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A dozen Wisconsin state lawmakers are urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject a utility coalition’s request to pause competition for major electrical transmission projects in the Midwest.

The lawmakers — eight Assembly Republicans and four Senate Republicans — argued in a letter to the commission that competition for electrical transmission is a net positive for ratepayers, who stand to benefit from lower costs and increased innovation. That outcome, lawmakers wrote, “is even more urgent today given the rising issue of customer affordability.”

The utilities requesting a pause dispute whether competition truly lowers final costs for customers, but that argument is secondary to their primary concern: Powering the Midwest’s data center boom will require vast electrical transmission upgrades, and major regional utilities argue that competition only slows down projects needed to bring data centers online before international competitors overtake the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race.

Among the utilities behind the request are Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company-Wisconsin, and American Transmission Company (ATC), Wisconsin’s largest electrical transmission operator. 

The state lawmakers cast the utilities’ request as the latest stage of a long-standing fight over transmission market competition — one that has unfolded in the Assembly over the last five years.

Data center boom intensifies transmission competition

Ratepayer advocacy groups successfully lobbied FERC, which oversees utilities nationwide, to introduce competitive bidding for regional transmission projects in 2011, arguing that the previous model — allowing local monopolies to build all projects planned within their territories — all but guaranteed inflated costs. 

The shift triggered a nationwide gold rush for transmission projects. Regulators pre-approve developers’ “return on equity,” or profit on each dollar invested, for transmission construction, so winning a project means picking up a reliable revenue stream. 

Dozens of developers have since bid on transmission projects planned by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the nonprofit that manages the wholesale electricity market for much of the Midwest. MISO has approved more than $32 billion in new transmission projects since 2022 — projects largely planned before the region’s data center boom reached full swing.

The rush to win projects has placed well-established local utilities like ATC in competition with powerful national utilities venturing outside of their traditional territory, international developers venturing into the U.S. market, and startups backed by private equity firms. 

As data center developers rapidly scale up Midwest operations, the pace of transmission upgrades could become a choke point.

In March, MISO reversed its decision to award substations in Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Sheboygan counties to private-equity-backed startup Viridon, instead handing the projects to ATC. 

ATC’s initial bid was more expensive than Viridon’s, but the company successfully argued it alone could build the substations in time to serve the nearby Vantage data center campus in Port Washington. Viridon had not yet secured Public Service Commission permission to  operate in Wisconsin — a hurdle ATC does not face.

MISO initially aimed to complete the substations by 2033; the Port Washington data center plans to come online in early 2028. Though ATC emerged victorious, it told FERC that the 15-month delay between MISO’s initial approval of the substations and the reversal was “completely unnecessary.”

Utilities say competition slows projects needed for AI growth

In the utility coalition’s initial request to FERC, it cast competition-related delays as a national security threat. 

“These projects — expressways for power — are as critical to meeting today’s challenges as the Eisenhower interstate highway system was to prevailing in the Cold War,” the utilities argued in their initial filing. “China has devoted itself to overtaking America as the world’s AI leader and is just months behind.”

The utility coalition proposed two options: Allow MISO, along with the grid operator for parts of the Great Plains and Southwest, to exempt transmission projects from competitive bidding on a case-by-case basis or suspend competition entirely for the next five years — “when our country must begin building the infrastructure that will decide which nation wins the AI race,” the utilities wrote.

Ratepayer advocacy groups immediately pushed back. Paul Cicio, chair of the nationwide Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition, called the request “tone deaf.”

“Suspending competition for five years,” he wrote in a press release, “would expose consumers in these regions to unchecked cost escalation for years, guaranteeing higher utility bills.” 

In a protest filed with FERC in late May, Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board pointed to the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line in southern Wisconsin as an example: The 102-mile project was not subject to competitive bidding, and construction costs came in roughly 40% over budget by the time ATC, Dairyland Power Cooperative and ITC Midwest completed the line in fall 2024. 

Opponents of the utilities’ request recognize that the data center boom complicates the playing field for transmission competition. 

“Timelines are looking different than the industry is used to,” said Caitlin Marquis, managing director of Advanced Energy United, a trade group representing an array of clean energy and energy efficiency industries. “Transmission competition has been facing curveballs and challenges since it was introduced,” she added. Many challenges result from lobbying by incumbent utilities, and data centers’ speedy construction cycles are only the latest addition.

Her organization opposes the utilities’ request, arguing that incumbent utilities have a long track record of delaying non-competitive transmission projects — and that regulators should streamline the bidding process rather than forego competition entirely. 

But utilities argue competitive bidding has yet to prove its worth. While MISO generally favors lower-cost bids, an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch, “evidence of a low bid is not evidence of cost savings.” 

Bid prices often do not match the final project cost, they added, and substantial overruns are common, even on projects with competitive bidding.

Federal fight echoes years of debate in Wisconsin

As regional grid operators introduced competitive bidding for transmission projects a decade ago, utilities turned to state legislatures for right-of-first-refusal, or ROFR, laws.

Those laws give local utilities first dibs on transmission projects within their territories, including those planned by regional grid operators like MISO. 

Michigan and Minnesota adopted such policies; Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a ROFR law in 2023.

Utilities have backed similar proposals in Wisconsin each year since 2021, including a 2025 bill introduced by outgoing Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

Those proposals would have “insulat(ed) incumbents from market discipline” and left ratepayers holding the bag, the Wisconsin lawmakers argued to FERC. 

“Having failed repeatedly to persuade the Wisconsin Legislature,” they continued, “the same incumbent entities are now pursuing an end-run at FERC.”

ATC maintains that options before FERC would “not operate as a substitute” for a ROFR law, “even temporarily.”

The utilities don’t stand alone before FERC. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union representing the tradespeople who build and maintain transmission lines, also backs the request to pause competition.

Editor’s note: This story was updated June 4, 2026 to include comments from Caitlin Marquis, managing director of Advanced Energy United.

Wisconsin lawmakers oppose utility push to pause competition for power line 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.

Hearing backlash from residents, cities and counties across the country in recent weeks have blocked planned data centers amid concerns over rising electricity prices and environmental harms.

The local actions come as state lawmakers also are looking to limit or repeal the incentives for the centers, which are sprawling campuses of computer servers that store and transmit the data behind apps and websites.

Supporters of the pauses say cities need rules before projects arrive, especially to answer residential concerns about electricity use, energy costs and nuisance issues. Industry supporters argue data centers bring jobs and tax revenue and are an essential part of the nation’s digital infrastructure. They warn that communities that block data centers are sacrificing those benefits.

The Denver City Council this month unanimously approved a one-year moratorium on data centers, halting new zoning permits and site development plans while the city drafts rules for future projects. In April, Oklahoma City approved a similar moratorium that will be in effect until the end of this year, or until the city updates its zoning code. Tulsa, Oklahoma, also approved a temporary stop on new data center construction, though major projects already in the pipeline will be allowed to proceed.

Smaller communities are taking similar steps.

In Illinois, both Bloomington and Normal earlier this month approved six-month moratoriums, and Morgan County took the same action in April. In Michigan, Huron County this week approved a three-year moratorium, joining roughly 20 other Michigan communities that have paused data center construction.

In Georgia, Camden County enacted a six-month moratorium earlier this month, becoming the first community on the state’s coast to do so. And a cluster of counties in North Carolina have hit pause, including Chatham County in February and Orange County (which includes Chapel Hill) in April.

But not all cities are souring on data centers: Cheyenne, Wyoming, this week opted not to proceed with a one-year moratorium after a lengthy public hearing.

A study released at the end of 2024 by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated U.S. data centers used about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with projected use rising to between 6.7% and 12% by 2028.

A March Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans would oppose the nearby construction of data centers for artificial intelligence (AI), higher than the 53% of respondents who said they would oppose living near a nuclear power plant.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org

WASHINGTON — Higher electric rates? Massive data centers looming over neighborhoods? Ugly political fights over what to do about them?

The future of data centers and their huge appetite for electricity is quickly escalating as a political flashpoint from coast to coast, moving from cities and states now to the nation’s capital. 

Bills are under debate in Congress. The Trump administration has weighed in. Lobbying is intensifying. The Environmental  Protection Agency is proposing changes.

But finding consensus on how to proceed in D.C. is tough, with the industry spreading around millions to make its case, some lawmakers pushing a moratorium, and others looking for ways to ease the burden on Americans without halting development. 

At the grassroots, intense opposition continues breaking out. In early May, community members screamed and booed when commissioners in Box Elder County, Utah, unanimously approved two resolutions in support of a 40,000-acre data center campus proposed for an unincorporated site in the county. 

Asked if he sees any momentum in Congress to do anything significant about the potential spread of data centers, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said in an interview, “Only with voters.” 

Hawley and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., are pushing a plan to assure consumers they will pay no increases in utility rates because of data centers.

Getting Congress to act is more complicated. “Some communities may have too many, but some would like the opportunity to have one of these data centers that pay a lot of local taxes,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who represents a state embroiled in its own fight over the issue, said in an interview.

There is general agreement that the issues need exploring, and fast.

“Demand for reliable energy is rising faster than at any point in history. Clearly, we will need more generation and transmission, and a great deal more of it,” said House Energy Subcommittee Chairman Robert Latta, R-Ohio, at a May 13 hearing. 

The Data Center Coalition, the industry’s membership association, says it’s eager to work with lawmakers and consumers.

“Data centers power modern life—from telehealth and digital classrooms to banking, air travel, financial transactions, and online shopping. With the average household using more than 20 connected devices, this infrastructure is not optional; it is foundational,” said Cy McNeill, coalition senior director of federal affairs.

“The data center industry is committed to being a good neighbor in communities where it operates, which includes the responsible use of key resources like water and energy,” he said

What are data centers?

Data centers in 2023 used about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity,  according to a report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

It predicted that percentage could double or triple by 2028 to meet the needs of growing amounts of data, notably artificial intelligence.

A data center is “a physical facility that houses and runs large computer systems,” said a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

As AI needs grow, CRS said, so have hyperscale data centers. These tend to contain at least 5,000 computer servers and at least 10,000 square feet of space, roughly four to five times the size of a standard single family home. 

All this can impact consumers. A ratepayer’s bill is generally determined by how much it costs to generate electricity and to deliver it. Rates are generally set by state or local regulators.

CRS found in its May 12 report that in most areas of the country, “little evidence existed that data center demand was affecting electricity rates nationwide.”

Can data center development be stopped?

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are sponsoring moratorium legislation.

Their plan would bar new AI data centers until “strong national safeguards are in place” that ensure AI is safe and effective and the economic benefits of AI and robotics will benefit workers.

The government would also have to guarantee that AI does not increase electricity or utility prices or harm the environment.

That idea has gained little traction. A moratorium “would be suicidal for the country,” said Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., a House Energy Subcommittee member.

Kaine explained the concern: ”The idea of a moratorium basically would be saying to all our competitors in the world we have an edge on this now but we’re going to let you catch up and race ahead of us.”

One area where he thought lawmakers could find common ground involved permitting reform. Data centers now can need different permits, depending on their location, function and other factors.

Tackling permit reform could be complex, as most of the process falls to states. As CRS wrote, “Data centers require permits for various aspects of their construction — such as roads, buildings, telecommunications, and utilities “

That can include permits for connections to the local electric grid, any on-site electricity generation, and backup electricity facilities, CRS said, as well as connections to the local natural gas pipeline system.

The Environmental Protection Agency on May 11 took one step, proposing making it easier for data centers and other projects to start construction even though they haven’t yet received federal clean air permits.

“The change will support the development of Artificial Intelligence infrastructure and power generation” an EPA statement said.

It called the proposal “a significant step forward in the Trump EPA’s efforts to provide affordable baseload power for American families and to advance the data centers essential to making the U.S. the AI capital of the world.” 

In addition, the White House in March announced a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” aimed at companies involved with centers. Major tech companies agreed to its points.

It says that “Companies will build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their new energy demands, paying the full cost of those resources whether by building, or buying from, new or otherwise additive power plants.”

Where possible, these companies will also add more capacity that serves the broader public by increasing supply. 

Congress wants more guardrails

Saying “a handshake and a promise from these tech companies is not enough”  Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, last month introduced legislation to guarantee data centers “pay the full cost of their energy demands and infrastructure needs (and) studies the environmental impacts of data centers.”

Other legislative initiatives include:

–The Energy Bills Relief Act. With 148 Democratic sponsors, led by Reps. Mike Levin, D-Calif., and Sean Casten, D-Ill., it would ensure that “facilities like data centers are paying for their own costs because it’s not fair for their expenses to be pushed onto your household if one opens in your area.”

