To: Interested Parties
From: Evergreen Action Communications Director Seth Nelson
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Re: Trump’s Energy Price Hike: The President Tees Up Another Empty Promise While Bills Climb
Today, Donald Trump is hosting a room full of Big Tech executives at the White House to sign an unenforceable, voluntary agreement with companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI that he claimed in his State of the Union would stop AI data center expansion from hiking electricity bills. “In many cases,” he promised, “prices of electricity will go down [...] and very substantially.”
Forgive us if we’re skeptical. Trump falsely promised—nearly 50 times—to cut Americans’ energy bills in half within his first year in office. He didn’t. Electricity prices are up more than 7% year over year, and the average household paid $537 more for electricity last year than it would have if he’d delivered on that promise. A voluntary agreement with Big Tech and the leader of the only party still actively trying to ban new energy sources—while AI data center demand skyrockets—is not a policy. It’s a photo op.
What Trump is staging today is a PR event great for Big Tech and the president’s talking points, but light on any real guarantees for the American people. Big Tech can make all the public pledges it wants, but when they actually sign deals with utilities, those agreements are sealed from the public—ratepayers have no way to verify what’s actually being agreed to. And utilities have every incentive to offer sweetheart deals: they profit from building infrastructure, and data centers are a lucrative opportunity to do exactly that.
Trump’s deal with Big Tech is likely to be worth less than the piece of paper it’s written on. Meanwhile, the real solution to cutting costs and meeting surging electricity demand from AI—the solution Trump is actively sabotaging—is building more low-cost clean energy. New wind and solar projects cost significantly less than new gas plants and come online faster. But Trump has canceled or blocked thousands of projects that would have helped lower bills, propped up expensive coal plants, and expanded gas exports that are already driving domestic prices higher.
And now, his reckless military action in Iran is spiking global oil prices—sending the national average gasoline price to its largest single-day increase since 2022 and driving up “natural” gas prices after a brutal winter already left millions with sky-high utility bills. And it’s Trump’s fossil fuel donors who stand to profit while American families pay the price.
Below is an updated timeline of Trump’s latest actions since our last update that are hiking energy costs for American families:
Trump’s Energy Price Hike: An Updated Timeline
February 20: Trump lets coal plants release more toxic mercury, scraps other pollution safeguards
Action: Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolled back Biden-era mercury and air toxics standards, reopening a loophole allowing some coal-fired plants to emit mercury at more than three times the rate of other coal plants. The rollback also scraps requirements for continuous emissions monitoring across the broader coal industry, increasing healthcare costs.
Impact: A prior EPA analysis found that only 27 out of 219 still-operating coal plants would need to actually make any technological upgrades to comply with the mercury standards. Yet Trump scrapped the standards anyway—after instituting a policy last year allowing coal plant operators to simply email the EPA to request an exemption. Seventy-one requested one. None were denied. In addition to leaving children at further risk of dangerous mercury exposure, the rollback eliminates safeguards that would have massively cut the industry’s emissions of soot and hazardous metals. Despite EPA claims to the contrary, gutting pollution standards does not lower energy costs for families—it transfers the hidden costs of dirty, toxic air onto communities through higher health expenses, while delivering yet another subsidy to prop up expensive coal plants.
February 17: Trump again orders expensive Michigan coal plant to stay open, with a $135 million price tag
Action: Trump’s Department of Energy (DOE) issued yet another emergency extension ordering a Michigan utility to keep an uneconomical coal-fired plant—scheduled to retire nine months prior—online through at least May 2026.
Impact: Recent financial filings show the administration’s repeated abuse of emergency powers has cost the utility at least $135 million in operating the plant—costs that will ultimately fall to ratepayers across the region. Since issuing its first emergency order last May, the administration has also forced coal plants to stay open in Indiana, Colorado, and Washington, as well as a retiring Pennsylvania gas-fired plant. According to an analysis by Grid Strategies, ratepayer costs could reach nearly $6 billion if Trump keeps these plants open and forces the remaining ones scheduled to retire by 2028 to stay open. And the administration continues to claim it is forcing the plants to stay open because coal is “one of the most affordable and reliable sources of electricity,” an absurd claim that does not stand up to basic Economics 101 scrutiny. Nearly the entire nation’s coal fleet is more expensive to maintain than to replace with cheaper energy sources—like solar, wind, and storage. Either no one inside the Trump administration ever passed an economics class, or they know it's false and don’t care because keeping coal plants open was never about lowering costs. It’s always been about paying off the corporate polluters who helped Trump return to office.
February 12: Trump kills endangerment finding, stripping vehicle pollution standards that save families money
Action: Trump’s EPA rescinded the endangering finding, the science-backed determination that climate pollution threatens Americans’ health and safety. The decision rolls back vehicle pollution standards built on that finding and threatens carbon pollution standards for coal and gas power plants.
Impact: The EPA claimed that killing the endangerment finding and rolling back the standards requiring automakers to improve fuel efficiency will save $1.3 trillion by 2055. But the agency’s own analysis undercuts that claim, reporting an additional $1.4 trillion in costs from increased fuel purchases, vehicle repair and maintenance, insurance, and traffic congestion over the same period. Now, families will be left with less efficient vehicles that are more expensive to fuel, maintain, and repair. The rollback is a direct handout to oil and gas companies at the expense of the families Trump claimed he would protect from high energy costs.
