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US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

theguardian.com

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Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#31

Post by magicalist »

drak0n1c wrote: post #23
techblueberry wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. It's certainly possible, we don't need to be cynical.

> Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken.

You're looking at the the conditional the wrong way. You want to look at how often pledges lead to "company civic greatness" (or even, you know, anything net positive) to start guessing at the value of a given pledge.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#33

Post by AnthonyMouse »

techblueberry wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Wait a “pledge”? What are the legal protections of a “pledge”?

That's the boring part until you look at what they're promising to do.

It's not as if existing data centers were getting power by sending a masked rogue to climb the utility pole, tap the lines and bypass the electric meter. Paying for electricity is the thing they were going to do anyway.

Likewise, paying for "new generation capacity" is the thing they were probably going to do regardless, because colocating large data centers with power plants saves the expense of power transmission which lowers their costs.

And as the article alludes to, the real question is when? In general you can build a data center faster than you can build a power plant, which is exactly the reason data centers can cause short-term electricity prices to increase. They temporarily cause demand to exceed supply until supply has time to catch up. So on the one hand the whole issue is kind of meh because it was only ever going to be a temporary price increase anyway, and on the other hand having them build power plants at the same rate anybody else is building power plants doesn't actually change anything or address the temporary shortfall. (If you really want to solve it, find a way to build power generation capacity faster.)

And then it doesn't matter if you can enforce the promise because they're just promising to do things they were going to do anyway.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#34

Post by AdieuToLogic »

staticman2 wrote: post #24
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait, we know it’s not your definition ... Of course it is not "my definition", as I cited the source of it. > ... because it’s inapplicable. Take that up with law.com.

Your goal seemed to be to fact check Claude. I'm not sure why your failure to do so should be taken up with law.com? Law.com's first definition is inapplicable. That leaves us with the second definition, which says nothing about whether a pledge is legally binding.

> Your goal seemed to be to fact check Claude.

No, this is not my goal. My goal was to illuminate that Claude is a product which produces the most statistically relevant content to a prompt submitted therein.

> I'm not sure why your failure to do so should be taken up with law.com?

The post to which I originally replied cited "Claude" as if it were an authoritative source. To which I disagreed and then provided a definition from law.com. Where is my failure?

> Law.com's first definition is inapplicable.

From the article:

  The pledge includes a commitment by technology companies to 
  bring or buy electricity supplies for their datacenters, 
  either from new power plants or existing plants with 
  expanded output capacity. It also includes commitments from 
  big tech to pay for upgrades to power delivery systems and 
  to enter special electricity rate agreements with utilities.[0]
> That leaves us with the second definition, which says nothing about whether a pledge is legally binding.

To which I originally wrote:

  Without careful review of the document signed, it is 
  impossible to verify which form of the above is applicable 
  in this case.
0 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/04/us-tech-comp...

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#35

Post by techblueberry »

drak0n1c wrote: post #23
techblueberry wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. It's certainly possible, we don't need to be cynical.

The thing about the old days is, they’s the old days.

And yes this particular group of professional liars provide every reason to be cynical.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#36

Post by miyoji »

You can read the actual pledge at [0]. The executive order regarding it is at [1].

There's some speculation in the comments about what is or isn't in the pledge. I recommend reading it yourself.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protec...

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/rate...

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#37

Post by deaux »

fulafel wrote: post #12

Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)? Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.

Strange downvotes for a relevant question.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#38

Post by behringer »

retrochameleon wrote: post #15
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Claude to provide a legal definition of "pledge" is unconvincing at best. > What are the legal protections of a “pledge”? To answer that question is to first agree upon the legal definition of "pledge": pledge v. to deposit personal property as security for a personal loan of money. If the loan is not repaid when due, the personal property pledged shall be forfeit to the lender. The property is known as collate…

Your answer is less useful and thought out than the Claude response. Claude actually answers the question in the context in which it's being asked.

The AI slop is still slop in any context.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#40

Post by warkdarrior »

fulafel wrote: post #12

Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)? Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.

There are no such things as CO2 emissions in this administration. Your AI chatbots will be powered by clean coal and you'll enjoy it!
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