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Wisconsin Senate Republicans passed a series of bills Wednesday aimed at restricting gender transition surgeries for minors and which sports teams transgender students can join.
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The state Assembly passed a package of nuclear energy incentives Thursday, with backers promising a "nuclear renaissance" in Wisconsin amid a data center building boom.
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Anticipated spikes in demand for energy to supply Wisconsinโs data center building boom come on the heels of decades of declining power and water use, according to a new report.
Aย Wisconsin Policy Forum analysisย shows there are more than 40 data centers operating in Wisconsin with another four planned. The sprawling facilities host computer servers, which store data and support a global surge in the use of artificial intelligence.
The data center building boom has been met by local opposition groups concerned about the facilitiesโ resource needs. But the Policy Forum report shows itโs all happening after years of declines in demand for electricity and water.
Using projections submitted to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission by utility companies, the Policy Forum estimates the stateโs peak electrical demand is expected to increase to around 17 gigawatts by 2030, driven largely by data centers. In 2024, Wisconsinโs peak demand was rated at 14.6 gigawatts. Over the past 20 years, total electricity sales have fallen by 9% over the past 20 years.
Wisconsin Policy Forum Senior Research Associate Tyler Byrnes told WPR a big part of the decline since 2005 is due to fewer commercial customers paired with more energy efficiency measures. He said during that span, utilities have pulled aging, coal-fired power plants offline and shifted toward more renewable energy.ย
โInto that landscape, now weโre seeing these really big data centers come online,โ said Byrnes.
Some utilities in Wisconsin are expected to seek state permission to build new power plants or expand existing ones to meet the data center demand. Byrnes said that will bring a need for more transmission lines, though local impacts will vary depending on where the data centers are located.
The Policy Forumโs analysis shows most existing facilities are in south central and southeastern Wisconsin. With other large-scale data centers planned for more rural areas like Beaver Dam and DeForest, he said utility companies may need to build out more infrastructure.
Another major concern raised during the data center debate is the facilitiesโ hefty water demands.
Opponents have complained that developers havenโt been transparent about how much water theyโll need to cool computer servers. In September, environmental advocates sued the city of Racineย to force the release of projected water needsย of a $3.3 billion data center campus located at the former Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant. The city released figures showingย the project will need more than 8 million gallonsย of water per year.ย
To put that into context, the Policy Forum looked at historical water sales reported by the Racine Water Works, which will supply the Mount Pleasant data center project. Between 1997 and 2022, the utility saw water sales decline by 2.1 billion gallons annually. Byrnes said that taken as a whole, the demand for water from data centers is โa drop in the bucketโ in a lot of cases.
As with electrical demand, Byrnes said water demand has decreased due to fewer industrial customers and increased efficiency efforts. Because cities like Racine still need to maintain the same level of infrastructure, which is more expensive due to inflation, the revenue from each gallon of water sold has to be spread further. That means potential rate increases.
Byrnes said data centers have been turning to closed-loop cooling systems, which use less water, but cities like Racine would still be selling more water, which would help cover fixed infrastructure costs.ย
โPotentially, it could maybe blunt some of the (water rate) increases,โ Byrnes said.ย
With the rise in data center developments in Wisconsin, local governments and state lawmakers are working to figure out how to regulate them.
The DeForest Village Board recentlyย took no actionย on a citizen petition calling for referendum votes before any data center project could be approved.
In Menomonie, the city council votedย to restrict where and how data centers can be builtย months after the mayorย halted a $1.6 billion proposal. A similar zoning ordinance is being considered in the city of Jefferson.
ย
At the same time, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers have proposed different ways to regulate data centers. Oneย GOP billย is aimed at ensuring data centers and not other customers would pay for any required improvements to the stateโs power grid. Theย Democratic billย is aimed at requiring data centers to get the bulk of their power from renewable sources.
This story wasย originally published by WPR.
Data center boom follows decades of declining electricity and water use in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
In a surprise reversal, Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden voted for a three-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits despite previously calling for the law to be repealed.
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Wisconsin politicians had a lot to say about the shooting death of a Minnesota woman by federal immigration agents, with one Republican accusing the woman of "domestic terrorism" and multiple Democrats calling for the defunding of ICE.
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Anticipated spikes in demand for energy to supply Wisconsin's data center building boom come on the heels of decades of declining power and water use, according to a new report.
The post Data center boom follows decades of declining electricity and water use in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
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