February 11: Trump enlists the military in his coal bailout scheme—at taxpayers’ expense
Action: On the same day an industry lobby group crowned him the "Undisputed Champion of Coal,” Trump ordered the Department of Defense to purchase coal-fired power, continuing his push to bail out the dying industry and forcing the military to serve as a captive buyer for a dirty, expensive fuel when cheaper, cleaner options exist.
Impact: A coal industry group handed Trump a phony award, and he immediately delivered more of exactly what they paid for—putting taxpayer dollars into their pockets. The cozy, pay-to-play arrangement that rewards fossil fuel donors at taxpayers’ expense won’t revive a dying industry, but every dollar spent propping it up will show up as higher costs for taxpayers.
February 3: Trump signs a spending package gutting $800 million in EV infrastructure funding to build more highways
Action: Trump signed a spending package that cut more than $800 million from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program—designed to build fast EV chargers along highways nationwide—to fund additional highway construction.
Impact: The cuts hit red states hardest—including Texas and Florida, where EV adoption lags only behind California. Without this investment, rural communities will struggle to continue building the charging infrastructure needed for residents to switch to cost-saving EVs, further locking Americans into gasoline dependency as costs surge.
February 2: Trump illegally rescinds nearly $1 billion in transportation funds for EV chargers
Action: Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed the Department of Transportation to claw back $943 million in federal funds from four states—Colorado, Illinois, California, and Minnesota—that did not vote for Trump in 2024. The funding was primarily intended to expand EV chargers in low- and moderate-income communities. OMB’s directive came days after CBS News reported that the agency was compiling a detailed accounting of only federal funding going to states led by Democrats, and weeks after Trump announced his administration wouldn’t make any payments to cities or states opposing his immigration policies.
Impact: In a clear-cut case of political retribution, the move only serves to hurt families already struggling with the cost of living. Pulling these funds increases transportation costs for residents of communities counting on the investment to expand charger access, making it harder for families to choose cleaner, cheaper-to-operate cars and pushing them toward more expensive-to-operate-and-maintain gas-powered vehicles.
January 22: Trump’s DOE announces plans to cancel or revise more than $83 billion in clean energy loans
Action: Trump’s DOE announced it’s canceling nearly $30 billion in clean energy financing and revising more than $53 billion in financing finalized under the Biden administration.
Impact: These loans fund solar, wind, battery storage, transmission, and manufacturing projects that would have expanded grid capacity and driven down electricity costs. While fossil fuel enthusiast and Energy Secretary Chris Wright has falsely claimed that many of these Biden-era loan deals were rushed, former agency officials told the New York Times that every project undergoes “exhaustive vetting.” Industry experts warn that unilaterally pulling loan agreements will also make companies think twice about doing business with the federal government, chilling private investment in the clean energy economy. It’s part of Trump’s broader energy agenda: systematically block the investments that would lower costs and use them to bankroll the dirty, expensive fuels that raise them.
December 22, 2025: Trump orders five offshore wind projects to halt construction
Action: Trump’s Department of the Interior ordered a halt to construction on five offshore wind developments stretching from Virginia to New England, citing unspecified national security concerns from “recently completed classified reports.”
Impact: Federal judges—including one nominated by Trump—were swift in allowing all five projects to resume, with one citing “irreparable harm” and another concluding the government provided no “sufficient explanation” for why “purportedly new classified information” should stop work entirely. But delay costs money and erodes confidence (and that’s the point, isn’t it?). The nearly month-long pause on Virginia’s offshore wind project alone cost Dominion Energy $228 million. The delay comes at a time when the northeast badly needs new capacity, particularly during extreme cold weather events, when offshore wind “keep[s] a lid on prices” by displacing expensive gas generation. But even once Trump leaves office, the broader damage to the industry is already done. If a company can’t rely on the U.S. government to be a good-faith partner, it won’t invest billions in a project the federal government might ultimately kill—meaning fewer wind projects, less affordable clean power, and higher electricity bills.
Photo Ops Don’t Pay the Bills
Trump has made a lot of promises about cutting energy costs. He’s kept none of them. That’s because his energy agenda wasn’t designed to help working families. It was designed to benefit his fossil fuel and corporate donors.
Today’s “pledge” is bound to be the latest entry in a long record of lies underpinning Trump’s energy agenda. An unenforceable handshake deal with Big Tech, signed by companies with a documented history of announcing and then abandoning lofty targets, is no solution. The Trump administration has spent the last year preventing any regulations for the Big Tech companies who have cozied up to him. Now that energy prices have gone up due to his misguided policies, he’s trying to cover up his mistakes. It’s a pressure release valve designed to cover for a president who has spent his entire presidency governing for corporate polluters and making energy more expensive for working families.
A voluntary pledge—while the president continues sabotaging the new energy sources needed to keep Americans’ bills from rising—is a photo op. And photo ops don’t pay your electric bill.
For more information or to speak with a policy expert, please contact Evergreen Action Communications Director Seth Nelson at seth@evergreenaction.com.
Evergreen has been tracking all the ways Trump is hiking energy prices and making life less affordable for Americans. You can read the last update here and find a running analysis of prior actions here.