President Donald Trump is directing PJM Interconnection LLC to conduct an emergency electricity auction that would compel large technology firms to shoulder the cost of new generation capacity.

The proposed auction, alongside governors from the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, would allow data-center operators and other large power users to bid on 15-year contracts to finance new electricity plants, an effort aimed at stabilizing supply as demand from artificial-intelligence infrastructure accelerates.

The initiative is designed to insulate households from further increases in utility bills by shifting the financial burden of grid expansion onto the companies driving the surge in consumption.

The move, expected to be announced Friday, reflects mounting concern that the rapid build-out of data centers is distorting regional power markets and pushing electricity prices sharply higher. Bloomberg first reported the plan.

“I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers,” Trump said.

The effort will be formalized through a “statement of principles” signed by Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council and governors from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and other PJM states.

It responds to growing alarm that electricity demand is outpacing supply across the PJM footprint, which serves more than 67 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest.

At the center of the debate is how the US can expand power generation fast enough to support energy-intensive data centers viewed as critical to maintaining global leadership in artificial intelligence without transferring the cost to ordinary consumers.

Governors backing the plan have committed to ensuring that new infrastructure costs are allocated directly to data centers rather than embedded in retail utility rates.

The price pressures are already evident. The average US retail electricity price rose 7.4 percent in September to a record 18.07 cents per kilowatt-hour, the largest monthly increase since December 2023.

Residential electricity prices climbed even faster, rising 10.5 percent between January and August 2025 one of the steepest increases in more than a decade, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.