–The Guaranteeing Rate Insulation from Data Centers (GRID Act).  The Hawley-Blumenthal plan would guarantee no increase in consumer utility prices due to data centers, and make sure that new data centers “use energy from power generation sources that are separate from the grid.”

–The Power for the People Act, which has Democratic support in the House and Senate. It would direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to make sure data centers pay for local transmission upgrades they need.

The bill “balances the need for data center development without pushing those costs onto consumers,” said Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., its chief House sponsor.

–The Fair Allocation of Interstate Rates Act.  Sponsored by Rep. Julie Fedorchak, R-N.D., It would “prevent households from being forced to subsidize transmission projects built to satisfy another state’s green energy goals.” 

Currently, regional transmission groups spread costs of big interstate lines to consumers throughout the region.

Latta, the subcommittee chairman, called it “a practical solution to place the burden of renewable portfolio standard costs on the states that choose to adopt those requirements.”

What’s standing in the way?

Politics and, as Hawley put it, “M-o-n–e-y.”

OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics, found “The electric manufacturing and equipment sector, including firms like Microsoft and Oracle, has poured more than $226 million into lobbying activity in 2025.”

That spending is aimed in part at backing what OpenSecrets called “the rapid growth of data centers and to address the resulting strain on the nation’s power grid.”

The Data Center Coalition’s McNeill said the industry “is committed to working with communities, local officials, and state and federal leaders to ensure the continued responsible development of this critical industry while protecting families and businesses.”

The Data Center Coalition, he said, “will continue to provide education on the data center industry and look forward to continued engagement with the administration, Congress, and other key stakeholders.”

Also, the data center issue has become bound with other incendiary matters. 

Discussing the moratorium idea, Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, said in an interview, “Of course they (Democrats) are pushing for that. They’re anti-building, they’re anti-American, they’re anti-everything. They’d rather see Iranian oil be sold in the United States.”

Democrats charge that Republicans are resisting meaningful regulation.

At one of the House hearings, Rep. Jenn McClellan, D-Va., tied the problems to the war in Iran.

“Not until the Trump administration carelessly ensnared the United States in a reckless and costly war of choice with Iran pushing energy prices up even higher,” she said, “that we focused a hearing specifically addressing the alarming impact that data centers could have on energy affordability going forward.”

All three members of the Public Service Commission criticized the lack of transparency from Meta and Alliant Energy during a meeting Thursday in which the body approved a contract for the social media giant to obtain power for its planned data center in Beaver Dam. 

Meta is in the process of spending more than $1 billion to construct a hyperscale data center campus that, when completed, would use six to eight times more power than the city of Beaver Dam’s current energy load. 

Like similar massive data center projects across the state, Meta’s Beaver Dam project has drawn opposition from local residents. For months, the project was shrouded in secrecy with Meta operating under the name Degas LLC. Opponents have complained about the lack of openness, the massive use of energy and the impact the construction and operation of the center could have on the community. 

PSC Chair Summer Strand said in her opening remarks she didn’t understand “why it needed to be this difficult” to achieve a transparent process. 

“To me, transparency is not a cliche, feel good, bare minimum, check the box concept,” Strand said. “If there’s one takeaway from our discussion and decisions today I want it to be clear that, whether you’re a large load customer coming into Wisconsin for the first time, or regulated entity familiar with our process, transparency — and by that I mean actual and real transparency — is the foundational expectation and a necessity.”

Commissioner Kristy Nieto said in her opening remarks Thursday morning that the case is one of the “most consequential” decisions the PSC has seen. 

“It bears repeating, existing Wisconsin customers should not pay a single cent to subsidize the service of data centers, not now and not decades from now,” Nieto said. “This means these very large customers must bear the full cost of the infrastructure required to serve them — generation, transmission and distribution — and that those costs must be fully and transparently assigned.” 

The three members of the commission lamented the redactions that had initially been made to the documents submitted in the case — which were later removed after objections from outside parties including members of the public, Clean Wisconsin and the Citizens Utility Board. 

The commissioners also decided that moving forward, hyperscale data centers constructed within Alliant’s territory must pay for and receive energy through a standardized tariff, rather than a one-off contract negotiated without public scrutiny. Late last month, the PSC made a similar ruling for large customers in WE Energies territory. 

Under the PSC order, Alliant will have to develop a tariff that applies for any data centers using more than 100 megawatts of energy. The Meta campus is expected to use 220 megawatts. 

“This is not going to be the last data center contract we see from this utility, and I will say Alliant needs standard guidelines and rules for its data center customers,” Nieto said. “A clear public tariff would create consistent, transparent rates and rules for future data centers, instead of handling each one through separate, confidential negotiations.”

While Alliant was ordered to develop a tariff rate for large customers, the PSC on Thursday approved the contract negotiated between Meta and Alliant with some modifications meant to insulate regular customers from bearing the costs of Meta’s energy use and any related infrastructure upgrades by Alliant. Nieto said denying the agreement while the tariff rate is developed would have allowed Meta to operate for up to a year without any guardrails, an outcome she said didn’t think would benefit anyone.

Brett Korte, a staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, said the PSC putting a halt to the development of a case-by-case patchwork of data center energy deals in Alliant’s territory — which covers parts of more than a dozen Wisconsin counties — will protect Wisconsinites.

“Tariffs create a consistent, transparent framework that helps protect the public interest,” Korte said in a statement. “Without them, Wisconsin risks a patchwork system where costs and responsibilities are unclear and potentially shifted onto other utility customers.”

After the meeting, consumer advocacy and environmental groups were complimentary of the PSC’s actions.

“Today, the Public Service Commission highlighted the importance of transparency and oversight: accountability is a must, and it cannot be bypassed,” Britnie Remer, organizing director of climate advocacy group 350 Wisconsin. “The Commission also recognized that protecting Wisconsinites from subsidizing billion-dollar data centers needs to be front and center when it comes to these massive projects. With more data center proposals inevitable, requiring tariff filings in the future will ensure large energy customers pay for their costs, not our families and small businesses.”

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Wisconsin regulators on Thursday approved a one-off contract between Alliant Energy and the Meta subsidiary building a data center campus in Beaver Dam, but with a major caveat: Alliant must return with a standardized plan to power future data centers — and shield other customers from resulting costs.

The agreement bears little resemblance to the model We Energies proposed for its hyperscale data center customers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. That model covers all future We Energies data center customers and was approved last month with major modifications by the three-member Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC).

Both the PSC and ratepayer advocates expressed reservations about allowing Alliant to proceed without a standardized payment structure for data center customers. Negotiating contracts one-by-one, Commission Chair Summer Strand argued, would undermine the public’s interest in transparency and consistency.

Strand and fellow commissioners Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins approved a modified version of the agreement, acknowledging that the Beaver Dam campus will open in 2027 with or without a tailored contract with Alliant. Sending the utility back to the drawing board for another year, they reasoned, could expose other customers to greater financial risk. The commissioners directed Alliant to propose a standardized payment structure for large data center customers similar to the We Energies arrangement approved last month.

Wisconsin Power and Light, an Alliant subsidiary, filed its case with the PSC last spring, months before Meta joined state and local officials in announcig its Beaver Dam data center campus.

The Beaver Dam facility, the first of its kind in Alliant’s Wisconsin service territory, is smaller than the soon-to-open Microsoft and Vantage data centers. Meta projects the facility will use 220 megawatts at peak, less than half the projected use of the Mount Pleasant and Port Washington campuses. But even that comparatively modest demand would be six to eight times the current peak for all of Beaver Dam.

In testimony to the PSC in November, Rebecca Valcq, Alliant’s assistant vice president for regulatory affairs and data center services, said the Beaver Dam campus would benefit other customers by “making more efficient use of existing infrastructure” and “spreading fixed costs” across a larger base. She also urged commissioners to consider the data center’s projected $2.1 million in annual local, state and federal tax revenue, among other economic benefits.

Alliant is a founding member of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, which promotes the state as a destination for data center developers.

Unlike We Energies, Alliant says it does not expect to immediately build new power plants to serve the Beaver Dam campus. Instead, Meta would purchase electricity from the same generators as the rest of Alliant’s customers. Hawkins noted on Thursday that even if the new data center doesn’t immediately require new generators, it might change the retirement timelines for Alliant’s existing power plants.

Contract negotiated in secret

The utility negotiated its contract with Meta behind closed doors. When it approached the PSC, it asked for approval without changes and requested extensive redactions, hiding many contract terms from the public. Alliant argued that the contract’s specific terms, and the surrounding secrecy, were needed to “attract and accommodate” Meta — and to compete with other states or utility territories courting data center development.

The redactions spurred pushback from ratepayer advocates and the PSC itself, which made more details of the contract available as the case progressed. In Thursday’s hearing, Strand drew parallels with the nondisclosure agreements some data center developers seek from local governments in Wisconsin, including Meta in Beaver Dam, which Wisconsin Watch first reported on in January.

“For some of these new private sector, big tech data center customers that are used to operating confidentially, coming into our state or coming into this process might be a shock to the system,” Strand said. “There is still this black-box approach that includes nondisclosure agreements, heavily redacted filings, corporate pseudonyms and negotiations shrouded in secrecy… This lack of transparency is hurting, not helping.”

The nonprofit law center Midwest Environmental Advocates in December sued the PSC to obtain unredacted documents from the Alliant case. That lawsuit is ongoing.

PSC adds protections, warns of gaps

Alliant proposed some protections for itself and non-data center customers. It set a floor for Alliant’s revenues from Meta, protecting the utility in a scenario in which the data center uses less electricity than initially anticipated.

That minimum covers the cost of building transmission lines to serve the data center. The American Transmission Company, the largest transmission operator in Wisconsin, is currently building a $200 million line to plug in the Beaver Dam campus.

Alliant also proposed requiring Meta to reimburse the utility for the costs of transmission infrastructure if the tech giant backs out of the Beaver Dam project before the new line is complete — and requiring Meta to put up collateral in case its credit rating falls.

The PSC agreed with those terms and added further protections, including requiring Alliant to regularly report on the costs of serving the Beaver Dam campus and leaving the door open for the commission to adjust the cost-sharing to shield other customers from unanticipated expenses.

Commissioners identified some ratepayer protections beyond what it has authority to require. The transmission buildout needed to serve data centers is largely outside of PSC jurisdiction. Much of that authority instead rests with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees transmission utilities nationwide, and the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), a nonprofit that manages much of the Midwest’s electrical grid.

MISO awarded the transmission line project that will serve the Beaver Dam data center to ATC, which spreads construction costs across all its Wisconsin customers, most of whom are outside Alliant’s territory. While Alliant’s new contract requires Meta to pay a minimum transmission fee to shield other Alliant customers from unexpected costs, those protections don’t extend to customers of other utilities using ATC’s transmission lines.

Alliant’s customers will also pick up “tens of millions of dollars” in transmission costs tied to data centers in other Wisconsin electrical utility territories, Hawkins said. “Whether or not that is appropriate — or something that we are being open-eyed about — is a concern of mine,” he added.

Commissioners on Thursday urged Alliant to begin discussions with ATC on a fairer method for distributing costs — one of the few options within commission authority.

The commission directed Alliant to produce a standardized plan before making agreements with new data center customers.

The PSC is aware that more data centers could come to Alliant’s turf.

“Evidence indicates there are 12 other potential data centers in this utility’s territory that are potentially in the works,” Nieto said. Given that future, she added, Alliant must “establish clear rates, terms and protections and provide transparency, regulatory clarity and public accountability as required when serving loads capable of reshaping a utility’s entire system.”

Ratepayer groups say PSC sent clear message

Ratepayer advocates welcomed Thursday’s decision while emphasizing the importance of the directive to outline a standardized payment structure for future data centers.

“While the PSC approved Alliant’s contract, with modifications, for Meta’s Beaver Dam data
center, the Commissioners recognized that continued one-off, bilateral contract
negotiations are not sufficiently protective of Wisconsin families and small businesses,” Brett Korte, a staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, said in a press release.

“Today’s PSC decision requiring Alliant to develop a tariff for future data centers will result in a consistent, transparent framework that helps protect the public interest.”

Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content echoed commissioners’ hopes that Alliant and other electrical utilities will reach an agreement with ATC to protect non-data center customers from transmission-related cost shifts.

“We’re calling on ATC to protect customers across Wisconsin and Michigan to make sure people who aren’t even (customers of) these utilities aren’t on the hook,” he told Wisconsin Watch.

Alliant raised no immediate objections to the PSC’s changes.

“Protecting our customers while allowing communities to grow is central to our commitment at Alliant Energy, and that’s exactly what this contract is designed to do,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “It maintains reliability, supports meaningful local economic benefits, and delivers benefits that help keep rates stable for all customers.”

