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North Arkansas Electric Cooperative has signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary commitment meant to keep data center construction from raising electricity bills for ordinary customers.
The cooperative serves about 39,000 active accounts across parts of eight counties from offices in Salem, Ash Flat and Mountain Home. No data centers operate in its territory.
“NAEC does not have any data centers in our service territory, but we are committed to having any future data center developers pay their fair share and to preventing our members’ electric bills from being impacted by these projects,” CEO Mel Coleman said.
President Donald Trump announced the pledge in his State of the Union address in February. Seven technology companies, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, signed it at the White House in March.
The pledge asks large data center operators to build, bring or buy the power their projects need and to pay the full cost of the generation and grid upgrades that come with it. Signers also agree to pay negotiated rates whether or not they use the electricity.
The White House expanded the pledge in July to include utilities, cooperatives, developers, governors and state legislators. More than 200 signed in that round.
The commitment is not law. Critics have noted it carries no enforcement mechanism, and some states have moved to write similar requirements into statute. Oregon passed a law in 2025 requiring large power users to pay rates that reflect what their service actually costs.
NAEC buys its wholesale power from Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation, which generates and delivers electricity to the member cooperatives that own it. Coleman sits on the AECC board.
AECC fields regular inquiries about data center projects, according to the release. No large-scale data centers are currently on cooperative lines anywhere in Arkansas.
“AECC’s position also is that any data center developers must bear any increased costs up front to prevent co-op members’ electric bills or service reliability from being affected,” Coleman said.
He said data centers carry real value for the economy and for national security, but that building them cannot come at the expense of member bills or the reliability of the electric system.
The pledge covers costs tied to data centers only. It does not address other pressures on member rates. NAEC members absorbed a 9.4% rate increase that drew opposition before the cooperative posted record margins of $14.1 million in 2025.
More information is available at naeci.com or by calling 870-895-3221.
