OpenAI releases commitments to host communities and a policy proposal
OpenAI on Nov. 5 (Nov. 6 Japan time) released the "National Community Compact," a set of commitments to communities that host its AI data centers, and a policy proposal, the "Compute Campus Policy Blueprint." For sites it owns and operates, the company pledged to pay its full electricity costs, disclose water and electricity use by site, not require public officials to sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) and report annually on jobs, among other things. In the proposal, it urged policymakers to write the same measures into law.
The communities that host AI infrastructure should have a say in how it's built and share in the benefits. Today we're announcing new commitments to the communities where we build, along with policy proposals for responsible AI infrastructure.
The release came 2 days after the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3. Local ballot measures produced a string of results unfavorable to data center development. OpenAI said it had spent months preparing before the election results came in.
In the documents, the company calls data centers used for AI training "compute campuses." It argues that they differ in scale from typical data centers and create many construction and operations jobs.
Commitments in 7 areas, including covering power costs and disclosing water use
The Compact covers listening to residents, accountability, protecting household electricity bills, cooperating with the power grid, water, community investment and jobs. The company had already pledged to cover power costs in January's "Stargate Community" and in a White House pledge in March, and it included that again in the new document. According to Bloomberg, the document consolidates measures set out in plans in Georgia and elsewhere and adds measures drawn from discussions with residents and local officials in Georgia, Ohio and Texas.
| Item | OpenAI's commitment | What the documents do not confirm |
|---|---|---|
| Power and infrastructure costs | Pay the full cost of power used and the incremental cost of infrastructure needed to supply the site. Before major spending, show financial guarantees so that costs are not left to other customers if plans are delayed, scaled back or canceled | Amount and form of guarantees, method of calculating costs |
| Water | Report water use by site at new sites and explain cooling and water management methods. Draw up water plans for each community and prioritize closed-loop systems (which recirculate water) and low-water cooling | Frequency of disclosure, caps on use |
| Electricity use | Disclose electricity use, including power generated and consumed on site | Frequency of disclosure |
| Noise | Conduct independent noise studies before operations begin and annually thereafter, and publish the results | How the study organizations are chosen |
| NDAs with public officials | Not require signing an NDA as a condition of consultations or negotiations. Retain narrow protections for security information, trade secrets and competitively sensitive information | Specific scope of exceptions |
| Jobs | Publish a hiring strategy and report annually on the number of workers, hours worked, job types and apprentice participation. Set local hiring targets where labor market conditions allow | Numerical targets |
| Progress reports | Reflect residents' input in site-specific commitments and publish progress annually | Timing of reports, external verification |
Covers company-owned and operated sites; locations and start date unconfirmed
The Compact covers sites OpenAI owns and operates. The document says each site will have a local version of the Compact "going forward," but it gives neither a start date nor a list of covered sites. The only plan for which a local version is explicitly mentioned is in Effingham County, Georgia.
Whether the plan in Pike County, Ohio, is covered cannot be determined. According to media reports, the site in that county will be built, owned and operated by SB Energy, and OpenAI will lease it under a 20-year contract. The Compact mentions community investment in the county but does not say whether it applies there. DCD, a publication specializing in data centers, also pointed out that it is unclear whether computing capacity secured through leases or development with partners is included.
How the documents treat the Abilene, Texas, site that OpenAI uses cannot be confirmed either. That site has a scale equivalent to about 760,000 "H100" units, according to an estimate by research group Epoch AI (related article).
Whether the commitments are binding is also unconfirmed. The Compact does not describe penalties for noncompliance, remedies for residents or an outside body to verify compliance. The only thing the documents describe as "independent" is the noise studies, and they do not say whether a third party will verify the water, electricity and jobs figures. The Blueprint says voluntary corporate commitments are only a starting point and on their own cannot give communities lasting assurance.
"Unconfirmed" in this section means the information does not appear anywhere in the full text of the 2 published PDFs. The text of the announcement page could not be checked.
Proposal calls for codifying its own commitments, and faster grid connections
The Blueprint calls for making the Compact's contents rules for the entire industry. It lists banning developers from requiring NDAs of public officials, requiring construction plans to be made public, mandating reporting on water, noise and electricity, and introducing rate structures under which large power users pay incremental costs. On rate structures, it explicitly calls for codifying the March pledge.
The disclosure items are more detailed than in the Compact. For water, it calls for reporting the initial fill and ongoing use, withdrawal and consumption, and estimates and measurements separately. For electricity, it also lists annual reporting of "PUE," a measure of power usage efficiency. It says environmental and economic reports should separate projections from actual results.
On tax incentives, it proposed that states and municipalities require agreements to be made public, measurable commitments and reporting, and include provisions for clawbacks if key commitments are not met.