In a quarterly earnings call last week, the company announced plans for a 370-megawatt electric service agreement with a data center customer in Iowa. Unlike Wisconsin’s PSC, Iowa’s utility regulator has been more open to one-off contracts between utilities and data centers.

By removing that option for Alliant’s future arrangements with data center customers, Content said, the PSC’s latest ruling could set a new standard for other utilities in the state.

“They’re sending a message,” he added. “None of this individual contract stuff.”

PSC approves Alliant-Meta data center power deal while criticizing ‘black box’ approach 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.

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An attorney read from a laptop propped atop a snowplow.

To his left was a Caterpillar street grader, and to his right, a dusty workbench. A disheveled American flag hung next to a red toolbox in the center of the impromptu stage.

Dozens of southwest Wisconsin residents recently forsook part of the local high school’s track-and-field meet so they could cast their votes inside the town of Cassville’s garage. The attorney had been retained by the town’s elected leaders to read the soon-to-be-newest regulation.

The unanimous outcome — 44 ballots in favor of banning data centers, none against — reflected a hostile backlash to unwelcome big tech incursions into rural spaces.

Residents instructed their town board to put a stop to the billion-dollar proposal by an anonymous developer after learning their community was on the short list.

Even promises of 50 jobs and more than $5.5 million in annual property tax revenue weren’t enough to make up for the loss of about 500 acres of Wisconsin’s Driftless area.

The pastoral landscape — known for rolling bluffs that straddle the locks and dams of the nation’s upper Mississippi River — possesses a bountiful aquifer, a temperate climate and few land regulations.

The latest move against data centers

Cassville’s ordinance is the latest move by a Midwestern community seeking to protect the qualities that make life so appealing to people — and data centers. 

Pushback over the power-hungry facilities that make the cloud run are occurring across the country, as companies expand in states like Mississippi and Tennessee.

Residents in Port Washington, Wisconsin, were the first in the nation to pass a referendum that would prevent their city from offering generous tax incentives without first obtaining voter approval.

Wisconsin lawmakers — some of whom previously supported a state sales tax exemption for new data centers — sponsored bills that would prevent developers from using confidential nondisclosure agreements when prospecting for new sites.

And in Clayton County, Iowa, directly across the river from Cassville, officials are considering zoning, setback and size restrictions.

Cassville residents fear data centers will devalue their properties, contaminate their wells and increase their electric bills.

“This is the Driftless area for Christ’s sakes,” said John Hawn, who retired to the area several years ago. “I suppose they didn’t expect any problems coming into a small town.”

‘There’s no information’

The Cassville project has been shrouded in secrecy. That includes the proposed location and what company will use it, leaving residents to fill in the vacuum with a frenzy of social media engagement.

“I don’t know really what to think about it because there’s no information,” town Supervisor Scott Riedl said. 

Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., has met with a developer but to date declined to identify the company that is scouting for locations so as not to jeopardize the project.

In an interview after Cassville’s vote, he said the town’s appeal is its proximity to electricity, specifically the high-voltage Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line that entered service in September 2024.

Brisbois estimated the data center would require 400 to 500 megawatts of power — a lot, even by the new transmission line’s standards.

But the town’s attorney, Eric Hagen, said if Cassville can make it inconvenient, the data center developer may look elsewhere. The company also is considering sites in Indiana and North Dakota.

“My read of the situation right now: They’re looking for the lowest-hanging fruit with the least amount of regulations,” Hagen said.

Cassville’s new ordinance prohibits data centers in the town for up to two years and prevents land use changes, such as constructing a residence on a farm field, without the town board’s approval. And the county cannot preempt local zoning authority in the town’s case, Hagen said.

“We can beat them to the punch.”

Data centers raise ire

Days after the town’s vote, Brisbois fielded questions from a concerned public at J&J’s Sandbar, a Cassville restaurant, over chicken and ham, mashed potatoes with gravy and macaroni salad.

He wonders whether the objections reflect data centers’ tarnished image more than concerns over actual water and power use. If a battery or farm equipment manufacturer were to move in and consume more of each, would residents even notice?

Brisbois said the developer has remained quiet for the past month, which he attributes to the lack of local tax incentives for the project rather than community unease.

“I’m looking forward to a bit quieter days,” he said, “where all I have to worry about with townships is housing and maybe an ag or a farm expansion.”

In rural Wisconsin, a town rejects a plan to build a massive data center 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.

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• Wisconsin in 2023 exempted data centers from the sales tax. A new estimate finds that means the state is missing out on more than $2 billion in revenue from massive data centers under construction.

• The estimate does not include related sales tax and other revenue the state is collecting as a result of the construction.

• Other states, including Minnesota, are starting to pull back on tax incentives for data centers as public opposition grows.

Wisconsin is poised to forgo more than $2 billion in sales tax revenue to subsidize hyperscale data centers built by trillion-dollar companies such as Microsoft and Meta.

Data centers were granted a sales tax exemption in the 2023-25 state budget, which was approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers as a way to attract economic development to the state. 

That means the $1 billion data center in Beaver Dam, a $20 billion complex in Mount Pleasant and a $15 billion facility in Port Washington don’t have to pay the 5% state sales tax, or local sales taxes, on purchases for constructing and equipping their facilities.

When the budget passed in July 2023, the scale of the data center boom was so uncertain that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau did not estimate how much state revenue would be “forgone” under the exemption, aside from a hypothetical example.

But now a fiscal bureau projection is in:

The state will be out $1.5 billion in forgone state sales tax revenue during construction, which can take years, plus $369 million annually once the facilities are built.

The estimates apply to the hyperscale data centers under construction in Beaver Dam and Port Washington and the facilities under construction or planned in Mount Pleasant. A much smaller Epic project in Verona is also part of the estimate.

It’s unclear whether the data centers would have been built in Wisconsin without the tax incentive.

“Obviously it’s a big number, but it’s right to think that this is not really revenue that the state realistically could have ever captured,” said economist Ross Milton, a state government tax expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“It seems quite likely that if Wisconsin wasn’t providing incentives of these kinds, we wouldn’t be seeing these data centers being built here.”

Highlighting the fierce competition for development, 38 states offer data center sales tax exemptions or other tax breaks, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Wisconsin offers sales tax exemptions for a wide array of products and services. One of the largest exempts food bought at the grocery store, which reduced state revenue by about $920 million in 2024.

Tricia Braun, executive director of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, a business group that supports data center development, pointed out that the fiscal bureau projection does not include economic benefits from data centers, including taxes paid by data center suppliers.

Wisconsin Watch reported in March that just three Wisconsin companies have done more than $1 billion in business supplying data centers.

Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan think tank, said “the state has good possibilities for recovering” the forgone revenue. That could come from spending by construction workers and income taxes paid by those workers, their employers and permanent data center employees, as well as corporate income taxes and utility taxes, he said.

The unexpectedly large amount of forgone revenue has helped fuel efforts for data center regulation.

State Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, who requested the estimate, said lawmakers should discuss what the state can get in return for the exemption. She said the exemption could be tied to, for example, requirements to protect the environment.

Habush Sinykin wants the Legislature, which Republicans control, to convene what is known as an extraordinary session to discuss a variety of data center bills, rather than waiting until the next regular session in January.

Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, and Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, introduced legislation in 2023 that led to the exemption and have proposed expanding it. They did not respond to requests for comment.

Their original legislation received more than 200 hours of lobbying support from Microsoft, power companies such as We Energies and Alliant Energy, and business groups. No one registered to lobby against the bill.

Nationally, state data center legislation has shifted from incentives to regulation.

In 2021 and 2022, 44 of the 45 data center bills introduced in states across the U.S. offered tax and economic incentives, according to an analysis released April 22. Since then, many other types of legislation have emerged. In 2026, only 61 of the 262 state data center bills covered incentives. The vast majority dealt with regulation of energy, environment and transparency. 

Some states, including Minnesota, have taken steps to restrict or roll back data center sales tax exemptions.

Data center opponent Shawn Haney, a former elected town board member in Dane County, said he understands that Wisconsin created its sales tax exemption to attract economic development. But he thinks it should be modified so that the state can collect some sales tax revenue from data centers.

“I don’t think anybody could have forecasted the size and magnitude of these massive data centers,” Haney said.

“You could do some good things with” the revenue, he said, tossing out a few ideas. “Look at all the roads we have to repair.”

Wisconsin data center tax break to cost state more than $2 billion 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.

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A $458 million tax incremental financing district the city of Port Washington approved in November 2025 for a massive data center will not be altered. However, future TIFs could allow voter input if a judge sides with voters instead of business and trade groups.

In an April 7 referendum, Port Washington voters approved giving residents a say in  approving tax incremental financing districts of more than $10 million. That only applies to future projects, not the $458 million TIF the city already approved for the data center for OpenAI and Oracle. 

What’s more, a judge reviewing a legal challenge from business and trade groups could strike down the referendum. 

The bottom line: Voters might be allowed to give input on approving TIFs, but the ordinance is facing legal challenge, is not set in stone and doesn’t affect the data center already under construction.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• City of Port Washington: Notice of referendum
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Port Washington passes TIF referendum proposed by data center skeptics
• Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce: MMAC, regional stakeholders file suit against Port Washington

Did Port Washington voters stop a $458 million data center project? 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.

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Data centers have made headlines and influenced the political debate across Wisconsin this year.

That’s why earlier this year we launched Data(Centers)Watch as a regular feature in Forward, our free Wisconsin government and politics newsletter that comes out on Mondays. Every week since mid-February, reporter Tom Kertscher has provided tidbits of data center news, including the latest from city council and county board meetings where land use decisions are being made amid public outcry, national industry news and recent polling about the issue.

To get these data center updates each Monday, please subscribe. Here’s a look at the updates that appeared in Forward since March.

April 13, 2026

From ballot box to court: The reportedly first data center referendum in the U.S. could make large-scale developments more difficult in Port Washington. Approved last Tuesday by voters in the Ozaukee County city, it was pushed by opponents of the $15 billion data center under construction there. The city now must get referendum approval to create any tax incremental finance district — a business development tool — worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center. Attention now turns to the courts. A hearing is set for Thursday on a business-backed lawsuit seeking to block the referendum from taking effect.

Second poll: Costs outweigh benefits: Some 70% of registered Wisconsin voters believe the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, according to a Wisconsin Conservation Voters poll taken in February and released last week. The same result was found in a February Marquette Law School poll.

Add-on data center approved: With a $1 billion data center under construction, Beaver Dam has approved a second, much smaller, $40 million data center. 

Data center opponent elected: Menomonie City Council member Matthew Crowe, an opponent of a data center proposed for Menomonie, unseated incumbent Mayor Randy Knaack in Tuesday’s election. Crowe cited lack of transparency over the data center proposal as a key to his win. Menomonie is among several Wisconsin communities that signed nondisclosure agreements to hide details of the proposals.

ICYMI: We’ve been discussing our coverage of data center secrecy deals. Recent spots: WUWM radio’s “Lake Effect” show (segment starts at 11:15), Civic Media’s “Nite Lite” show (starts at 23:30) and the Ventures of the Land podcast. We reported that Wisconsin companies are part of a coalition asking a federal agency to pause competitive bidding for electrical transmission projects needed to serve data centers.  

April 6, 2026

Cure for blight? The $8 billion data center proposed for Janesville is unique in that it would involve a $30 million cleanup of the contaminated General Motors plant, which shut down in 2008. The cleanup cost has led 200 potential developments of different types to walk away, the energy and environment-focused E&E News reports. Also noteworthy is this quote from the city manager about power: “One of the most glaring needs that has not yet been addressed is statewide legislation to clarify that data centers pay for 100% of their costs.”

Referendum on Tuesday’s ballot: A referendum that could make large-scale developments more difficult is on Tuesday’s election ballots in Port Washington. It was pushed by opponents of the $15 billion data center under construction there. If the referendum is approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental finance district — a business development tool — worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center. 

Limiting public comment: The city council in Beaver Dam, where one hyperscale data center is under construction and a smaller one is proposed, limited the public comment at its meeting last week to 20 minutes. That irked some data center opponents because the period is usually open-ended, though each individual is asked to speak for two minutes. Mayor Bobbi Marck told Wisconsin Watch several items were likely to involve lengthy discussion and the comment limit was meant to use the council’s time effectively. All 10 speakers criticized data centers and the council, including Jackson Brook, 18, who said the council made data center decisions too quickly and without enough public input. 

