00:00President Trump pushing for tech companies to foot the bill for new plants to power AI data
00:04centers. Sources telling us here at Bloomberg the move would fund some $15 billion of new plants
00:09to take pressure off of homes and businesses. Joining us now from Washington is Bloomberg's
00:14Tyler Kendall. Tyler, the big push, the latest big push of the last 24 hours.
00:19Yeah. Hey, John. Good morning. I mean, this is considered to be an unprecedented move aimed at
00:24easing concerns that data centers are driving up electricity costs amid the AI boom. And the
00:29fact that this White House is playing defense when it comes to affordability. Now, a White House
00:34official tells Bloomberg News that President Trump, alongside a number of governors whose states are
00:38served by the nation's largest power grid, PJM, will call for an emergency wholesale energy auction
00:44where essentially big tech companies would place bids to fund new power plants. And we are talking
00:50about, just for context here, unique and one-time terms. Typically, PJM holds electricity auctions
00:56for a 12-month period. But instead, this plan is putting forth the idea of 15-year contracts where
01:03the only bidders are data center owners and operators. Now, this grid in particular, which
01:09serves 13 states, has been strained by more data centers coming online and actually more power plants
01:14going offline faster than they can be replaced, which has put a squeeze on supplies. And as you heard
01:21there, President Trump has previously floated this idea that he likes that data centers could be built
01:27alongside power plants. And we sort of heard him tease that this announcement was going to be coming
01:32earlier this week when he took to Truth Social. And he said that he was working to ensure that big
01:36tech doesn't drive up prices and praised, as Anne-Marie mentioned at the top of the segment,
01:40a pledge by Microsoft to pay more of its, quote, fair share. Now, our reporting indicates that this is going
01:46to be a non-binding directive, which means that PJM doesn't necessarily need to go along with it.
01:52So it might not come to fruition, though there is definitely mounting pressure. John,
01:57expected at the White House today is Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. I actually
02:01sat down with him back in September. And at the time, he told me he was threatening to pull his state
02:07out of PJM. If the grid operator didn't do more to rein in costs, I would expect some similar threats
02:13could be on the table today.
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