Data centers, artificial intelligence and fossil fuels are dominating headlines. Across the  United States, more than $350 billion was invested in AI and data-center infrastructure, with  tens of billions of dollars proposed in Wisconsin. Investment and economic development are  often framed as unequivocal wins, but energy infrastructure is different. If built without  foresight, the consequences will reshape the future. 

Growth is certain; however the balance between positive and negative growth is yet to be  determined. 

I have worked in Wisconsin’s energy sector since 2019, beginning in residential and  commercial solar. Over the years, I’ve seen energy debates around renewable energy become  increasingly politicized, even as their original purpose remains unchanged: to produce reliable  electricity, reduce dependence on fragile infrastructure, and give communities more control  over their energy supply. Yet, the existing industry stakeholders have blocked deployment and  ownership for everyone but themselves. While homeowners, farmers, tribal nations and  small businesses face mounting restrictions on deploying their own power systems, the state  has moved quickly to approve massive new energy loads for data centers. These agreements  are also accompanied by preferential rate structures, infrastructure guarantees and the ability  to negotiate. 

That contradiction should concern all of us. 

Wisconsin residents have grown accustomed to electric rate increases justified by grid  maintenance, system upgrades and long-term reliability. According to federal energy data,  Wisconsin already ranks among the top 15 states for electricity costs, and utilities have  signaled additional increases in the years ahead. At the same time, power reliability has  deteriorated in both rural and urban areas. 

In parts of Milwaukee, aging poles lean precariously, and low-hanging lines form tangled  webs that look untouched for decades. In rural Wisconsin, the impacts are similar. Tribal  nations such as the Sokaogon Chippewa and the Menominee Nation have experienced  long-duration outages lasting days or even weeks, disrupting health care, food systems and  economic activity. These are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of an overstretched  and unevenly maintained grid. 

Against this backdrop, Wisconsin is welcoming some of the most energy-intensive facilities  on the planet. A single large data center can consume as much electricity as a small city,  operating around the clock, every day of the year. The rise of AI only accelerates this demand.  Unlike the rest of the state, these facilities do not proceed without firm assurances of power  availability, reliability, transmission access,and cost certainty. 

Data centers operate under a different set of rules.  

Utilities and regulators are willing to negotiate specialized rate structures, accelerate  infrastructure investments, and prioritize reliability. Meanwhile, everyday ratepayers, who  collectively use far less power and have far less leverage, are asked to shoulder rising costs  and accept declining service quality.  

This is not a free market. Wisconsin’s energy industry has become an unregulated monopoly.  Large utilities control generation, transmission and distribution, and they largely determine  who is allowed to produce power and under what terms. While utilities have invested heavily  in renewable energy they own, they continue to restrict external ownership and  community-scale generation knowing that distributed energy can reduce peak demand,  improve resilience, and lower long-term system costs.  

If utilities can justify new power plants, substations and transmission lines for data centers,  they must also explain why a similar urgency does not apply to grid reliability, ownership  opportunities for distributed energy systems and lower rates for Wisconsin residents. Why is  Wisconsin able to deliver gigawatts of electricity to data centers, yet unable to address  persistent grid failures in communities that have been struggling for decades?  

This moment calls for accountability, not ideology. Wisconsin deserves transparency in how  data center energy deals are structured, who bears the costs of new infrastructure and how  reliability risks are distributed. Ratepayers deserve to know why the largest electricity users  receive the greatest assurances, while households, businesses and communities are told to  accept less while paying more. Economic growth should not come at the expense of affordability,  resilience or fairness. If Wisconsin is going to power the future of AI and digital  infrastructure, it must also protect the people and communities that power Wisconsin itself.  

This energy crisis is not inevitable. It is the result of choices. And those choices will  determine whether Wisconsin’s energy future delivers reliable power for all, or a system  defined by higher costs, more frequent outages and growing divides between communities. 

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his top environmental policy officer finalized a move Thursday to undo an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that laid the foundation for federal rules governing emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

At a White House event, Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said they were officially rolling back the “endangerment finding” that labeled greenhouse gases a threat to public health and provided a framework for the EPA to regulate emissions. 

The 2009 finding, established under President Barack Obama, called climate change a danger to human health and therefore gave the EPA power to regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from cars and trucks. 

Such regulations created a challenge for automakers and other industries, which dragged down the entire economy, according to Trump, administration officials and allies in Congress. 

Democrats and their allies in environmental and climate activism, though, consider the measure a crucial tool to address climate change and protect human health.

Undoing the finding will remove the economy-wide uncertainty, Trump argued. 

“That is why, effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond,” he said Thursday. 

Affordability argument

In its initial notice last year that it would repeal the endangerment finding, the EPA said it did not have the authority to regulate vehicle emissions.

With household costs, including transportation, expected to be a major theme in the fall’s midterm campaigns to determine control of Congress, members of both parties have framed it as an economic issue.

