Minnesota Cooperatives Sign Ratepayer Protection Pledge

On Thursday, the Minnesota Rural Electric Association joined utilities, elected officials and businesses across the country in signing the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, an initiative focused on ensuring the costs associated with new data center development are not shifted to existing electric consumers. The pledge calls for large energy users to pay for the power generation and infrastructure needed to serve their facilities while supporting reliability, affordability and economic growth.

The pledge aligns with long-standing electric cooperative principles that large new loads should cover the costs associated with serving their electricity needs and should not shift costs onto existing consumer-members. Darrick Moe, President and CEO of the Minnesota Rural Electric Association, released the following statement.

“The Minnesota Rural Electric Association supports the principles behind the Ratepayer Protection Pledge because they put electric consumers first.

Minnesota’s electric cooperatives believe economic development and data center investment can bring meaningful benefits to local communities, but growth must not come at the expense of existing member-owners. We support policies that require large energy users to pay their share of the costs associated with serving their electricity needs and any necessary infrastructure upgrades, helping protect affordability and reliability for all consumers.

As locally owned and governed utilities, electric cooperatives are uniquely positioned to balance economic development with the needs of the communities they serve. Our priority is simple: ensuring cooperative members continue to receive reliable, affordable electricity while being protected from unnecessary rate increases.”

The Ratepayer Protection Pledge includes commitments for data center developers and technology companies to build, bring or buy the new power resources needed to serve their facilities, pay for new transmission and distribution infrastructure required to connect those facilities, negotiate rate structures that ensure they pay for dedicated resources whether they use the electricity or not, invest in local communities and workforce development, and coordinate with grid operators to support reliability and grid resilience.

The pledge is intended to support continued economic development and data center growth while protecting households and businesses from increased electricity costs.

The pledge reaffirms MREA’s position that data center development can be a positive for local communities when done properly and that existing consumers should not be asked to subsidize the costs of serving new facilities.