Wisconsin utilities are investing to meet demands of the AI data center boom. But utility customers and local communities could be left paying the bills if the AI industry goes bust, utility watchdog warns.
The post How would an AI ‘bubble’ impact Wisconsin communities hosting data centers? appeared first on WPR.
SANTA FE, N.M.— Electric vehicle manufacturer GreenPower Motor Company (NASDAQ: GP) today announced they have reached an agreement with the New Mexico Economic Development Department (EDD) to establish operations in Santa Teresa, NM.
Internationally headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with current operational facilities in southern California and West Virginia, GreenPower is a leading manufacturer and distributor of all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission medium and heavy-duty vehicles serving the cargo and delivery market, shuttle and transit space, and school bus sector.
The new 135,000 sq. ft. facility in Santa Teresa will become the company’s base for North American operations and US corporate headquarters. The move is estimated to generate over $200 million in economic impact for New Mexico over the next decade, creating more than 340 jobs.
The company will receive a $5 million LEDA award from the state and $4.6 million in job training incentive funds (JTIP). The company also qualified for a $1.36 million Rural Jobs Tax Credit (RJTC) and $3.65 million as part of New Mexico’s High-Wage Jobs Tax Credit program.
“Establishing GreenPower’s new manufacturing facility in Santa Teresa marks a significant milestone in our expansion and commitment to safe, sensible, sustainable transportation solutions,” said Fraser Atkinson, CEO of GreenPower. “This strategic move leverages the region’s highly skilled and dedicated workforce, which has long been recognized as a key driver of economic growth and innovation in southern New Mexico.”
Santa Teresa’s Foreign Trade Zone designation was a key factor in the company’s decision, offering streamlined customs and cost-effective trade that support efficient production and distribution of zero-emission vehicles across North America. The designation also provides access to the North American Development Bank, underscoring the project’s cross-border economic and environmental impact.
These incentives and programs enhance the company’s ability to efficiently produce and distribute zero-emission vehicles, parts and inventory throughout North America and beyond, reinforcing New Mexico’s role as a hub for green manufacturing and international commerce.
“Our decisive commitment to the goal of net zero emissions ensures New Mexico’s position as a leader in the nation’s clean energy transition,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. “With this strategic investment, we’re creating high-quality jobs and strengthening our economy while building the carbon-free energy future New Mexico’s families deserve.”
In 2025, GreenPower worked with EDD to launch the state’s first all-electric, zero-emission school bus pilot project at two Las Vegas public schools and a Santa Fe charter school. The continuing 2-year pilot program supports New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act, designed to transition the state toward the goal of 100% zero-carbon electricity supply by 2045.
“The electric school bus pilot project was an important first step in bringing GreenPower manufacturing and their high-quality jobs to New Mexico,” said EDD Cabinet Secretary Rob Black. “The real-world data and insights we are gaining from the pilot project will help inform New Mexico’s electric school bus roll-out and specifications, ensuring that fleets are safe, efficient and tailored to the unique needs of local districts.”
“Governor Lujan Grisham’s steadfast commitment to advancing zero-emission vehicles has provided a supportive policy environment that encourages companies like GreenPower to invest and innovate,” said GreenPower President Brendan Riley. “Her administration’s ambitious sustainability goals align perfectly with GreenPower’s mission to deliver clean, reliable transportation solutions, contributing to a healthier environment and a stronger state economy.”
“We know the transportation sector is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the nation — here in New Mexico, we want to lead on policy, manufacturing and deployment of zero emissions vehicles,” said New Mexico Secretary of Transportation Ricky Serna. “GreenPower’s move to the state is an important part in helping the state achieve these important energy transition goals.”
In support of those sustainability goals, GreenPower will offer dealer-level pricing to the state for a comprehensive lineup of Class 4 all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission commercial vehicles. The selection includes a variety of options like box trucks, refrigerated trucks, passenger vans, buses, utility trucks and stakebed trucks meeting the diverse needs of public agencies and commercial operators throughout the region.
A public press conference featuring the company’s all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission Class 4 commercial vehicles and school buses will take place in Santa Fe during the state’s upcoming legislative session.
