Microsoft said Tuesday it would take a series of steps to become a “good neighbor” in the communities where it operates. build data centers— including promising to ask utilities to set higher electricity rates for data centers.
Speaking on stage at an event in Great Falls, Virginia, Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith directly referenced a growing national reluctance to data centers, describing it as creating “a moment in time where we need to listen, and we need to address these concerns head on.”
“When I visit communities across the country, people have questions, pointed questions. They even have concerns,” Smith said, as a slide showed headlines from various media outlets about opposition to data centers. “Those are the kinds of questions we need to consider… We’re at a time when people have a lot of things on their minds. They’re worried about the price of electricity. They’re wondering what this big data center will mean for their water supply. They’re looking at this technology and wondering: What will it mean for the jobs of the future? What will it mean for today’s adults? What will it mean for their children?”
This announcement follows a message from President Donald Trump on Social truth On Monday, he pledged that his administration would work with “major American technology companies,” including Microsoft, to ensure that data centers don’t inflate customers’ utility bills.
“We are the hottest country in the world and number one in AI,” Trump wrote in the post, in which he also blamed Democrats for rising utility bills. “Data centers are the key to this boom and keeping Americans FREEDOM and SECURITY, but the big tech companies building them must “pay their own dues.”
Average electricity bills have rose faster than inflation in recent years in many parts of the country. These price increases are due to a variety of factors, including the costs of repairing and maintaining the country’s aging power grid. But increased demand for electricity, particularly from data centers, which can also be expensive to connect to the grid, plays a role. As tech companies and utilities anticipate a massive new need for energy from data center construction nationwide, the Energy Information Administration projects that electricity bills will continue to rise until 2026.
Concerns over data centers and electricity bills played a role key role in several local and state midterm elections last year, while research released last fall shows that local opposition to data centers skyrocketed in the second quarter of 2025, leading to multibillion-dollar projects being blocked or canceled. The political divide against data centers appears to be bipartisan. In recent months, influential former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has begun speaking out against the data center energy and water costs on his War Room podcast, which is part of a broader backlash from some MAGA figureheads against the development of AI in the United States.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, has made accelerating the construction of data centers in the United States a major priority. It removed various environmental protections for data centers, including water protection, accelerated the review of chemicals involved in their useand encouraged their development on federal territory. The Ministry of Energy also educated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate transmission, to work on a range of data center and grid issues.
Microsoft, which has about 100 data centers planned or under construction across the country, has encountered local resistance to some of its projects. In October, the company canceled plans for a data center in Wisconsin due to local opposition; the group leading the charge against this project warned of a potential “price increase of 5 to 15% to subsidize cheap electricity”. The company revealed last week that it was also behind a proposed project in Michigan, which was put on hold in December following concerns from community members. Hundreds of residents attended a planning commission meeting for the project Monday evening, and many told local media they were there to voice their opposition.