LoginFederal loan could fund Wisconsin natural gas and battery storage projects
Editor’s note: This story has was updated Oct. 29 with comments from Wisconsin Sierra Club and Clean Air Wisconsin.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced a $5.1 billion loan to Alliant Energy on Wednesday, including $1.6 billion for Wisconsin Power and Light, Wisconsin’s third-largest electrical utility.
Alliant spokesperson Cindy Tomlinson told Wisconsin Watch that the loan may support the construction of a natural gas storage facility in Rock County and a pair of battery storage facilities — one in southwestern Wisconsin and another near Sheboygan — among other possibilities. Two of those projects still require approval from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. The loan itself doesn’t name those projects, and Tomlinson noted that the federal dollars could also support efforts to restart or repurpose shuttered power plants or build new natural gas plants.
The company estimates Wisconsin ratepayers will save $400 million over the life of the loan. “To the extent that tax dollars are used to help pay for projects that are approved,” Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board (CUB) Executive Director Tom Content wrote in an email, “that should lower the overall cost over 20-40 years.” CUB has not yet reviewed Alliant’s ratepayer savings claim.
The deal dates back to the final days of the Biden administration, when the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office focused on shoring up clean energy projects that otherwise struggled to get bank loans. The office mulled canceling existing clean energy loans after President Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, Bloomberg reported.
The new loan language doesn’t explicitly bar spending on renewable energy infrastructure. It instead allows the utility to direct funding to “energy infrastructure and related projects that increase energy supply or enhance grid reliability, including but not limited to nuclear, coal, oil, natural gas, geothermal or hydropower power generation facilities.”
“The Energy Department is delivering on President Trump’s promise to lower electricity costs and unleash the full potential of American energy,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement.
Environmental advocacy groups were dismayed to learn Alliant may use the loan to fund natural gas projects.
“Clean, renewable energy like wind and solar are more affordable than gas infrastructure, and they come without the massive water use and pollution that fossil fuels have,” Wisconsin Sierra Club Senior Campaign Coordinator Cassie Steiner wrote in an email. “This grant that props up gas plants, a more expensive, financially volatile, and polluting fossil fuel energy source, will harm residents. We are going to pay for this dirty infrastructure with our health, our water, our air, and our bills.”
“They’re taking our tax dollars to pull us in the wrong direction,” added Brittany Keyes, clean air policy manager for Healthy Climate Wisconsin. “This is going to make the Rock River Valley sicker.”
Alliant also applied for a federal grant in June to extend the life of coal-fired generators it owns at the Columbia Energy Center near Portage. The utility previously planned to retire the plant’s coal units before the end of the decade.
Federal loan could fund Wisconsin natural gas and battery storage projects 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.