The post GreenPower Motor Company Chooses New Mexico for Advanced EV Manufacturing Facility appeared first on School Transportation News.
Anticipated spikes in demand for energy to supply Wisconsin's data center building boom come on the heels of decades of declining power and water use, according to a new report.
The post Data center boom follows decades of declining electricity and water use in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
Months after a $1.6 billion data center proposal in Menomonie was halted by its mayor, the city council has passed an ordinance restricting where and how any potential future data centers can be built.
The post Wisconsin cities regulating data centers as lawmakers consider statewide rules appeared first on WPR.
As the cost of everything, especially energy, increases, nonprofit organizations stockpile wood to help neighbors stay warm through winter.
The post Firewood banks offer heat, and hope, to rural homes in need appeared first on WPR.
When Denny Blodgett learned his northwest Wisconsin county intended to burn wood harvested during a road-widening project near his home, he thought it would be unthinkable for that fuel to go to waste.
As Blodgett recalls, he offered some of the harvested wood to an older man from his church, and word spread around his community of Danbury that he had firewood to give.
“And pretty soon, we’re helping 125 families,” said Blodgett, who founded Interfaith Caregivers’ Heat-A-Home program.
That was three decades ago.
Last year, volunteers delivered nearly 200 loads of split wood to local households.
And as the cost of living increases amid federal cuts to social safety net programs, struggling families increasingly face a winter of tough choices as they try to meet their basic needs.
Food, medicine or heat?
Interfaith is one of about 250 known firewood banks across the country that seek to ameliorate the demand for energy assistance.
There isn’t a clear definition for firewood banks, which have been around since at least the 1970s, but have roots in Native traditions since time immemorial. They can take the informal form of Good Samaritans delivering logs to neighbors to large take-what-you-need distribution sites operated by cities or Indigenous tribes.
But the common denominator to these networks of care is their low- or no-cost service to people who lack the means to purchase alternative forms of heat and process their own firewood. Often, both factors stem from the same issue, such as illness or aging.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated as of 2020 that 2.3 million households in the United States rely on firewood as their primary source of heating fuel.
But one of the great paradoxes of what researchers term “fuel poverty” is that those struggling to keep their homes warm in rural, often heavily forested areas lack ready access to wood.
“I’ve got 20 acres of oak and hardwood here and a chainsaw and a log splitter, but I’m pretty much unable to really do much with it,” said Danbury resident Peter Brask, 78, who struggles with neuropathy. “I just still feel embarrassed asking for help because I’ve been so self-sufficient all my life.”
Last year’s wood delivery from Interfaith was a “lifesaver” for getting through the winter, the retired IBM software specialist said.
Blodgett, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, purchases and accepts donated wood, delivered to a yard adjacent to his home. A processor cuts “cattywampus” piles of timber into smaller pieces, and volunteers split them into burnable portions.
The wood dries until it’s “seasoned.” The less moisture in a log, the cleaner and more efficiently it burns.
Interfaith purchased two trailers a few years ago with money the group obtained from the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit that advocates for the use of modern wood-burning heating systems.
Buoyed with money from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, it has issued more than $2 million in grants to firewood banks that help them purchase safety equipment, chainsaws and wood splitters, as well as smoke detectors for wood recipients.
Overlooking a renewable resource like wood at the potential cost to human health is unthinkable, said the organization’s founder John Ackerly, especially when so much potential firewood ends up in landfills — the “scraggly stuff” that lumber mills can’t offload. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated 12.2 million tons of wood ended up as municipal solid waste in 2018.
“Usually, firewood is not a very profitable thing to sell, very labor-intensive and very heavy,” Ackerly said.
Another opportunity presented by firewood banks is providing a local outlet that avoids spreading wood infested with invasive species. Banks also avert the dumping of wood sourced from storm-damaged trees, exacerbated by climate-change-magnified severe weather — winds and snow.
“We’re losing our power, our electricity in these storms all the time,” said Jessica Leahy, a University of Maine professor, who co-authored a guide to starting community wood banks. “It would be great to have everybody in the most carbon-neutral heating source for their house. That sounds great, but there are people burning their kitchen cabinets in order to stay warm.”
