A responsible path forward for America’s energy future

Key takeaways

Amazon joins White House energy pledge to strengthen the grid and protect ratepayers.
We fully pay our data center energy costs, including new generation and grid upgrades.
Since 2020, Amazon has been one of the world's largest buyers of carbon-free energy.
Amazon's 700+ carbon-free projects deliver 40+ gigawatts to communities.

Today, Amazon is proud to have signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge at the White House. We welcome the Administration’s leadership on this issue, and the pledge’s commitments which establish an important baseline that will protect ratepayers and enable responsible, long-term energy partnerships that strengthen the grid and communities where data centers operate.

At Amazon, we start by building and operating data centers responsibly, paying our full costs without passing them on to others, and investing in new energy sources that strengthen the grid for everyone. When Amazon builds a data center, we also meaningfully invest in the community around it.

As a result, Amazon data centers create thousands of high-skilled jobs, drive new opportunities for local businesses, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for local schools and services, and support workforce development programs that help people pursue good jobs.

We share the concern about rising utility costs for American families. While data centers are part of the conversation, independent studies show that data centers are actually helping to keep rates lower even as other forces push utility costs higher.

When Amazon invests in new data centers, we also contribute to upgrading the grid because meeting the nation’s growing energy demand is essential to keeping power affordable and reliable, supporting everyday life, enabling economic growth, and strengthening U.S. competitiveness.

Amazon contributes to America's electricity system

Amazon pays its full electricity costs while making substantial investments in building new energy generation and transmission infrastructure that benefits everyone in our communities. We’re working with grid operators, utilities, and other partners to ensure the grid is prepared to meet future demand and that costs are not passed on to ratepayers.

For example, we have participated in utility rate proceedings in Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, and Virginia to ensure we protect ratepayers and pay the full cost to serve our data centers. For Amazon, paying the monthly power bill is only part of what it takes to responsibly run a data center. We also pay for the additional infrastructure to deliver that power to our data centers, including new transmission lines, substations, and other grid upgrades.

We do this through long-term agreements with utilities that include mechanisms like minimum demand charges, financial guarantees, and multi-year commitments. These agreements ensure the costs of serving our data centers are fully paid by Amazon, not by households or small businesses.

Amazon’s grid modernization benefits local communities

At the same time, Amazon’s long-term commitments give utilities the capital and certainty to invest in modernizing and strengthening the grid—the same grid that serves households, local businesses, and the communities around our data centers. For example:

In Indiana, regulators approved an agreement between Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) and Amazon that will deliver approximately $1 billion in cost savings to NIPSCO customers over 15 years. And near Amazon’s Project Rainier, one of the world’s largest AI compute facilities, Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) announced rate reductions last week because added revenue from data center growth is helping lower costs for customers.
In Louisiana, Amazon worked with Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) to ensure we cover 100% of the costs associated with our new data center campus. That includes fully funding the new energy infrastructure and grid upgrades required to serve Amazon’s data centers, investments that also strengthen reliability for all SWEPCO customers.
In Mississippi, Entergy has launched a $300 million grid transformation initiative that will go towards improving reliability and targets a 50% reduction in outages, at no additional cost to residential customers, using investments from Amazon and other large customers.
In Pennsylvania, our agreements ensure that we contribute to the transmission system, and according to PPL Electric Utilities, help reduce costs and pay for local grid infrastructure updates that will benefit all local energy users.

And when it comes to Pennsylvania, our investment in the new Salem Township data center campus includes significant financial support for the neighboring Susquehanna nuclear power plant, helping ensure that the plant will continue to generate safe, reliable nuclear energy for years to come.

How Amazon is helping power America's AI future

The American economy is growing and energy demand is increasing to power the future, driven by advanced manufacturing, transportation, and new technologies like AI. That’s a sign of economic strength and potential, but it also means our grid must modernize far faster than it has in the past to harness these opportunities. Modernizing the grid will require utilities, regulators, policymakers, and energy providers working together along with thoughtful policy, accelerated permitting to expand and expedite transmission infrastructure, and sustained investment.

Amazon is contributing to this effort by making long-term energy commitments and investments that support a more resilient, affordable energy future. Since 2020, Amazon has set the industry standard as one of the world's largest corporate purchasers of carbon-free energy. Our portfolio of over 700 carbon-free energy projects across our operations includes more than 40 gigawatts of capacity—enough to power the equivalent of over 12 million homes in America.

These projects do more than bring new carbon-free energy online. They create thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions in their locations. They deliver new sources of energy to power homes, hospitals, and schools, while modernizing the infrastructure communities rely on to keep costs stable and affordable. And they power the AI innovation and emerging technologies essential to America’s technological leadership.

We are also pioneering the next generation of nuclear power. In Washington, we signed an agreement to develop advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) that can scale up to 960 megawatts of capacity. We have also made an equity investment in X-energy, a leading U.S. company developing SMRs, to advance more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear energy by 2039. We’re also collaborating with U.S. national labs like the Idaho National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to bring the power of our AI technology to help them advance the next generation of advanced and safe nuclear fission and fusion power.

A responsible path forward

In signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge today, Amazon is committed to doing our part to strengthen America’s energy future and advance affordability, reliability, and innovation by investing to bring new energy to the grid, building responsibly, and partnering with communities to ensure that the benefits of the digital economy are widespread.

However, even as we invest to help modernize the grid, more must be done. Much of America’s electrical grid was designed for a different era, with 70% of transmission lines now more than 25 years old. Outdated permitting processes and bureaucratic delays are slowing critical energy and infrastructure progress, leading to rising utility bills and placing growth and U.S. competitiveness at risk. That’s why we continue to encourage bipartisan collaboration at the local, state, and federal levels to unlock the private-sector innovation and investment needed to strengthen America’s technological edge and ensure long-term economic and national security.

The Ratepayer Protection Pledge marks an important milestone as a national commitment to a stronger grid that supports American families, fuels our economy, and keeps the United States at the forefront of global innovation. We look forward to working with the Administration, Congress, utilities, regulators, and policymakers at all levels to protect ratepayers, strengthen the grid, invest in national infrastructure, and pave the way for America’s energy future.

Learn more about how Amazon data centers aren’t raising your electricity bills.