Legislative intent/inaction on NDAs: Commenting on the Legislature ending its 2025-26 session without approving any data center bills, Milwaukee data center attorney Rod Carter cited legislation that would have prohibited local governments from signing nondisclosure agreements with data center developers. “The legislative intent was clear: the era of secret data center deals in Wisconsin should be over,” he wrote. “Whether that intent becomes law remains an open question.”

March 30

Town chair calls cops on petitioner: In Grant County, which is one location being considered for a $1 billion data center, Waterloo town chair Chad Brinkman called the sheriff’s office March 21 asking that resident Richard Stelpflug be removed from public property. Stelpflug was collecting signatures on a petition seeking to have the town authorize “village powers” — which the neighboring town of Cassville did March 12 to try to get more control over any data center proposal. A sheriff’s deputy informed Brinkman that Stelpflug had a First Amendment right to circulate a petition on public property — which happened to be the Waterloo Township Shop and Hall. As it turns out, the town already adopted village powers in 1965. An update on where Grant County stands among sites being considered is expected soon.

Rock County also signed NDA: A Rock County Board committee voted down a resolution prohibiting county employees from signing nondisclosure agreements. Pointing to data center NDAs, the resolution cited concerns “across Wisconsin that the signing of an NDA without the input of the public and elected officials is unethical and risks the public trust.” Wisconsin Watch reported that the town of Beloit in Rock County signed an NDA in February 2025, more than a year before announcing this month that a data center has been proposed. Last week, Rock County responded to a Wisconsin Watch public records request showing it signed an NDA with the same company, Delaware-based Cambrin LLC, in January 2025. Janesville, about 10 miles northeast of the town of Beloit, has also signed a data center NDA, with Colorado-based Viridian Acquisitions.

Alliant Energy’s record stock price: Madison-based Alliant Energy’s record-high closing stock price reached $73.03 on March 16. The main reason, according to The Motley Fool: an influx of data centers in the Midwest, including one under construction in Beaver Dam.

AI fear fuels opposition? Some opposition to data centers might stem from uneasiness about artificial intelligence. The Marquette Law School Poll found 69% of Wisconsin registered voters surveyed said AI is being developed too quickly. The same percentage said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits.

ICYMI: Wisconsin Watch looked at competition over who builds out the grid as data centers demand more power.

March 23

No data center legislation: The Legislature considered a number of data center bills but concluded its work in the 2025-26 session without passing any of them. That means data center legislation won’t come up again until the Legislature’s next regular session begins in January. One of the bills, to ban nondisclosure agreements between data center developers and local governments, was introduced by Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie. He told Wisconsin Watch his bill was crowded out by other priorities, but that he’s hopeful it will eventually pass. Also disappointed was GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. He said at an event that requiring data centers to pay for their own electricity, as some legislation would require, is “probably an 80% issue for the public.”

Opposition in Grant County: Cassville township residents voted 54-3 this month to authorize “village powers.” The move gives the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal. A developer has included Cassville, in the Driftless Area in southwest Wisconsin, as one possible site for a planned $1 billion data center.

ICYMI: Microsoft announced it would stop doing NDAs with local governments amid growing focus on local governments and data center secrecy. We explored data centers’ job implications, particularly for developers, construction and operations. We also fact-checked a claim that Mount Pleasant’s massive data center will use relatively little water. Go here to see our data centers coverage in one place.

March 16 

‘Bulletproof’ vest in Port: Port Washington police have been called about a dozen times to Lighthouse, the Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus, since the construction groundbreaking Dec. 17. Police reports show the largest number involve complaints of either trespassing or excessive construction noise. But on Dec. 26, a security officer on the site reported being told by a motorist she “hopes the vest they wear is really bulletproof.” Police called the motorist and left a voicemail message, according to the report. The motorist did not return calls and emails from Wisconsin Watch.

‘Stranded assets’ targeted: One of the Democratic candidates for governor, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, announced a plan to prohibit residential and other utility customers from having to cover the cost of “stranded assets” — power plants that have been shut down but on which debt is still owed. Wisconsin Watch reported in December that ratepayers owe $1 billion for stranded assets and that the rush to build more plants to serve data centers runs the risk of creating more stranded assets.

‘Stranded assets’ targeted II: In a model for state data center legislation, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy proposed making data center companies financially responsible for stranded assets. The companies would be required to post a bond.

Beaver Dam limits public comment: The city council in Beaver Dam, where one data center is under construction and another is proposed, is limiting to 20 minutes total the public comment at its meeting tonight. That raised concerns among data center opponents, some of whom packed a town hall meeting on data centers last week. Typically, the council’s public comment period is open-ended, though individuals are each asked to limit their remarks to two minutes. Mayor Bobbi Marck said several items are likely to involve lengthy discussion and the comment limit is meant to use the council’s time effectively. Ald. Nancy Wild said data center opponents have spoken at the previous eight council meetings. “I think we have been very reasonable,” she said.  

March 9

Quietly, a possible Beloit data center: News of a possible data center in the town of Beloit comes eight months after the town quietly signed a predevelopment agreement. Last week, the town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions,” including signing the agreement. The town board in May approved negotiating a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC, but the meeting minutes do not mention a data center. The predevelopment agreement, signed in July, also does not mention a data center. It says that the town will pursue a tax incremental district to finance infrastructure improvements that would be needed and that Cambrin agreed to reimburse the town up to $175,000 for preliminary work. “If the project actually moves forward, we would have a frank discussion with the developer about who should be paying for any improvements that are needed,” town administrator John Malizio told Wisconsin Watch. News reports indicate that Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, could be the data center operator.

Data centers’ $1 billion for Wisconsin: Even before the first hyperscale data center begins operation in Wisconsin, data centers have made an economic impact in the state. No comprehensive tally has been done. But just three Wisconsin companies have received more than $1 billion of business supplying data centers, and other companies are benefiting, too, Wisconsin Watch found. That’s separate from the economic impact from constructing data centers.

Electric-onnections: The data centers under construction in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington came together because a We Energies executive met the co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which secures power and land for data centers, The New York Times reported. “We’ve got the site for you,” the executive said at a Chicago conference in 2021, proposing Mount Pleasant and, later, Port Washington.

March 2

Who pays for the power: The state Public Service Commission held a hearing last week on who will pay for providing the electricity needed to run the $1 billion data center being constructed in Beaver Dam. The center is owned by Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. Opponents said the rate structure proposed by Alliant Energy doesn’t protect general ratepayers from bearing some of the costs. The same concerns have been raised to the PSC about We Energies’ proposed rates for data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. Comments on the Alliant case can be submitted through March 9. That deadline was extended after Alliant agreed to remove some redactions it made in its application to the PSC.  

Legislation delayed, in doubt: One bill on data centers might see action, but others are likely on ice now that the state Assembly has adjourned for the 2025-26 session. The Senate could still act on an Assembly-approved bill that seeks to limit how much general ratepayers can be charged by utilities for the cost of providing electricity to data centers. It’s likely that various bills that would prohibit local governments from signing nondisclosure agreements with data center developers won’t be considered again until a new Legislature convenes in January.

Blocking a possible data center: A move is afoot to block a possible data center in Grant County in southwest Wisconsin. Doug Schauff, the town chair in Cassville, said the town will hold a meeting March 12 on adopting “village powers.” That, in turn, would enable the town to create zoning that would regulate projects such as a data center. A data center developer has told the town it is considering the Cassville area, among other locations, for a possible $1 billion facility.

Port Washington referendum: An April 7 referendum in Port Washington pushed by data center opponents can proceed as scheduled, a judge ruled last week. Pro-business groups had sued to try to stop the vote. If the referendum is approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any future tax incremental finance district – a business development tool – worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the $15 billion Open AI/Oracle data center now under construction in Port Washington. 

From DeForest to Iowa: Virginia-based QTS Data Centers will build in Iowa a data center it had planned for the Madison suburb of DeForest, according to Alliant Energy, which will supply the electricity. Amid community opposition, the $12 billion facility proposed for DeForest was abruptly dropped in January after Wisconsin Watch reported that village officials had worked on the proposal for months before announcing it to the public.

Voters down on data centers: Regardless of how much they have heard about data centers, most registered Wisconsin voters polled by Marquette Law School said the costs outweigh the benefits. Opposition was 74% among those who have heard a lot about data centers, 73% among those who had heard nothing at all and 68% who had heard a little. 

Expect delays? Some 30-50% of data centers projected to open worldwide in 2026 could be delayed, according to the Sightline Climate research firm: Access to electricity is a key reason, and more data center operators are building their own power rather than relying on the grid.

Get the latest Wisconsin data center news you might have missed 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.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing Tuesday on a request from the AI data center company Vantage for an air quality permit to operate 45 diesel backup generators at the company’s proposed hyperscale data center in Port Washington.

The department has already granted a preliminary approval to the permit request. Members of the public complained at the virtual hearing that the DNR chose not to conduct a full environmental impact assessment — despite southeastern Wisconsin’s existing classification as a high air pollution region. 

Michael Greif, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, said that all 45 generators operating at once for one hour would emit the same amount of nitrogen oxides as more than 5 million cars driving over one mile of nearby Interstate 43 — or seven times the hourly nitrogen oxide emissions for all of Ozaukee County. Exposure to nitrogen oxides have been tied to respiratory issues such as asthma. 

“It is also one of the first hyper scale AI data centers proposed in Wisconsin,” Grief said. “So it raises new and unreserved questions about energy use, climate impacts, air pollution and public health, and for all those reasons and more, DNR is legally required to prepare an EIS for the Vantage data center.”

Residents of the area put it more simply, complaining about the air pollution they’re already dealing with every day. 

“Our lakeshore is at capacity,” Sheboygan resident Rebecca Clarke said. 

Many speakers also expressed frustration at their lack of a voice in the state’s surge in data center development and proposals. 

“This community has not been given a fair process,” Port Washington resident Carri Prom said. “We’ve been speaking about this process for months. We’ve largely been ignored, and yet, here we are.”

The air pollution permit is one of the DNR’s few chances to weigh in on a data center proposal that has drawn widespread opposition in Port Washington and across the state. The Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates utility companies in Wisconsin, has given the public little confidence it will do enough to prevent electric bills from increasing.

Local zoning boards and city councils, enticed by the promise of property tax revenue, have often signed off on data centers after agreeing to non-disclosure agreements to keep the details away from their constituents. 

“I think things are very backwards, and that we’re proceeding with all of these projects before we even have any idea of how to protect residents,” said Sarah Zarling, an environmental organizer who’s been involved in the data center fight. 

Over the past year, as the number of data centers operating, under construction or proposed has continued to increase, public opposition has grown. Multiple pieces of legislation for regulating data centers were proposed by lawmakers of both parties, yet none passed  before legislators adjourned for the year. Data centers have become a big issue in the Democratic primary for governor and a number of environmental groups have called for a moratorium on data center development until stricter regulations can be put into law. 

Brett Korte, a staff attorney at Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a statement after Tuesday’s hearing that the disconnected government approval process only highlights Wisconsin’s lack of a coherent plan.

“One of the pressing issues related to the data center boom currently underway in Wisconsin is that there is no overarching plan to ensure they don’t harm communities in our state,” he said. “Nor is there even an effort to fully understand the harm they will cause. Local governments make zoning decisions, the PSC approves the construction of power plants and transmission lines, and the DNR implements water regulations and issues air permits.” Yet no state office is responsible for looking at all of the issues raised by data centers at once.

Korte added that a better process for planning future renewable energy sources, stronger carbon emission standards and a more concrete plan for achieving Gov. Tony Evers’ goal of powering the state with 100% clean energy by 2050 would help the state better manage data center growth. 

“No one is asking: Do the benefits of data centers outweigh their environmental harm?” he continued. “That is why Clean Wisconsin continues to call for a pause on data center construction until the state has a comprehensive plan to regulate their development.”

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A coalition of electrical utilities, including two major players in Wisconsin’s power supply, is seeking federal intervention to pause competitive bidding for transmission projects needed to meet the vast energy needs of the data center boom.

The coalition filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Tuesday asking the agency to exempt at least some major grid upgrades from bidding, arguing “bureaucratic red tape” can tack months onto project timelines and strain the country’s ability to “achieve dominance” in artificial intelligence. 

“This complaint is about whether our country will seize, or squander, a generational chance to own the next century,” the utilities wrote.

Among the companies behind the complaint are Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company-Wisconsin, and American Transmission Company (ATC), which owns and operates transmission lines across much of Wisconsin. 

National and statewide ratepayer advocacy groups reacted with alarm, casting the utilities’ request as a recipe for higher electricity bills. 

“Utilities rushing to catch a ride on the AI investment gold rush need to slow down and think about the impact their proposals are having,” wrote Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content, as customers “wake up like Groundhog Day to rate hikes well above the cost of living.”