Now in its fourth year issuing grants with federal dollars, the Alliance for Green Heat had to rebrand after the Trump administration pushed for increased timber harvests on federal lands in the name of national economic security.
This year, firewood banks seeking grants must source wood from actively managed federal forests, a potential problem for the handful of states that lack them.
“Before, we really touted the program as serving ‘low-income populations’ with a ‘renewable, low-carbon fuel,’” Ackerly said. “We had to remove that language, but we were able to keep doing what we had been doing the same way.”
Researchers who mapped wood banks across the U.S. identified a second in Wisconsin — the Bear Ridge Firewood Bank, sponsored by the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians — and a handful in other Midwestern states, including Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota.
Clarisse Hart — director of outreach and education at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, and one of the researchers — said firewood banks often go by different names depending on the region: firewood assistance program, firewood for elders, firewood ministry, wood pantry and charity cut, to name a few.
Other exchanges happen behind the scenes, she said, often on private, community social media pages — making banks harder to identify.
Often, the operations depend on the commitment of volunteers.
“A lot of people want to give back, but they don’t know what to do,” said Ed Hultgren, who started an Ozark, Missouri, wood bank in 2009. “It doesn’t have to be wood ministry. You find a gap in your area and see if there’s something you can do to fill it.”
Wayne Kinning — a retired surgeon who volunteers with his Fenton , Michigan, Knights of Columbus council — is one of a dozen or so men from St. John the Evangelist parish who cut, split and sell low-cost firewood. The proceeds support local charities.
“We donate all our time and even our chainsaws,” he said. “That, of course, then gives a person a sense of meaning in their day and a sense of worth in their giving.”
Among Blodgett’s helpers are a snowmobile club, several churches and a Jewish summer camp. Another dedicated volunteer — Wendy Truhler, 74, of Danbury — has assisted Blodgett for nearly two decades, since her spouse died.
“Listen, I helped my husband split for 30 years. I know how to lift and work a splitter and this and that,” she told Blodgett when she started. “I would rather be outside than glued to a little 12-inch computer screen.”
Blodgett delivers wood throughout the year, which takes the pressure off the winter rush.
He fills the extra time working on other Interfaith projects: constructing wheelchair ramps for families and running the Christmas for Kids program.
Last year, 335 children received toys and clothes from their wish lists. Families also get a $50 food card. And he makes sure they get another resource wood provides.
A decorated tree for Christmas.
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The Pettit National Ice Center has made Milwaukee, the first indoor speedskating oval built in the U.S., is going solar.
The post Milwaukee’s Pettit Center indoor Olympic speedskating oval goes solar appeared first on WPR.
Minnesota’s largest power company is backing away from plans to develop a proposed $1 billion gas-fired power plant in northern Wisconsin due to legal challenges and permitting delays.
The post Minnesota utility says it won’t buy from planned $1B power plant in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
Obsolete power plants continue to cost ratepayers. Now, the push to generate
unprecedented amounts of electricity for data centers risks creating another $1 billion in "stranded assets."
The post As energy-hungry data centers loom, Wisconsin ratepayers owe $1B on shuttered power plants appeared first on WPR.
Wind turbines generate electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm on July 7, 2022, near Block Island, Rhode Island. The first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States is located in the Atlantic Ocean 3.8 miles from Block Island, Rhode Island. The five-turbine, 30 MW project was developed by Deepwater Wind and began operations in December, 2016. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday it’s halting leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast due to national security risks.
The Interior Department paused the projects — off the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia and New York — due to analysis from reports that have “long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference,” which poses a national security risk, according to a department release.
“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement alongside the announcement.
The Interior Department said “the clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.”
The department said leases for Vineyard Wind 1, off Massachusetts; Revolution Wind, off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind; along with Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1, off New York, have been paused “effective immediately.”
The department noted that the pause would give it, the Defense Department and other agencies “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.”
The moves are part of the administration’s continued attacks against the renewable energy source, which have spilled into courts. A federal judge found this month that Trump’s January order halting permits for offshore wind projects was unlawful.
