Anyone who owns a backup generator quickly learns this lesson the hard way. Buying the machine is the easy part. Fueling it week after week is the real cost.
President Donald Trump just asked America’s largest data centers to learn this lesson at scale. He posted on Truth Social earlier on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. The new large-scale data center, he wrote, “is authorized by me to generate its own electricity.”
He also told builders to feed or sell any extra power back to the grid and pay “dividends” to host towns, according to Reuters. He sees it as a way to lower or even cut home electric bills.
Two companies have already implemented a version of the plan. Oracle Corporation (ORCL) supplies power on-site at several of its artificial intelligence campuses. Bloom Energy Corp. (BE) is providing a large portion of the fuel cells for this effort.
To me, they are the clearest test of whether Trump’s ideas work in practice. First, it helps to understand why he keeps pushing this.
Also read: Oracle issues ‘force majeure’ warning as artificial intelligence power becomes scarce
Why Trump wants data centers to generate their own electricity
The short answer is your electric bill. Reuters pointed out that the data center has become a political hot spot, and the anger has now crossed party lines. The post came less than two weeks before the midterm elections, when no candidate was willing to defend the higher bill.
Trump has been pushing the idea since February. On Wednesday, March 4, 2026, Oracle and six other technology companies joined his pledge to protect taxpayers. They commit to building or buying new power and grid upgrades.
However, experts told The Associated Press that pledge may not be enforceable at the federal level. Wednesday’s post couched that voluntary commitment in mandatory terms.
The bigger question is what happens when a company actually does this. Oracle already has it.
Christy Crotolu/Getty Images
Oracle already has its own power
Oracle’s problem is speed. AI customers need capacity now, while grid connection may be years away. So it turned to Blum, whose fuel cell can convert natural gas into electricity without burning the gas.
According to a press release, it took Bloom just 55 days to deliver a working system to Oracle last year. A master agreement announced on Monday, April 13, 2026, allows Oracle to purchase up to 2.8 gigawatts of Bloom fuel cells, according to the release.
More Oracle:
- Oracle cuts 2,500 employees as AI spending surges
- Oracle issues ‘force majeure’ warning as artificial intelligence power becomes scarce
- Michael Burry just set a date for Big Tech’s AI reckoning, with Oracle’s $664 billion valuation taking center stage
Two weeks later, Oracle said Bloom would fully support Project Jupiter, its giant artificial intelligence campus in New Mexico. Jupiter reads like a first draft of a Trump post.
Oracle said it would cover all of Jupiter’s energy costs, and the plan pledged $360 million for schools, infrastructure and local services. This is what Trump describes as the community dividend he promised months before he made the request.
What Oracle can do no Commitment is the fuel of stability.
Generating your own electricity costs more than it looks
Fuel cells still need fuel. According to Bloomberg, natural gas from Jupiter was originally scheduled to arrive through a new pipeline called Green Chile, but the start-up time has been delayed to Monday, February 1, 2027.
As a result, a separate Bloomberg report found that Oracle turned to trucks to transport compressed natural gas to sites in Utah and Texas during pipeline construction. It is considering doing the same for Jupiter. East Daley Analytics told Bloomberg that the cost of trucking natural gas is about four times the price of natural gas from major pipeline hubs.
It would be difficult for Oracle to afford this premium. Its free cash flow was negative $28.7 billion over the past 12 months, according to StockAnalysis. It even cited force majeure (a contractual clause that covers events beyond its control) to limit the cost if Jupiter was late.
What I find most telling is this: Trump’s plan shifts electricity bills away from households, but does not reduce them. Instead, shareholders picked it up, and these two stocks show who’s paying the price.
Oracle stock takes responsibility after Bloom gets paid
Oracle shares fell about 53% Last 52 weeks, according to StockAnalysis. The decline reflects concerns about cash rather than a lack of customers.
Even so, 43 analysts tracked by StockAnalysis still rate Oracle purchase On average, the average target is close to $237. This sounds like a bet that the power problem is temporary.
Bloom was on the other side of the deal. The company’s shares have more than doubled in 52 weeks as builders pay for fast power, according to StockAnalysis.
However, the Oracle plans it showcased are also waiting for the same delayed pipeline. Bloom will report third-quarter results on Thursday, October 22, 2026, and any update from New Mexico is likely to be more important than the headline number.
Trump’s plan is now brewing
Trump’s post pictured data centers having excess power and selling the excess power back to cities and towns. Campuses that truck in natural gas have nothing left to sell. The gap between promise and reality is what really happens.
The next big decision belongs to regulators weighing the Green Chile pipeline, not the White House. Their answers will tell each builder how much the Trump model really costs.
The race for artificial intelligence once became a race to see who could buy the most chips. Increasingly, the question comes down to who can provide fuel to the front door.
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