The complaint and the pushback it prompted mark the latest phase in a long-standing fight over the benefits of opening the transmission market to competition.

Stiff competition

FERC first introduced competitive bidding for regional transmission projects in 2011 after ratepayer advocates lobbied for change, arguing that the earlier process — allowing local monopolies to control all projects within their territories — all but guaranteed inflated costs.

The shift set off a race between developers angling for a piece of the action. When a developer wins a transmission project, it also picks up a new revenue stream: Regulators pre-approve developers’ “return on equity,” or profit on each dollar invested.

Dozens of developers have lined up to bid since the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a nonprofit that manages the wholesale electricity market and grid for much of the Midwest, approved more than $10 billion in new transmission projects in 2022. A new round of projects approved in December 2024 added about $22 billion to the total, and the list of prospective bidders grew once again.

Some are local utilities hoping to maintain control of their territory; others are powerful national utilities venturing outside of their turf, international developers wading into the U.S. market, and startup transmission developers backed by private equity firms.  

While the data center rush had already begun in the Midwest by the time MISO approved the latest set of transmission projects in 2024, the approved projects often couldn’t account for the scale and breakneck pace of the data center developments that emerged in the region soon after. With the boom now in full swing, the tenor of competition for transmission projects is changing.

Debate over bidding benefits 

MISO, which is also responsible for picking a developer for each project, has favored lower-cost bids with more substantial “cost containment” measures designed to shield customers from budget overruns. Ratepayer advocates say the lower bids are proof the bidding requirements are working, pushing even major national utilities to underbid competitors.

In their complaint to FERC, the coalition of utilities — which calls itself the “Grid Acceleration Coalition” — argued the benefits of competition are “unproven.” 

Projects planned by utilities themselves aren’t subject to competitive bidding; non-competitive projects around the country routinely exceed initial budgets by millions of dollars. While cheaper bids tend to win competitive projects, the utility group argued that even those projects aren’t immune to budget overruns.

But the core of the utilities’ case is about time, not money. They argue the bidding process adds months to project timelines without clear benefits.

In their view, those delays harm customers, in part by slowing the construction of transmission lines that could expand access to cheaper electricity and prevent blackouts, and pose national security risks. 

“These projects — expressways for power — are as critical to meeting today’s challenges as the Eisenhower interstate highway system was to prevailing in the Cold War,” the coalition argued in its complaint. “China has devoted itself to overtaking America as the world’s AI leader and is just months behind.”

The utilities pointed to a recent example in Wisconsin: Last month, MISO reversed its decision to award three substations in Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Sheboygan counties to private-equity-backed startup Viridon, instead handing the projects to ATC. 

ATC’s initial bid was more expensive than Viridon’s, but the company successfully argued it alone could build the substations in time to serve the nearby Vantage data center campus in Port Washington. 

MISO’s initial plans set a goal to complete the substations by 2033; the Port Washington data center plans to come online in early 2028. Though ATC emerged victorious, it told FERC that the 15-month delay between MISO’s initial approval of the substations and the reversal was “completely unnecessary.”

Ratepayer advocates and other observers, however, quickly pointed out that even noncompetitive projects run into delays. ATC’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line in southwest Wisconsin, for instance, came online in 2024 — more than a decade after MISO approved it — following prolonged legal battles with conservation groups. 

“All developers can experience construction delays,” said Claire Wayner, a senior associate with the clean energy nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. “It’s not like there’s a silver bullet.”

Opponents also underscored that two competitively bid projects in the Southwest met their in-service date goals last year. 

“Competitive transmission projects have been shown to have a better track record of adhering to cost containment and completion schedules than noncompetitive projects,” said Paul Cicio, chair of the national Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition. “A moratorium would move us backward at precisely the wrong time.”

The back-and-forth over the merits of competition is nothing new, Wayner noted. “The tricky thing with transmission competition is that there are stories of projects from both sides of the aisle that support their positions.” 

The push to pause competition

The utility group proposed two options to FERC: Allow MISO and a Southwestern regional grid operator to exempt projects from competitive bidding on a case-by-case basis or suspend competition entirely for the next five years — “a period pegged to when our country must begin building the infrastructure that will decide which nation wins the AI race.”

The utilities added that they don’t intend to “claw back” other projects already awarded or interrupt ongoing bidding processes.

During that five-year period, national forecasts estimate data center electricity demand could reach up to 25% of the country’s total energy use. MISO alone projects that it may need to double its current pace of generation growth to avoid shortfalls in the near future.

MISO’s territory, stretching from the Upper Midwest to Louisiana, has seen by far the most dramatic increase in data center capacity since 2020 relative to other regional grid networks.

The right of first refusal fight

After FERC introduced competitive bidding in 2011, utility groups turned to state legislatures. The result: right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws that give established local utilities first dibs on transmission projects in their territories, including those planned by regional grid operators like MISO.

Utilities prevailed in Minnesota and Michigan; Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down its ROFR law in 2023 after a national transmission developer challenged its constitutionality, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker vetoed an ROFR bill the same year.

But similar efforts have failed in Wisconsin. State lawmakers have consistently rejected ROFR proposals, including a 2025 bill sponsored by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

Wisconsin ratepayer advocates see the FERC complaint as a work-around. “It is another effort by the utilities to defeat competition,” Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “When they lose in state legislatures and then lose out on competitive bids,” he added, “they go back to FERC.”

In the utilities’ complaint, Xcel Energy cited Wisconsin’s lack of an ROFR law, and the resulting bidding process for projects in the state, as posing a risk of delaying upgrades needed to serve a data center across the border in Minnesota. 

The company wouldn’t comment about the parallels between the options utilities suggested in the FERC complaint and ROFR laws. Instead, spokesman Kevin Coss pointed to permitting reforms in Minnesota — a 2024 law streamlining permitting for clean energy projects — as another example of the company’s efforts to “speed the buildout of critical infrastructure across our systems.” Xcel did not bid on any of the competitive projects in Wisconsin.

In a statement to Wisconsin Watch, ATC argued the options its coalition suggested to FERC “would not operate as a substitute” for an ROFR law, “even temporarily or on a case-by-case basis.”

Buildout costs fall to ratepayers

Regardless of who builds a transmission line, ratepayers cover the construction and maintenance costs through their electricity bills. We Energies estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills. 

Customers across the Upper Midwest share the costs of MISO-designed projects across multiple states, spreading costs among a larger number of ratepayers.

But billing practices vary. In some cases, utilities can only bill ratepayers for the costs of building a transmission project after it comes online. When ATC builds a transmission line, FERC allows the developer to begin billing customers while the line is still under construction.

ATC says this approach saves customers money in the long term by reducing interest on construction costs.
Ratepayer advocates see it differently. “Consumers are paying for projects without receiving the benefits,” Cicio said. Transmission projects take years to complete, and short-term increases in monthly electricity bills don’t square well with concerns about affordability and the risk of stranded assets if the AI boom goes bust.

Adding to the frustration: a planned 9.2% electricity rate increase for We Energies customers in eastern Wisconsin over the next two years. That rate hike in part reflects the addition of generators, including new natural gas plants in Milwaukee and Kenosha counties, needed to meet data center demands.

Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission will soon decide how to divvy up costs of powering We Energies-served data centers — a decision that could set a statewide precedent.

This story was updated to clarify which transmission projects are subject to competitive bidding.

Utilities seek federal pause on grid bidding amid AI-driven power demand 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.

Lawmakers have given final approval to a moratorium on data centers larger than 20 megawatts — the first statewide ban of its kind in the country.

“What we’re talking about here is an ability for us to absorb and understand the impact of data centers potentially on the State of Maine,” Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-York) said Wednesday ahead of the Senate vote. “The states that have had data centers come in have had tremendous impacts.”

The bill, LD 307, bans data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November, 2027. It also creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, and instructs the council to provide strategic input, facilitate planning considerations and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.

“We’ve seen across the U.S. the rapid expansion of AI data centers, with few to no safeguards to insulate people from shocks to electricity demand, impacts to local water supplies, and more,” Maine Conservation Voters said in a statement. “LD 307 will help protect Maine people and the environment, pushing pause on large-scale data centers to ensure strategic and strong policies and protections are in place first.”

The bill was passed in both chambers this week, and is now awaiting funding on the special appropriations table.

“My point here is not that data centers should never happen,” said Sen. Nicole Grohoski (D-Hancock) Wednesday. “The point is we do not have the correct regulatory regime on the books to ensure that a decision like this isn’t neutral, at a minimum, or positive for everyone that would be affected by that decision.”

Discussion in both the Senate and Maine House of Representatives focused on the impact on proposed data center projects, primarily one in Jay and another in Sanford. Lawmakers volleyed back and forth on the potential benefits to a former mill town like Jay, and possible negative impacts to the surrounding areas. They also considered an amendment that would have created an exemption process to the moratorium that was ultimately rejected by both chambers.

“I’m not going to support something that doesn’t support business, the expansion of business in the State of Maine, especially in a community that’s dying for commerce and to get back on its feet,” said Sen. Jeff Timberlake (R-Androscoggin).

Republican lawmakers also raised concerns that Maine would lose out on economic opportunities, but would still feel the negative impacts when the data centers are built in other states.

“These projects are going to happen whether or not we pass this moratorium,” said Sen. Matt Harrington (R-York). “For those who care about the environment, they will be built in states that use 70% coal power, and we will be the tailpipe for that. These data centers will be built in groves in states that don’t have an economic death wish, and we will receive all the negative environmental impacts of that.”

Rep. Steven Foster (R-Dexter) said in March that any data centers are already subject to environmental and local regulations.

“This moratorium is not needed here in the state of Maine,” Foster said. “A lot of fear has been stoked up about an AI data center being built anywhere in Maine, which is contrary to reality. We would not see the facilities here the size of those being built in other states.”

But Democrats countered that Maine residents can’t afford the potential costs from the projects.

“We’re already seeing a tremendous impact from rising gas prices, rising oil prices, and how that feeds into also rising electric energy prices,” Lawrence said. “We don’t need to add an additional risk on energy costs for Mainers when we have time to reflect on this, study this and do this right.”

Grohoski also pointed to the local opposition to data centers, and said if the state doesn’t take the time to build intentional regulations, residents may just continue to stop projects at the local level.

“So I think if we do think that Maine is a place where we would like data centers at some point, if we don’t figure out how to do it right, they’re not going to happen anyhow, because people are concerned that we have not done our jobs to protect them,” Grohoski said.

In March, Rep. Melanie Sachs (D-Freeport) argued that the moratorium is not against innovation.

“Maine has always been a place that embraces new industries and new ideas, but we are also a state that understands the value of stewardship of our land, our water, our communities and our long-term future,” she said.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A possible billion-dollar data center in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area would be built without any tax incentives and would produce more than $5 million annually in property tax revenue, according to a local economic development official involved in the discussions.

Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., also told Wisconsin Watch he expects to learn this month whether a developer chooses Grant County over sites in Indiana and North Dakota.

Asked if progress has been made, Brisbois said: “I’ll use the word ‘promising’ because I’m about fostering economic development, and I see this project for being a quality project. So, yes, I think it looks promising, from my perspective.”

When the proposal first gained attention in February, Brisbois said little more than the data center is expected to be worth $1 billion. He is now offering more details:

Scope: The facility would cost $1 billion to $2 billion, span about 500 acres and employ about 50 people.

Tax breaks: Local governments would not have to provide any tax incentives, such as a tax incremental district — a common development tool that delays when municipalities and school districts receive additional property tax revenue from a project.

Tax revenue: Brisbois said his “conservative estimate” is that the data center would pay $5.6 million annually in property tax revenue to local governments and school districts.

Brisbois has refused to identify the company that is scouting sites, but said the data center would be run by one of the major tech companies. “People will recognize the name,” he said.

Brisbois would not identify the part of Grant County being considered, other than to say it’s near power transmission lines.

But talks have taken place with officials in the town of Cassville, population 400, where opposition has emerged.

Cassville town residents voted 54-3 last month to authorize “village powers.” The move is aimed at giving the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal.

The “No Data Centers in the Driftless” Facebook page has 2,700 members.

One of the Facebook group’s leaders, Grant County resident Pete Moris, said he was pleased that more information is being released but wants more.

“The more transparency we can have on this project, the better,” he said.

“If we’re going to embark on the largest project ever developed in Grant County, it would sure be nice for citizens to know who we’re inviting into our county.”

The use of a tax incremental district for a $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee, spurred backlash. 

Data center opponents pushed a referendum that will be on ballots next Tuesday. If approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental district worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center.

Hyperscale data centers are also under construction in Mount Pleasant, south of Milwaukee, and in Beaver Dam.

