Tech giants should pay for residential HVAC installs, reports suggest

With power-hungry AI data centers competing with consumers for available electricity, the Trump administration on Friday suggested that data center operators — America’s tech giants — should effectively fund new power plants by bidding on electricity through an auction, an effort to meet surging demand without hiking utility bills for homes and businesses. 

Meanwhile, in recent months, some energy analysts have proposed another way for tech companies to free up grid capacity: Shouldering the costs of home efficiency upgrades. 

What’s happening: In September 2025, nonprofit Rewiring America released a report estimating that data center operators could meet 33 percent of their projected additional capacity needs by subsidizing heat pump installations in the “tens of millions of U.S. households that currently use inefficient electric heating, cooling, and water heating.”

• In December, D.C.-based AnnDyl Policy Group released a similar report, finding that a tech company investing $50 million in attic insulation, duct sealing, and smart thermostats in homes near a data center could offset up to 10 percent of its peak demand, while spurring 208 jobs and generating over $3 million in annual consumer savings.
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The big picture: Rewiring America has estimated that large-scale residential upgrades to heat pumps and heat pump water heaters, as well as rooftop solar and storage, would create up to 1.1 million new jobs annually over the next five years, with most in the skilled trades.

What they’re saying: Kara Saul Rinaldi, CEO of AnnDyl Policy Group, tells Homepros that data center owners “are looking at all solutions,” and that contractors will play an important role.

• “I work with the Building Performance Association. I work with a lot of the ACCA chapters,” she says. “For us to be able to move forward… we have to have the contractors on board.”