“This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Tuesday’s press briefing.

Some Democrats and climate activists argue the rollback will hurt the country’s nascent renewable energy sector, driving up the cost of home heating, electricity and other common expenses.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., issued a lengthy joint statement slamming the announcement.

“The Trump EPA has fully abandoned its duty to protect the American people from greenhouse gas pollution and climate change.  This shameful abdication — an economic, moral, and political failure — will harm Americans’ health, homes, and economic well-being. It ignores scientific fact and common-sense observations to serve big political donors,” the senators said.

“This sham decision initially relied on a now thoroughly disgraced and abandoned ‘report’ by known climate deniers. Zeldin stuck to this charade anyway, undaunted by half a century of actual evidence, showing the fix was in from the beginning,” they continued.

Money and fossil fuels

The move outraged Democrats and climate activists when Zeldin first proposed it last summer. Climate activists say undoing the finding undercuts the federal government’s ability to address an issue critical to the United States and the entire world.

In a Tuesday floor speech, Schumer blasted the rollback as a giveaway to fossil fuel companies, leaders of which contributed to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

“Remember: In the spring of 2024, Donald Trump invited top oil executives to Mar-a-Lago and told them, if you raise me a billion dollars to get me elected, I will cut regulations so you can make more money,” Schumer said. “That devil’s bargain is now coming true. I never thought it would be this way in America, in this bald disgusting way that so hurts people’s health, but there it is.”

Democratic attorneys general and environmental groups are likely to sue over the rollback.

At least one lawsuit, from the Environmental Defense Fund, was promised Thursday afternoon.

“EDF will challenge this decision in court, where evidence matters, and keep working with everyone who wants to build a better, safer and more prosperous future,” Fred Krupp, EDF president, said in a statement Thursday. 

Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, said last year he would “consider all options if EPA continues down this cynical path.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

Snow and ice boulders at the Forest Glen Metro stop in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Jan. 29, 2026, days after Winter Storm Fern hit the region. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

A focus on addressing climate change, including by producing wind and solar energy, has not helped Americans keep their electricity and heat on during winter storms, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Friday.

Ahead of another major cold snap on the East Coast, Wright briefed reporters at the agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the importance of maintaining electricity and heat supply during winter storms and advocated for a national energy strategy that focuses more on grid resilience and less on reducing carbon emissions. 

His statements continued a Trump administration stress on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas that contribute to global climate change.

Americans elected President Donald Trump to move away from a focus on climate, Wright said.

“Today, the policies that get in the way of reasonable energy development and mess up the math are things focused around climate change,” he said. “We’ve done almost nothing to change global greenhouse gas emissions — as close to nothing as you can get — from endless regulations on electricity that have just driven up prices and driven down reliability in the name of climate change.”

Electricity grids and peak demand 

Electricity grids must be designed for peak demand, such as during winter storms or summer heat waves, Wright said. Efforts to increase generation capacity with renewable sources are misguided, as the United States electricity grid produces hundreds of excess gigawatts of power during normal conditions, he said.

During President Joe Biden’s administration, Democrats enacted a law providing massive tax credits for wind and solar production. Without naming that law or specific officials, Wright said those efforts were not useful.

“When I hear politicians say, ‘We just need more electrons on the grid,’ no, we don’t,” he said. “When the sun shines or the wind blows, (it) doesn’t add anything to the capacity of our electricity grid. It just means we send subsidy checks to those generators, and we tell the other generators, turn down.”

During the winter storm that gripped much of the country last month, wind energy provided 40% less electricity than it had on the same days in 2025, Wright said. Solar provided only 2% of energy to affected areas, according to a pie chart shown at the briefing.

By contrast, coal provided 25% more power than usual and natural gas produced 47% more, he said. Nuclear energy was about the same.

Renewables strengthen grid, climate group says

The clean energy group Climate Power said in a Tuesday statement that renewable sources helped fortify energy supply during peak demand times. Solar energy produced 300% more in a 2024 Texas storm than it had in a storm three years earlier. And during last month’s cold streak, areas that relied on wind saw lower prices, according to the group.

Climate Power also said natural gas infrastructure was “prone to freezes and mechanical failure.”

“As back-to-back winter storms pummeled communities across the country in January, the facts about Donald Trump’s reckless energy policies have come into focus: fossil fuels have proved less reliable and more expensive as families struggle to keep the power on,” the statement read.

Wright favors natural gas

But while Democrats and climate activists have said the U.S. should move away from oil, coal and gas because of the climate-warming emissions they release and toward renewables, Wright suggested natural gas should be emphasized instead to substitute for oil, which is more expensive and produces more air pollution.

The proposed Constitution Pipeline, which would carry natural gas from New York state to Pennsylvania, should have been approved years ago, Wright said, but was held up by a “bad political decision.”