New details emerge on possible data center in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area 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.

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• A big shift in Wisconsin’s power grid fight: The regional grid operator pulled a key project from a Blackstone-backed developer and gave it to ATC — the latest twist in who gets to build (and profit from) the data center boom.

• Surging power demand is fueling billions in grid upgrades and intensifying competition between utilities and investors. The data center boom has amped up demand and competition even further. Ratepayers will ultimately cover the costs through their utility bills.

• The decision isn’t final. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission still has to weigh in.

The Midwest’s data center boom requires a vast electrical transmission buildout to keep servers online, and transmission developers are clamoring for a share of the action.

An example of that tug-of-war played out last week, when the regional grid operator for much of the Upper Midwest reversed its earlier decision to allow a developer backed by the investment firm Blackstone to build a series of substations in eastern Wisconsin.

Instead, the operator handed the substations to the American Transmission Company (ATC), which owns and operates most transmission lines in eastern and central Wisconsin. The company argues it’s better-positioned to complete the project before a new Port Washington data center comes online by early 2028, five years ahead of the transmission project’s original deadline.

The about-face is a win for Wisconsin’s largest transmission developer after a series of losses in Wisconsin’s Assembly, where lawmakers have repeatedly rejected a proposal to give regionally established developers like ATC a monopoly over portions of multistate transmission projects within Wisconsin, leaving the door open for competition. 

The new arrangement itself likely won’t drive up costs for Wisconsin ratepayers. But ATC will now fold the substations into a larger $1.3 billion buildout to serve the Port Washington campus — another phase in the ongoing fight over who will pay to supply power for new data centers.

How the Midwest’s grid is planned and paid for

The North American grid is an ever-evolving network of transmission lines and substations that carry electricity from generators to customers.

In much of the country, nonprofit “independent system operators” coordinate regional power grids, managing a wholesale electricity market and interstate transmission projects. Wisconsin is within the territory of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which spans from the Upper Midwest to Louisiana. 

MISO has approved roughly $32 billion in transmission upgrades for the Upper Midwest since 2022, including new “backbone” power lines capable of carrying a higher voltage than existing lines in the region.

Among the latest round of projects: a series of transmission lines and substations in eastern Wisconsin. 

Just months after MISO’s board approved the eastern Wisconsin buildout in 2024, Port Washington’s city council approved a $15 billion data center on the city’s northern edge. Three new substations outlined in MISO’s plans are within easy reach of the campus.

Blackstone-backed developer takes the lead

Four transmission developers bid on the eastern Wisconsin upgrades, including ATC, which submitted a joint bid with Dairyland Power Cooperative and the nonprofit WPPI Energy, owned by municipal utilities in Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

MISO initially awarded the project to Viridon, owned by Blackstone Energy Transition Partners — a private equity fund under the umbrella of Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset management firm.

Viridon’s roughly $350 million bid was by far the lowest — just over half of MISO’s estimate and more than $100 million below the next-cheapest bid. In its January announcement, MISO acknowledged the budget “may not be achievable” but cited Viridon’s promises to limit cost overruns and profits as reasons to pick the company over its competitors. 

Who pays for transmission depends on who builds it

When MISO awards a long-range transmission project, the developer spreads costs across customers in multiple states, meaning each customer pays less.

When a developer plans a transmission project within its own territory, that developer’s customers bear the costs alone.

Transmission developers pass costs along to customers through electrical utility bills. We Energies, for instance, estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills. 

Those fees include a “return on equity” for shareholders: profits generated for each dollar invested. As of 2025, ATC collects a 10.48% return.

Competitive bidding for multistate projects is relatively new. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees regional grid operators like MISO, began requiring competitive bidding for regional projects in 2011, following criticism that monopoly developers were driving up ratepayer costs. 

Competition for Midwestern projects escalated after MISO’s board approved billions of dollars in grid upgrades in 2022. MISO was “ahead of the game in terms of how much regional transmission it was planning” compared to other regional grid operators, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

Grid expansion draws new competitors and investors

MISO’s transmission buildout plans offered utilities a golden opportunity to pick up new, dependable revenue streams. “I would have said generational,” Peskoe said, “but then we have the data center rush starting shortly thereafter.” 

Dozens of utilities, including some of the nation’s largest, have since lined up to bid for MISO transmission projects.

Also competing for a share of the buildout: newly formed developers financed by powerful investment firms.

Blackstone sponsored Viridon’s launch in 2023, and the new developer soon threw its hat into the ring for Midwestern transmission projects. Stonepeak, a smaller private equity firm, entered in 2025, backing startup developer Longview Infrastructure.

Well-established utilities have their own ties to multinational investment firms. 

As of December 2025, investment giants BlackRock and the Vanguard Group both owned more than 10% of shares in Wisconsin’s four largest investor-owned utility companies: Wisconsin Electric Power Company, Xcel Energy, Alliant Energy and Madison Gas and Electric Company. 

State Street, another powerful investment firm, owns more than 5% of shares in each utility. 

The four major utilities collectively own a majority of ATC.

Duluth-based utility ALLETE, also an ATC investor, belongs to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The board’s purchase of ALLETE last year gave more than 22 million Canadians a chance to shore up their retirement savings through the Midwest’s grid buildout. 

A fight over competition

ATC and its peers have criticized competitive bidding from the outset. As MISO set up the new bidding process, Peskoe said, utilities fought the change in federal court and urged state legislatures to pass right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws.

ROFR laws give local utilities first dibs on transmission projects within their territory, including those planned by regional grid operators. 

In the view of Wisconsin’s utilities, ROFR laws ensure that utilities with local experience lead transmission projects, avoiding delays and missteps newcomers might face. “Out-of-state single-project developers lack local connection,” an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “We maintain relationships with our regulators that go beyond a single project.” 

But a coalition of critics, including many Midwestern ratepayer advocacy groups, argue that ROFR laws drive up consumer costs by stifling competition and preserving local monopolies. “We firmly believe that competitive bidding makes sense,” said Tom Content, executive director of Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board.

MISO has favored lower-cost bids thus far, but ATC argues that celebrating the cost savings from competitive bidding is premature. “Evidence of a low bid is not evidence of cost savings,” the company spokesperson wrote, because bid prices often do not match final project cost. Substantial overruns are common, even in projects without competitive bidding.

The two sides have battled in state legislatures and courts across the Midwest for more than a decade. Utilities prevailed in Minnesota and Michigan; Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a ROFR law in 2023 after a national developer challenged its constitutionality.

Despite extensive lobbying, ROFR bills have repeatedly failed in Wisconsin’s Assembly, including one introduced in 2025 by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

That leaves ATC to compete for the MISO-planned transmission upgrades, including the plans for eastern Wisconsin.

Data center complicates planning

Shortly after MISO began soliciting bids for the project in February 2025, ATC alerted the grid operator to a complication. The Port Washington data center would need to connect to the grid by the end of 2027, and ATC would be responsible for making the plug-in possible with new substations designed to support the campus’ vast energy needs.

ATC jointly bid on MISO’s eastern Wisconsin grid upgrades in July 2025.

Two months later, the company filed an application with Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) to build substations and transmission lines to serve the new data center campus. ATC projected a price tag of at least $1.3 billion for its broader project, which includes infrastructure not in MISO’s reliability-focused plan for eastern Wisconsin. Both proposals called for three substations — albeit at different scales, on different timelines and for different purposes — in roughly the same locations. 

From ATC’s perspective, at least one set of substations would need to be built in time for the Port Washington data center’s opening day. If MISO awarded its project to ATC, the company could address regional grid reliability concerns and serve the data center in one fell swoop, spreading some costs across the Upper Midwest to ease ratepayer burdens. Even if MISO didn’t award the project to ATC, the utility said it would still seek state approval to build the necessary substations. 

But others saw the overlap as an attempt to sidestep competition.

“We have concerns that attempts are being made to circumvent competitive bidding,” Content said.

MISO soon raised concerns of its own with the Wisconsin PSC. In early January, the grid operator argued that ATC was effectively applying to build the “same substations” as those outlined in its own eastern Wisconsin project. Because MISO had not yet selected a winning bidder for its transmission upgrades, it urged regulators to “consider this uncertainty” before allowing ATC to move forward.

After MISO selected its bid, Viridon also raised objections.

“Put simply, if ATC constructs the substations, Viridon cannot, and ATC will have circumvented MISO’s planning processes,” the developer’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed with the PSC. Allowing ATC to build the substations, they added, would prevent costs from being distributed across multiple states, “potentially requir(ing) Wisconsin customers to pay more.”

ATC pushed back, arguing the projects serve different purposes. The project MISO envisioned aims to improve regional grid reliability and did not require a rapid turnaround, ATC attorney Amy Miller wrote in filings with the PSC. The project under consideration by the PSC, on the other hand, was tied to a specific customer with a firm deadline.

ATC emphasized that Viridon is not yet certified as a public utility in Wisconsin — a process that could take a year or more. That timeline, ATC argued, makes it impossible for Viridon to complete the substations in time. “MISO cannot cause Wisconsin customers to go without timely access to power,” Miller wrote.

Vantage Data Centers echoed the urgency, telling regulators it had “a considerable amount to lose” if the substations aren’t ready by the time the Port Washington campus opens.

MISO changes course — benefiting ATC

Behind the scenes, the timeline began to shift.

Shortly before filing its PSC application last fall, ATC asked MISO to expedite a review of its eastern Wisconsin upgrades in light of the data center’s plans.

MISO adjusted its schedule in February, setting a new in-service date of Dec. 1, 2027. Viridon submitted a plan to meet that deadline, Jeff Dodd, president of Viridon’s Midwestern subsidiary, told Wisconsin Watch.

The grid operator wasn’t persuaded. 

In a revision released quietly on Thursday, MISO reassigned the substations to ATC, noting its “uncertainty” that Viridon could clear administrative hurdles in time. 

The reassignment is a first for MISO. The grid operator has previously worked with developers to update plans when problems arose, with the exception of a 2023 case in which MISO canceled a project because of Texas’ right of first refusal law. 

Viridon retains a fraction of MISO’s original project: a set of transmission lines and one substation scheduled for completion by 2033. 

Under the new arrangement, Midwestern customers will collectively cover the costs of Viridon’s project and about $40 million of ATC’s substation upgrades. 

The regional cost sharing of the substations is a small relief for ratepayer advocates. ATC now plans to fold the substations into the larger grid buildout it brought to the PSC last September, which includes transmission lines needed to serve the Port Washington data center. Wisconsin ratepayers alone are set to cover the remainder of the project’s more than $1 billion budget. 

“Now that the dispute over ownership of the substations is resolved,” Content wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch, “our overriding concern is over the costs of the transmission line itself that ATC has proposed. Critical changes are needed to prevent utility customers across Wisconsin as well as customers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from footing the bill for this project and other data center-feeding power lines that should be paid for by the tech companies.”

The final outcome for the Wisconsin transmission projects still hinges on state regulators. Neither Viridon nor ATC can begin construction on their respective substations or transmission lines without approval from the PSC. The commission is reviewing ATC’s application and weighing where the infrastructure will be built.

For now, construction crews are racing to bring the Port Washington data center online by the end of next year. The PSC will soon decide who pays for the power to run it.

Competition intensifies over who builds Wisconsin’s grid as data centers drive power demand 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.

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Microsoft announced last week it would stop signing nondisclosure agreements that keep its data center proposals secret, a move that received praise from open government advocates.

Less attention was paid to the other party to those NDAs: local governments.

“Hopefully, the industry follows,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, where the city signed an NDA, then put a proposed data center on hold. Microsoft “just realized that it’s not a successful formula when you come into a community under darkness.”

Moses said a bill he introduced to ban data center NDAs, which stalled in the Legislature, is still needed to prevent local governments from signing the agreements. If local officials sign them, “hopefully voters will remember it and hold them accountable,” he said.

Microsoft did not sign NDAs in the Racine County communities of Mount Pleasant, where a multibillion-dollar data center complex is under construction, or in Caledonia, where it withdrew a data center proposal amid community opposition. But its announcement comes at a time of public backlash against data centers proposed in Wisconsin.

The company said its new position on NDAs is an effort toward transparency “as we continue to build trust with the communities around the world in which we operate” and that it would work with local governments to terminate current NDAs. Microsoft has one in Kenosha, where a data center is proposed.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for further comment.

Its move won qualified praise from data center NDA critics, such as Midwest Environmental Advocates. “Companies typically don’t make announcements about building community trust unless those communities are already pushing back pretty hard,” the group said in a statement.

