costs.
The president announced a new “taxpayer protection pledge” to protect residents from high electricity costs in areas where artificial intelligence data centers are being built to represent electricity. Trump said major technology companies would be “responsible for providing for their own energy needs” under the plan, although the details of what the promise actually entails are unclear.
“We have old electricity – you will never be able to deal with the types of numbers, the amount of electricity needed, so I tell them they can build their own place,” said the president. “They will produce their own electricity … at the same time lowering the electricity prices.”
The announcement comes as polls show Americans are dissatisfied with the economy and concerned about the cost of living. Experts on both sides of the political spectrum said the energy purchase issue could translate into negative results for Republicans in the midterm elections in November, as it did in several key races in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia last year.
While Trump has focused on increasing domestic production of oil, gas and coal, residential electricity bills have been rising — jumping from 15.9 cents per kilowatt hour in January 2025 on average to 17.2 cents at the end of December, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
One year into his second term as president, Trump has dramatically changed the state’s landscape when it comes to energy and the environment, reversing many of the efforts made by the Biden administration to prioritize electrification and investment in renewable energy through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
Among several changes, the Trump administration cut funding for solar projects, ended federal tax credits for electric vehicles and canceled grants for offshore wind power — and even tried to stop other such projects from being completed on the East Coast.
Trump has also promoted fossil fuel production and on Tuesday doubled down on his “drill the kids” agenda, citing lower fuel prices, increased US oil production and new oil imports from Venezuela.
Many of the president’s efforts are aimed at loosening Biden-era regulations that he said are burdensome, ideologically motivated and costly to taxpayers.
Trump is taking direct aim at California, which has long been an environmental leader. Last year, the president moved to block California’s long-held authority to set stricter emissions standards than the federal government — an ability that helped the state deal with historic air quality problems and underpinned its sweeping ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
Trump also cut $1.2 billion in federal funding for California’s effort to develop clean hydrogen energy while leaving unchanged funding for similar projects in states that voted for him. In November, his administration announced it would open the Pacific Coast to oil drilling for the first time in nearly four decades, a move the administration vowed to fight.
But perhaps no issue has hit voters’ kitchen tables more than energy availability.
So far this term, Trump has canceled or delayed enough projects to power more than 14 million homes, according to a tracker from the nonprofit Climate Power. The group’s senior adviser, Jesse Lee, described the president’s data center announcement as “a toothless, empty promise based on private deals with his billionaire donors.”
“To make matters worse, Trump continues to block clean energy production across the board — the only sources that can keep up with demand, ensure utility bills don’t keep rising, and prevent new pollution rates,” Lee said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency overturned the findings, the US government’s 2009 assertion that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment, in what officials described as the largest deregulation in American history. The findings form the basis of major US climate policy. The EPA also loosened guidelines on emissions from coal gas, including mercury and other harmful pollutants.
The president’s environmental record thus far “has been marked by barriers that put the interests of some corporate polluters ahead of the lives of everyday Americans,” read a statement from Marc Boom, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group made up of more than 750 former EPA employees and recruits.
In addition, Trump has worked to undermine climate science in general, often describing global warming as a “hoax” or a “hoax.” In his first year in office, he he fired hundreds of scientists working to overhaul the National Weather Service, laid off staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and dismantled the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions, among many other efforts.
In all, the administration has taken or is proposing more than 430 actions that threaten the environment, public health and the ability to deal with climate change, according to a tracker from the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
The opposition’s choice of speaker shows how seriously it takes the issue of energy availability: Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger focused on energy procurement during her campaign against Lt. Gov. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears last year, including vows to expand solar power projects and technologies like fusion and hydrogen geother. Virginia is home to more than a third of all data centers worldwide.