Planners abandoned the controversial project in 2020 in the face of regulatory difficulties in New York, but revived it last year. Its federal reviews are pending.

Wright said producing more energy would also be needed for another Trump administration priority: leading in artificial intelligence development. The industry needs massive energy sources to run the data centers AI relies on. 

On the night of Jan. 2, there was an explosion on a well pad in eastern Ohio’s Guernsey County. In shaky Facebook videos, the volunteer fire department chief warned off “looky-loos,” as a burning tank fed dark, billowing clouds of smoke off in the distance.

The accident happened at the Groh well pad which is operated by Gulfport Engergy. No one was injured in the blast and first responders determined the safest course of action was to let the fire burn itself out. Guernsey County Emergency Management Agency issued an evacuation notice within half a mile of the well pad. The agency lifted its advisory about 14 hours later.

In a statement, Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Karina Cheung said the agency is still investigating the cause of the fire and assessing damage.

“Preliminary findings indicate that one containment tank was affected,” she said. “All produced fluids have been safely removed. There was no release of fluids into the environment and the well pad remains shut down and inactive.”

“There were no reported injuries, no reported impacts to wildlife, and no reported impacts to water,” she added.

Context and track record

But to some, the incident highlights concerns they’ve been raising for years about oil and gas drilling — particularly as exploration expands to state lands.

The Groh well pad sits about five miles from Salt Fork State Park. While the site doesn’t draw from within the park, the accident is a reminder that Salt Fork was recently opened to oil and gas exploration thanks to a 2022 law signed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

Those leases don’t allow well pads within the boundaries of state land, but opponents argue more exploration means more accidents. And with drilling infrastructure creeping closer, they contend, it’s a matter of time before those accidents affect public land.

“These are accidents that have great potential to cause people serious breathing and respiratory illnesses from air emissions alone,” Melinda Zemper from the organization Save Ohio Parks said.

Although she’s quick to note the difference in scale, Zemper compared the accident to the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine.

“Sometimes when you have explosions,” she added, “you don’t know what chemicals are going to be released into the soil and the water nearby the well pad.”

The group has organized opposition to drilling leases on public land since state officials began awarding them through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Oil and Gas Land Management Commission.

Gulfport Energy has been awarded seven of those leases in Belmont and Monroe Counties.

Save Ohio Parks argues the recent Groh well pad fire isn’t an isolated incident.

In 2020, Gulfport agreed to a $3.7 million settlement with the U.S. EPA over its operations in Ohio. The company faced $1.7 million in penalties and was directed to invest $2 million in upgrades to reduce emissions at its facilities. The company has also had several accidents in Ohio, primarily related to spilling brine or other drilling fluid. In 2013, state officials fined the company a quarter million dollars over leaks at seven well pads in Belmont and Harrison Counties.

Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Gulfport Energy but got no response.

Accidents and reporting

Taking a step back, the organization FracTracker argued the Groh well pad explosion is a symptom of a broader problem. In an analysis of incident records from 2015 to 2023, Gwen Klenke found at least 1,900 well-related incidents reported in Ohio.

“I think the larger context is just that this industry is prone to accidents,” she said, “and that there will be accidents as we start to frack and extract on state lands — not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”

The bulk of incidents Klenke documented have to do with release or discharge — of gas, brine or other chemicals involved in drilling. Nearly 160 of those incidents are classified as explosions or fires, but only two reference injury or property damage. Under ODNR designations, only three incidents are classified as major or severe since 2018.

Ohio Oil and Gas Association President Rob Rob Brundrett points to the lack of major incidents as “a testament to the industry’s rigorous safety standards and practices.”

“Considering that only .004 percent of ALL Ohio oil and gas operations have had a major reportable incident during that timeframe, I have, and will continue to, put our industry’s safety numbers against any other labor-intensive industry in Ohio,” he added.

But Klenke argues that low number of major incidents points to shortcomings in reporting and classification rather than a strong safety record. Kathiann Kowalski from the Energy News Network highlighted ODNR’s classification system in a 2023 report as well.

The agency relies on a matrix to determine the severity of an incident, but its criteria are subjective and complex. Does the burned-out tank at the Groh well pad constitute “moderate” or “major” on-site equipment damage? If the fire burned for at least 14 hours, does that push it into the category of a major incident (12-24 hours to control impact) or does the apparent lack of off-site spillage ratchet it down to a minor incident?

In her report, Klenke points to two other incidents involving explosions at homes that involved injuries. Because the reporting system allows just one category, they were listed as “explosion/fire,” but they could’ve also been listed as “injury” or “property damage” among other designations.

Klenke explained neither incident was listed as “major” or “severe” under ODNR’s designations.

“They were calling those moderate or minor explosions,” she said, “when those should really be considered major if they’re damaging property, they’re damaging folks’ health.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

Well pad explosion raises concerns about drilling on Ohio public land is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.