Sheboygan Falls Mayor Randy Meyer, board president of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, said municipalities feel pressure to sign NDAs because they need new development to increase tax revenue. It can be difficult to know when in the planning process a development proposal should be disclosed to the public, he added.

But “if the companies that are building data centers say there’s nothing wrong with them, they don’t hurt the environment, all that stuff, well, then there’s no real reason to be secretive about it,” Meyer said.

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, also praised Microsoft’s move, which happened during Sunshine Week, which promotes public access to government meetings and records. 

But Lueders encouraged local government officials to be more transparent.

“There’s nothing the public hates more than the idea that their public officials are doing things behind their back,” he said. “That’s like the most offensive thing that you could do as a public official is hide information that affects the people you represent.”

Wisconsin Watch has reported that at least five Wisconsin communities signed data center NDAs. In one of them, Beaver Dam — where an NDA was signed more than a year before the proposal was announced — a $1 billion Meta data center is under construction.

Meta declined to comment on Microsoft’s announcement.

Vantage Data Centers, which is building a $15 billion data center in Port Washington with Oracle and OpenAI, did not reply to a request for comment.

The push to build data centers nationwide has meant more than $1 billion in business for Wisconsin suppliers, even before any of the hyperscale data centers in Wisconsin begin operation.

The data centers proposed or under construction in Wisconsin typically cost billions of dollars and cover hundreds of acres. 

Some communities that have not signed NDAs have taken other steps to keep data center proposals quiet.

The Madison suburb of DeForest dropped a proposed $12 billion data center in January, the day after Wisconsin Watch reported that village staff worked for at least seven months with Virginia-based QTS Data Centers before the proposal was publicly announced in October. 

Wisconsin Watch also found that in Port Washington, when citizens requested emails about the data center, the city turned over emails but withheld documents that were attached to the emails — something a judge found did not follow the state open records law.

Blaine Halverson, a leading opponent of the proposed data center in Menomonie, said Microsoft’s announcement is a step, but he remains skeptical.

“I think that committing to not doing NDAs does not mean they’re not committed to still being secretive,” he said. 

“What the pledge needs to be (is) that we’re going to not just not use NDAs. We’re going to be up front. We’re going to encourage and allow free communication from the beginning with communities. And we’re going to insist on being available to answer the public’s questions from the front end. That’s what needs to happen.”

Local data center critics praise Microsoft’s pledge to stop using NDAs, but remain skeptical 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.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• Jobs for data centers happen in three phases: development, construction and operations. 

• The largest numbers of workers are on site when a data center is being built, experts said. 

• The number of long-term jobs a data center brings depends on the size of the facility. 

• It’s difficult to measure the ripple effects data centers have on the economy; however, experts say local businesses can benefit from producing components and products for data centers. 

• Data center technicians will be in high demand as more facilities come online.

As data center developers stake out land in Wisconsin communities, much debate has surrounded whether the computer-packed warehouses will deliver economic benefits locally. 

Waves of opposition and concerns about land, water and electricity use routinely follow data center proposals, while supporters echo that the centers will create jobs and help the economy. 

But what jobs? How many of them? And will they last?

To answer those questions, Wisconsin Watch talked to three professors:

• Xiaofan Liang, who specializes in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
• Scott Adams, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee labor economist. 
• Dijo Alexander, who specializes in information technology, digital transformation and artificial intelligence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Here are some takeaways.

What kinds of jobs do data centers bring?

Data center jobs fall into three major categories that represent phases in their creation: 

• Development
• Construction
• Operations

A data center first needs people to plan for its existence. Developers, engineers, designers and planners lay that groundwork. 

“The data center industry as an ecosystem is pretty big … When they first introduce a data center to a place, they have to figure out the design standard, how to construct all kinds of facilities, how it connects to city systems,” Liang said.

Then, developers must hire heaps of hands-on laborers to construct the gigantic warehouses from the ground up — the largest portion of workers needed in creating and operating a data center. Among other professions, this includes electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters, structural steel and iron workers, concrete workers and earth drillers.

The job boom from early phases fizzles out once the building is complete, Liang said. 

“(During) construction time, you usually have a lot more jobs — maybe 10 times in magnitude more so than operations,” Liang said. 

Operations jobs, fewer in quantity, are largely “unglamorous,” Adams said. 

Some of these roles have relatively low barriers to entry, such as maintenance workers and security guards. Meanwhile, electricians and HVAC workers are needed, considering that power and cooling are data centers’ “two most important inputs,” Adams said. 

Adams echoed a popular analogy likening data centers to warehouses full of rotting bananas that need constant cooling and replacing.

“You need banana technicians, more or less, that take the rotted bananas out and replace them with new bananas,” Adams said. “Now, granted, they’re much more expensive bananas in there, and they’re doing a whole lot, and it requires a little more expertise. But again that expertise, by and large, can be developed pretty quickly.”

Those workers will be data center technicians — people who install servers, replace hardware and cables, monitor systems and notice when things break down.

How many jobs do data centers bring? 

The number of jobs created depends on a data center’s size, Liang said.  

That can initially mean thousands of jobs at gargantuan developments like in Mount Pleasant. Microsoft says it has employed 3,000 people to construct the location, compared to 500 full-time workers once the plant is operating. But these numbers are expected to climb as the company constructs a cluster of additional centers at the site. 

Not all of these workers will be local. Given the temporary high demand, the projects will likely need out-of-town construction laborers who travel to the area and don’t stay long term.

Smaller projects will employ far fewer people. For a typical data center, Microsoft estimates it hires about 50 full-time employees. What those numbers mean for the local area depends on the community’s size. 

“In a bigger city, like Atlanta, it’s like a drop in the ocean, right? It doesn’t really affect much,” Liang said. “In a rural area, in a smaller town, hundreds of jobs … are a big deal.”

What about the trickle-down economic benefits? 

A sizable new employer entering communities could ripple across other nearby industries, though Liang notes this is hard to measure. 

“(A data center) just has such a big infrastructure need that trickles down in many different ways,” Liang said. “Now we need expanded utility infrastructure, grid, fiber, water, all these things. Construction of these infrastructure, even though it’s not directly related to (a) data center, could increase local employment in those areas.”

Inside a data center are “cabinets after cabinets of steel frames holding computers” that need to be built, Alexander said. This can boost local manufacturing, especially the metal fabrication industry. 

Wisconsin manufacturers have already begun cashing in on the construction boom nationwide. As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, just three Wisconsin companies alone have amassed more than $1 billion in equipment sales — such as motors, generators and cooling systems —  to data centers.

Massive developments like Microsoft’s in Mount Pleasant can potentially lead to a “tech corridor,” a cluster of warehouses and manufacturers near the data center they serve, Alexander said. 

“If we take the initiative and if we bring a few big enough component manufacturers, we can create locally created components for these data centers to consume,” Alexander said. “It’s like if you have a big restaurant or food manufacturer here, you will have agriculture around there, because it is easy for you to bring your produce for their consumption. Just like that. ”

The trend could also activate industries like nuclear power, Adams said. Building data centers  in conjunction with nuclear reactors to generate their power would fuel even more construction and energy jobs, he added. In Kewaunee County, an energy company wants to rebuild Kewaunee Power Station, a defunct nuclear power plant, anticipating energy demand from AI and data centers.

In more rural communities or near smaller data centers, the trickle-down effects could prove more modest — perhaps a few new restaurants and housing units, Adams said. 

Alexander also noted the effects could also be less concentrated, with growth spilling into neighboring cities as employees work at the center but live elsewhere.

But will enough permanent jobs be created to sustain the growth sparked during the early labor-intensive development phase? That’s unclear, Adams said. 

“We don’t have a firm enough grasp about the indirect effects in the longer term,” Adams said. “Short run, that’ll be great. Longer run, can we sustain the new development that might happen around these? I don’t know the answer to that. I think if the power generation side of it comes in connection with them, there’s more of a chance that that will work.”

Who are data center technicians?

Data center technicians are perhaps the most novel job introduced by the data center boom. The roles are more specialized than others needed inside the warehouses.

Job postings for data center technicians at Microsoft’s Milwaukee location say the workers will be “preparing, installing, performing diagnostics, troubleshooting, replacing, and/or decommissioning equipment under the guidance of more experienced data center colleagues.” 

The posting states the job requires a high school diploma, knowledge of computer hardware and some experience with IT equipment. Pay for lower-level technicians ranges from $23 to $36 per hour, with more experienced workers making up to about $48 per hour.

Adams said likely candidates will include engineers and computer coders and people now entering college with their sights on data center work. Microsoft and Gateway Technical College in Kenosha launched a “Data Center Academy,” preparing students to work in data center operations. Adams believes partnerships like this will become more common.

Are these good jobs?

You can use the interactive table below to explore many of the jobs data centers are expected to create, including wages, employment totals and required education.

Here’s what the data center boom means for Wisconsin’s workforce 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.

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Microsoft data centers in Mount Pleasant in southeast Wisconsin are projected to use much more water annually than would fill four Olympic-size pools.

Water to operate the facilities, including for cooling, will be supplied by the city of Racine.

The first data center, described by Microsoft as “the world’s most powerful data center,” is expected to begin operation in 2026.

Racine projects that facility will use 2.81 million gallons of water (roughly four Olympic pools) in 2026.

But a second data center is also under construction and a 15-center expansion is planned.

Racine projects total water usage will be 8.44 million gallons annually (roughly 12 pools).

The projections don’t include water that will be needed to generate electricity to fuel the data centers.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated in 2024 that 92.5% of the water U.S. data centers used was to generate electricity, 7.5% for cooling.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• The Conversation: Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much
• Microsoft: Made in Wisconsin: The world’s most powerful AI datacenter
• City of Racine Water Utility: Mount Pleasant data center water projections
• WPR: Mount Pleasant commission approves Microsoft’s plans for data center expansion
• Badger Institute: Claims of data center water use are laughably wrong
• WPR: Microsoft data centers will use up to 8.4M gallons of water each year, records show
• Midwest Environmental Advocates: Demanding Data Center Transparency – City of Racine
• Clean Wisconsin: Analysis: Offsite Water Use of Data Centers

Is a claim that a massive data center will use only 4 Olympic swimming pools of water per year accurate? 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.

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• At least five Wisconsin communities have signed nondisclosure agreements with data center developers, including the town of Beloit.

• Even in communities without an NDA, there has been pushback against transparency. For example, Port Washington was sued because it released emails referencing a project, but not the attached files.

• It’s unclear if the state Senate will take up a bill that would ban data center NDAs, but the Assembly has already adjourned without passing the bill.

At a Jan. 28 public forum on Wisconsin data centers, Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke boasted that his city did not sign a nondisclosure agreement that would have concealed plans for a $15 billion facility that is now under construction.

“If you’ve got the courage and you push back and say, ‘Listen, we’re just not going to do it,’ (the data center developers) will find a way to operate without having to sign an NDA,” Neitzke said. “So, we did not and we will not.”

On the same day Neitzke was touting his community’s openness, Port Washington was in court over its refusal to provide communications about its data center. The city had turned over emails, but not documents attached to the emails.

It’s one example, beyond NDAs, of local governments hiding details of proposed large-scale AI data centers, which are projected to span hundreds of acres, cost billions of dollars and transform communities.

Wisconsin Watch reported in January that NDAs were signed in at least four Wisconsin communities where artificial intelligence data centers are proposed or being built — Beaver Dam, Kenosha, Janesville and Menomonie. Since then, Wisconsin Watch has learned about a fifth project with an NDA, this one in the town of Beloit — showing that discussions there occurred more than a year before any public announcement was made.

Port Washington stymies public records requests 

Construction began in December on Lighthouse, the 672-acre Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee.

Four months earlier, philanthropist Lynde Uihlein, a town of Port Washington resident, environmentalist and major Democratic donor, made a public records request of the city. She asked for any communications between the city and the data center developer dating back to Jan. 1, 2025.

The Wisconsin public records law declares that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” and that governmental bodies must respond to requests “as soon as practicable and without delay.”

After nearly three months, the city did not reply to Uihlein’s request, so she sued.

The city responded by turning over emails, but not the documents attached to those emails, such as a draft development agreement. The city’s attorney explained that Uihlein didn’t specifically ask for the attachments.

“When cities want to court large, community-changing development, they also should be prepared to act with maximum transparency,” said Madison lawyer Christa Westerberg, one of the lawyers representing Uihlein.

“The city of Port Washington has been too slow to respond to requests about the data center and even when it has, there are gaps, like providing emails without attachments. This was foreseeable and avoidable.”

Wisconsin Watch is one of Westerberg’s clients, but is not a party to this case. Westerberg did not participate in the writing or editing of this report.