At the same time, the proposal also includes requests that would make it easier for OpenAI to build. It urged Congress to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authority to quickly connect construction-ready projects to the grid. It also cited permitting reform and the restoration and expansion of tax incentives for clean power. It opposes regulations that would uniformly require large users to supply their own power. The proposal also argues that America's ability to build will determine the competition with China.
40 of 41 local ballot measures go against development
According to CNBC, citing an analysis by Ballotpedia and its own tally, in 40 of 41 local ballot measures held in 10 states on Nov. 3, voters supported restrictions on development or rejected proposals to advance it. In Ballotpedia's pre-election tally, Ohio accounted for 21 of the 41. Another report said restriction measures were supported in 39 cases, and the numbers differ depending on how they are counted.
According to Reuters, Democrats won governor's races in Texas, Georgia and Ohio. All are states where OpenAI has large projects. Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has called for an immediate moratorium on data center development. Bloomberg reported that, with Democrats winning governor's races, about half of the proposed AI data center expansion could face tough scrutiny or opposition.
In February, OpenAI showed investors a target of $600 billion in total compute spending through 2030. According to research group Data Center Watch, at least 45 projects worth a combined $88 billion were affected by local opposition in April-June 2026. Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, acknowledged to Bloomberg that some projects could be delayed.
Lehane told CNBC that the proposal had been in preparation since August and that during that time he met with dozens of lawmakers and candidates. The aim is to set a "very high floor," he said. As it prepares for an initial public offering, OpenAI announced on Nov. 3 that it would bring in Uber President Jill Hazelbaker as chief communications officer, and building public trust has become a management priority (related article).
- OpenAI announces Stargate Community, says it will pay its own power costsOfficial
- Major companies sign White House electricity rate pledge; OpenAI participatesOfficial
- Georgia plan announced; OpenAI says it voided the county NDA that monthOfficial
- Georgia Power announces approval of contract with OpenAIOfficial
- Environmental group sues over Effingham County proceduresReport
- Midterm elections; 40 of 41 local ballot measures go against developmentReport
- National Community Compact and Blueprint releasedOfficial
Criticism over NDAs and tax breaks at the Georgia site
The plan most often cited as an example in the documents is the one in Effingham County, Georgia. It involves $20 billion in investment and requires 3.2 gigawatts of power, and was announced on July 22.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, OpenAI asked county officials to sign NDAs while it was comparing candidate sites. Residents objected that they had not been told about the plan until it was announced, and more than 100 people protested outside a July 23 information session. OpenAI says in the Blueprint that it voided the NDA in Effingham County in July.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), an environmental legal group, filed suit on behalf of residents and others on Sept. 21. It alleges that the county's industrial development authority approved about $900 million in tax breaks without a public process. Octans GA, an OpenAI affiliate, was reportedly also named as a defendant.
OpenAI emphasizes the benefits to the community in the documents. It pledged $80 million in investment to the county, and based on residents' input allocated $4.8 million to cover school meal costs for all 14,000 students and $2 million for park improvements. At full operation, it will pay about $66 million a year in lieu of taxes, according to the county's projections, making it the county's largest taxpayer, it said. On power, it signed a contract allowing Georgia Power to cut supply by up to 1,000 megawatts during periods of high demand, and it will pay the full cost of infrastructure. Georgia Power says it expects a typical household to save more than $15 a month starting in 2029, but that is the utility's projection covering all large-load demand.
Job projections are mostly construction
The job projections OpenAI gave in the documents show construction jobs far outnumbering long-term jobs. In Pike County, there are 26,000 construction jobs and 2,500 long-term operations jobs. Long-term jobs in Effingham and Pike counties are expected to pay an average of $80,000 a year. All figures are the company's projections.
OpenAI says data center equipment is replaced every 3 to 5 years, creating long-term work. Lehane told Reuters the new sites are different from "black boxes" placed in pastures. The company's hardware and computing infrastructure teams use the conversational AI "ChatGPT" and the AI coding tool "Codex" to develop data center equipment (related article).
- Construction jobs
- Long-term jobs
Other companies have already pledged to cover costs and rethink NDAs
Other companies in the industry have also announced they will cover power costs or rethink NDAs. Microsoft released a community-focused infrastructure plan in January and later said it would stop using NDAs with local governments and end existing agreements. Amazon also reportedly said in October that it would not require NDAs in negotiations with municipalities. Anthropic said in February that it would cover increases in electricity rates caused by its data centers and the cost of grid upgrades needed for connection.
Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI signed the March pledge, but it is not binding. Meta says it publishes annual energy use for each of its operating data centers. The annual reports will be the basis for judging how far OpenAI's commitments are carried out, but the timing of the first report has not been given.
