Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore — both possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidates — endorsed a plan with the Trump administration on Friday to try to slow electricity price increases in the nation’s largest grid region.
The two governors traveled to Washington to sign a document with Trump administration officials urging significant changes to the way that the grid is managed for 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states. All thirteen governors, including eight Democrats, signed the statement of principles urging significant reform to the grid, according to a document reviewed by NOTUS.
Over the past two years, the grid region known as PJM has experienced an unusual upswing in electricity prices largely attributed to rising power demand from data centers. As a result, electricity prices have become a mainstream political issue in the region and even featured prominently in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia.
The Trump administration, which has embraced artificial intelligence and data centers wholeheartedly, is now trying to head off a growing political problem, with Americans increasingly blaming data centers and tech companies for the rising prices. “I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers,” Trump said Monday in a Truth Social post.
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Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Thursday blamed rising electricity prices on Democratic states that endorse emissions-reductions goals and tried to shift the blame away from data centers. “Data centers are not the problem. They’re the answer,” he said at an energy-industry conference.
Friday’s agreement, which included two key proposals designed to force tech companies to pay for their share of electricity costs and keep electricity costs from spiking too quickly for consumers, appeared intended to partially address that political problem and drew measured praise from grid experts.
One of the two core pieces of the proposal is a plan to keep a price cap in place on future PJM auctions for a type of electricity generation known as capacity, which is used to ensure that enough power will be available to prevent blackouts in times of high demand.
Shapiro essentially forced PJM to accept a price cap in a legal settlement last January, and his participation in Friday’s meeting with the White House was contingent on Trump administration officials supporting an extension of that price cap, a Shapiro aide told NOTUS.
“If implemented, the price cap sought by Shapiro would save consumers in the PJM grid up to $27 billion in future energy costs over the next several years,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
The White House proposed a meeting, document-signing and endorsement of Shapiro’s price cap all in the last week, sending the Shapiro administration scrambling to assess the plan and agree to endorse it, according to the Shapiro aide. The governor’s office, which has been aggressive in addressing electricity price issues in Pennsylvania, has had ongoing dialogue with Trump administration officials for months but had not prepared for a commitment to move so quickly, the aide said.
Moore’s office confirmed that they also were asked to participate in the plan and come to Washington within the last week.
The second proposal is a one-time auction for technology companies to allow them to bid on new, 15-year contracts for power generation in the region, a highly unusual setup compared to the standard one-year auctions that involve all power generators. This design has the potential to solve multiple problems: it would force tech companies to make commitments about their power needs in the region (creating some clarity about data center demand), and it would ensure that the costs for new data centers are borne by the companies creating them instead of the average residential electricity consumer.
This part of the proposal was a White House initiative, not a Shapiro team idea, according to the Shapiro aide. The text of the “statement of principles” was not immediately available.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the administration is leading a unprecedented bi-partisan effort urging PJM to fix the energy subtraction failures of the past, prevent price increases, and reduce the risk of blackouts,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson.
PJM was not invited to the meeting, according to a spokesperson. PJM is expected to release its proposal to reform how large loads like those for data centers are added to the grid later Friday, and it is not yet clear if the new proposals will be part of those reforms.
“PJM is reviewing the principles set forth by the White House and governors. The PJM Board’s decision, resulting from a multi-month stakeholder process on integrating large load additions, will be released later today. The Board has been deliberating on this issue since the end of that stakeholder process. We will work with our stakeholders to assess how the White House directive aligns with the Board’s decision,” a spokesperson for PJM said to NOTUS.
Late Friday afternoon, PJM released its own plan with some similarities to the proposed plan from the thirteen governors and the White House. Both plans describe the need for a one-time backstop addition of new generation, and both also discuss the importance of improved load forecasting. However, the PJM plan does not make any commitment about a price cap, and the plan also does not describe whether a one-time backstop would look like the auction to tech companies proposed by the Trump administration.
But the agreement between the White House and the governors could apply enough pressure that PJM could be forced to consider adopting its proposals. PJM needs large states like Pennsylvania and Maryland to participate, and Shapiro already threatened once to pull his state out of the grid operator. And the White House has already been exerting pressure on PJM through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.
The document signed by all thirteen governors also included several other provisions, including one that asks PJM to improve its forecasts for what energy demand will look like in the future. That provision was a red line for Moore to agree to sign on to the statement, according to an aide in his office.
“It’s bold. I want to see more details, but from what I know so far the data centers should embrace it,” said Neil Chatterjee, a former Republican commissioner at FERC. “They will pay their fair share. This brings PJM in line with regulated states on this, addresses affordability and helps solve for capacity. I suspect there will be close to unanimous support amongst Republican and Democrat governors. It’s short term but significant.”
Jeff Dennis, the executive director of the Electricity Customers Alliance and a former Department of Energy official, cautioned that Friday’s plan only appears to address one piece of a complex puzzle contributing to increasing electricity prices.
“I would note that a lot of the electricity price challenges and supply constraints in PJM are related to factors outside the capacity auction that are slowing new generation construction, including lack of long-distance transmission capacity to deliver new generation to customers, along with siting and permitting roadblocks. So there are more pieces to the affordability puzzle still to be placed,” he said.
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