City Attorney Matthew Nugent told Wisconsin Watch: “The assertion that the city refused to produce email attachments is inaccurate. The city reasonably interpreted the original request to seek the email communications themselves, that is, the body of the email message, not the separate documents attached to those communications.”

At a court hearing Jan. 28, Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Adam Gerol rejected the idea that documents attached to emails aren’t part of the emails themselves. “There has not been a complete response to the open records request,” he said.

In February, the city turned over emails along with attachments to Uihlein, and Gerol ruled that city officials must submit to depositions to answer questions from Uihlein’s lawyers.

Gerol will be asked to determine whether the city has fully complied with the public records law, whether its delay in replying violated the law and whether it should have to pay Uihlein’s legal fees.

Another denial

The city used the same rationale to partially deny another public records request.

Port Washington resident Michael Beaster, an opponent of the data center, asked the city Nov. 20 for emails and other communications between city officials and the data center developer. 

The city replied six weeks later, sending some emails but no attachments to the emails. An attorney for the city told Beaster he would need to submit another request if he wanted attachments because Beaster did not specifically request those.

“It feels like they’re being overly cautious in trying to protect the city,” Beaster said, “which certainly isn’t serving the public.”

Beaster is running unopposed April 7 for an open seat on the Port Washington city council. He helped lead a failed effort to recall Neitzke over the data center.

Neitzke said he could not comment on why the city has not turned over email attachments, other than to say he is not part of the process of releasing records.

NDA for possible Beloit data center

News surfaced this month of a possible data center an hour southeast of Madison in the town of Beloit. The town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions” and signed a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC.

Wisconsin Watch has since learned that the town signed an NDA with Cambrin in February 2025 — more than a year before making its announcement.

The NDA and other documents provided to Wisconsin Watch in response to a public records request do not directly refer to a data center. 

The documents indicate that “Project Corn Maze” would initially include 700,000 square feet of buildings, employ 50 people and require tax incremental financing from the town.

The records also show that the town has exchanged emails about the project since April 2025. They indicate that Cambrin LLC was formed to make the development proposal and don’t identify what company would operate the data center.

Signs of openness 

Access to records also was at issue for the first phase of a data center complex south of Milwaukee in Mount Pleasant. The first center in that Microsoft complex is expected to open later this year.

This month the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council announced it is giving its annual citizen openness advocate award to Midwest Environmental Advocates. The public interest law firm successfully sued the city of Racine for records disclosing how much water it is projecting to provide for the Mount Pleasant data center.

The council also gave an award to Wisconsin Watch for its story on data center NDAs.

Amid reports of a possible data center in Grant County and as Meta seeks to add a data center to one it is building in Beaver Dam, there is movement toward more openness on several fronts.

The state Public Service Commission, which approves requests for new utility plants and utility rates, initially accepted a confidentiality request from Alliant Energy in its application to serve the Beaver Dam data center despite numerous redactions — including how much energy the center would use.

On Feb. 26, however, state administrative law judge Michael Newmark, who is overseeing the PSC hearings on the request, told Alliant to resubmit its request with fewer redactions. Alliant did the next day with less information blacked out. 

“It seemed like the redactions were not going to allow us to do sort of the basic functions of open government,” Newmark said at the hearing. Fewer redactions would enable the commission to rule on the application in a way that is “defensible in court and in the court of public opinion,” he said.

Last week the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy released a model for state legislation to “promote transparency and environmental protections” for data centers.

The model, which recommends temporary statewide moratoriums on data centers, makes several recommendations to increase transparency, including a ban on local governments signing NDAs and requiring public disclosures on water and electricity use before any approvals are given.

The “continued absence of comprehensive and timely disclosure requirements,” the report said, “undermines public understanding and limits informed decision-making around siting, permitting and environmental impacts.”

And on Friday, a state Senate committee on a 4-1 vote approved Senate Bill 969, which would prohibit local governments from signing NDAs with data center developers. No further action has yet been scheduled.

The committee also advanced, 3-2, Assembly Bill 840, which would require the Public Service Commission to protect ratepayers from the costs of providing electricity to data centers. The bill contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be located on the site. The Assembly passed the bill 53-44 in January. 

Legislation banning NDAs is pending in several states, including two that took action last week.

A Minnesota House of Representatives committee approved a bill banning data center NDAs and sent it to the House floor.

In Florida, a provision banning NDAs that industry groups lobbied against was removed from a data center bill. 

A report released last week by the Alliance of Great Lakes urged governmental bodies to limit the use of NDAs so that the public can know how much water and energy a data center will use.

“When critical information is withheld, decision-making shifts risk from private developers to communities and public utilities,” the report said.

More than NDAs. Wisconsin communities face scrutiny over data center secrecy. 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.

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Two attempts to peel back the veil of secrecy over the proliferation of data centers, including one by Wisconsin Watch reporter Tom Kertscher, are being honored in this year’s Openness in Government Awards, or Opees, bestowed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

In advance of national Sunshine Week (sunshineweek.org), March 15-21, the council has named the winners of its 20th annual Opees. These recognize outstanding efforts to protect the state’s tradition of open government, as well as highlight some threats to it. Winners have been invited to appear at a free public event in Madison on March 19. (See WFOIC website for details.)

The winners are:

Public Openness Advocate (Popee): Vilas County District Attorney Karl Hayes. District attorneys in Wisconsin are statutorily empowered to enforce the state’s open records and open meetings laws, but in practice rarely do so. Early this year, Hayes showed how it can be done, warning officials in the town of Presque Isle that they needed to comply with a nearly year-old request from the Lakeland Times newspaper for records regarding the town’s computers. His intervention succeeded, and the records were released. Other DAs might look for occasions where they can turn the lever in favor of openness.

Citizen Openness Advocate (Copee): Midwest Environmental Advocates. This nonprofit public interest law firm last year filed two pivotal lawsuits challenging the secrecy surrounding data center projects. The first, against the city of Racine, forced the prompt release of water usage projections for Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant campus. The second lawsuit, against the state Public Service Commission (PSC), contested the “trade secret” status of energy demand data for Meta’s proposed data center in Beaver Dam; that case is pending. Kudos to MEA for insisting on the public’s right to know.

Media Openness Advocate (Mopee): The Badger Project. In recent years, this nonprofit news outlet has been requesting records from police departments around the state about internal investigations of police officers and suing when they are not provided. In 2025, it filed three such lawsuits — against a police department in Racine County, the state Department of Transportation and St. Croix County. All led to the release of records. The Badger Project is now appealing St. Croix County’s refusal to pay attorney fees, which could lead to the overturning of a deeply problematic state Supreme Court decision. Fingers crossed. 

Open Records Scoop of the Year (Scoopee): Tie: Tom Kertscher of Wisconsin Watch; Danielle DuClos of The Cap Times. Among much other good reporting on openness issues, the work of these two journalists stands out. Kertscher pulled back the curtain on the secrecy surrounding data centers, including at least four projects in which local officials signed nondisclosure agreements with the companies. And DuClos reported on how the state Department of Public Instruction secretly investigated more than 200 Wisconsin K-12 educators accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students, prompting a statewide audit and legislative action.

No Friend of Openness (Nopee): Deborah Kerr, superintendent of the St. Francis School District. While there were other contenders for this award, there was also little question that Kerr would be the winner and new champion. Last June, she threatened to have a TMJ4 News reporter and camera operator arrested for wanting to film a school board meeting “because you did not give us any notice or tell us why you were here,” neither of which is required. The jaw-dropping video (see for yourself at https://tinyurl.com/zvam889a) went viral, and Kerr issued a weak apology, but her eruption is one for the ages. Credit reporter Megan Lee for her deft handling of the situation.

Whistleblower of the Year (Whoopee): John Sigwart. This former Port Washington city council member refused to keep the public in the dark about a clandestinely proposed microchip production facility, revealing that local officials had signed nondisclosure agreements. The city’s mayor retaliated by stripping Sigwart of his committee appointments, precipitating an end to his many years of public service, said an editorial in the Ozaukee Press. Sigwart died in August at age 80, but his example of courage will live on.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the group’s president.

Your Right to Know: Opees highlight good works, and bad 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.

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• While no hyperscale data centers are operating yet in the state, Wisconsin companies are helping power massive facilities elsewhere by supplying parts and equipment. 

• Just three Wisconsin companies have already amassed more than $1 billion in data center-related business. 

• It’s still unclear how much large-scale Wisconsin data centers will ultimately contribute to the state’s economy — and some question their long-term impact.

None of the billion-dollar-plus data centers planned for Wisconsin are yet online, but the nationwide, artificial-intelligence-fueled market is already spurring economic growth in the state.

Wisconsin business leaders say no comprehensive accounting has been done. But just three Wisconsin companies have already amassed more than $1 billion in data center-related business: 

• Regal Rexnord, a Milwaukee maker of motors, announced in February it had received $735 million in orders from data centers.

• Generac, a Waukesha-based manufacturer, told Wisconsin Watch it has a backlog of $400 million in orders for backup generators for data centers. Moreover, Generac announced Feb. 19 it is acquiring a 120-employee Illinois engineering company to help meet data center demand. 

• Racine-based Modine announced in February 2025 it received $180 million in orders from a new customer for data center cooling systems to be manufactured in Virginia and Mississippi. In addition, the company in November opened a 155,000-square-foot plant in suburban Milwaukee to manufacture the systems.

Many companies don’t publicly report details on data center business they do, so it’s impossible to tally total economic impact in Wisconsin. But there are other examples.

Trane Technologies is manufacturing cooling systems for data centers in La Crosse, where it was founded in 1913, and says data centers are a strong part of its business. In November 2023, Excellerate opened a 385,000-square-foot plant in Little Chute, primarily to manufacture “modular electrical buildings” for data centers. Maysteel, a Washington County manufacturer, opened a data center hub in November 2024 and announced in February it is expanding the operation. 

The sheer demand to outfit data centers has meant that some business has trickled down from larger companies to smaller ones.

Modular Power & Data has 90 employees in Dane County and suburban Milwaukee to manufacture electrical distribution products. Chief Operating Officer Erik Thompson told Wisconsin Watch that Modular did $10 million of data center business in 2025 and expects to more than double that in 2026.

That work is “transforming a very small company into what I believe will be a very large Wisconsin manufacturer,” Thompson said. “Without this growth, we’d always be much smaller.” 

Because no hyperscale data centers are scheduled to begin operating in Wisconsin until later this year, their ultimate economic impact remains unknown.

Nationally, data centers are known for spurring construction work. That includes companies such as Brownsville-based Michels Corp., a lead contractor on the $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, and Waukesha-based Boldt Co. But those jobs are often temporary. 

“The standard data center development model — speedy dealmaking and opaque negotiations — delivers short-term construction jobs and revenue, but little durable local economic upside,” the Washington, D.C.- based Brookings think tank concluded in February.

In Wisconsin, data center expenditures are projected to raise the state’s gross domestic product from $354 million in 2024 to $881 million in 2029, according to University of Virginia economist João-Pedro Ferreira, author of a study done for the Joyce Foundation. The data center workforce is expected to triple from 360 to 1,143 jobs, but constitute only 0.09% of the overall labor market.

“The impacts might seem a lot, but they are not,” Ferreira said.

At least $46 billion in hyperscale data centers are under construction or under consideration in Wisconsin. Besides Port Washington, $20 billion worth of data centers are under construction and planned in Mount Pleasant, and a $1 billion facility is being built in Beaver Dam. Proposals are pending in Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie. 

That’s as concerns about impacts on land, water and electricity spur loud opposition to data centers in Wisconsin. On Facebook alone, more than 24,000 people have joined groups to fight hyperscale centers that are proposed or under construction in the state. 

But Wisconsin businesses see more growth from AI. In November, a foundation connected with Waukesha County-based Pieper Electric announced a $2 million donation to expand Waukesha County Technical College’s Applied AI Lab.

Dale Kooyenga, CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and a former Republican state lawmaker, said skills being developed for data center construction have value after the facilities are built.

“These men and women building these data centers aren’t building just buildings, they’re building the world’s largest computers,” he said. 

Kooyenga also pushed back on claims that AI will be bad for the economy.

“The concept that robots and technology are out to get your jobs has been a concept in America since 1900. That’s not a new fear,” he said. “But the fact is, is that there will be a different-looking economy and different opportunities.”

AI’s growth is affecting workers unevenly across industries. 

It’s reducing employment in the most AI-exposed industries, such as computer systems design, and it’s especially hitting younger workers, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis. 

But wages in those sectors have continued to grow as AI tools are benefiting veteran workers — those who have gained knowledge from experience.

Data centers fuel $1 billion in Wisconsin business growth, but some question long-term impact 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.