The action drew swift backlash from major environmental advocacy groups and Democratic officials.
Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a Monday statement the administration is “again unlawfully blocking clean, affordable energy.”
The administration has “baselessly and unlawfully attacked wind energy with delays, freezes and cancellations, while propping up aging, expensive coal plants that barely work and pollute our air,” Kelly added.
Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, described the move as a “desperate rerun of the Trump administration’s failed attempt to kill offshore wind — an effort the courts have already rejected.”
She added that many of the projects had already won approvals through “rigorous review” and court challenges.
“Trying again to halt these projects tramples on the rule of law, threatens jobs, and deliberately sabotages a critical industry that strengthens, not weakens, America’s energy security,” she said.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also weighed in, saying in a Monday social media post Trump was “trying AGAIN to kill thousands of good-paying union jobs and raise your electricity bill.”
The New York Democrat said he’s “been fighting Trump’s war against offshore wind — a war that threatens American jobs and American energy” and vowed to continue fighting “to make sure these projects, the thousands of jobs they create, and the energy they provide can continue.”
Lawmakers in Rhode Island were also quick to blast the administration’s effort, which affects the Revolution Wind project off its own coast.
Rep. Seth Magaziner said that “at a time when working people in Rhode Island are struggling with high costs on everything, Trump should not be canceling energy projects that are nearly ready to deliver reliable power to the grid at below-market rates and help lower costs.”
The Rhode Island Democrat rebuked the administration’s claims that Revolution Wind and the other offshore wind projects present national security concerns as “unfounded,” noting that “the Department of Defense thoroughly reviewed and signed off on this project during the permitting and approval process.”
Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement Monday that Revolution Wind “was long ago thoroughly vetted and fully permitted by the federal government, and that review included any potential national security questions.”
Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the move “looks more like the kind of vindictive harassment we have come to expect from the Trump administration than anything legitimate.”
“This is President Donald ‘Stop Work’ Trump trying to keep affordable, clean energy off the grid, without a care about how many working people have to lose their jobs to keep his fossil fuel billionaires happy,” he said.
In a statement Monday, Sen. Jack Reed noted that amid an increase in energy prices, policymakers should be promoting new energy sources.
“Trump’s repeated attacks on offshore wind are holding our nation back, increasing energy bills, and hurting our economy,” the Rhode Island Democrat said.
The former site of the We Energies Power Plant on Nov. 13, 2025, in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (Photo by Joe Timmerman/Wisconsin Watch)
By some measures, the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, once regarded locally as an “iconic industrial landmark,” had a good run.
Opened in 1980 near Lake Michigan in Kenosha County, it became Wisconsin’s largest generating plant, burning enough Wyoming coal, some 13,000 tons a day, to provide electricity for up to 1 million homes.
But over time, the plant became too expensive to operate. The owner, We Energies, shut it down after 38 years, in 2018.
We Energies customers, however, are still on the hook.
A portion of their monthly bills will continue to pay for Pleasant Prairie until 2039 — 21 years after the plant stopped producing electricity.
In fact, residential and business utility customers throughout Wisconsin owe nearly $1 billion on “stranded assets” — power plants like Pleasant Prairie that have been or will soon be shut down, a Wisconsin Watch investigation found.
That total will likely grow over the next five years with additional coal plants scheduled to cease operations.
Customers must pay not only for the debt taken on to build and upgrade the plants themselves, but also an essentially guaranteed rate of return for their utility company owners, long after the plants stop generating revenue themselves.
“We really have a hard time with utilities profiting off of dead power plants for decades,” said Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group.
The $1 billion tab looms as Wisconsin utility companies aim to generate unprecedented amounts of electricity for at least seven major high-tech data centers that are proposed, approved or under construction. By one estimate, just two of the data centers, which are being built to support the growth of artificial intelligence, would use more electricity than all Wisconsin homes combined.
All of which raises an important question in Wisconsin, where electricity rates have exceeded the Midwest average for 20 years.
What happens to residents and other ratepayers if AI and data centers don’t pan out as planned, creating a new generation of stranded assets?
Of the five major investor-owned utilities operating in Wisconsin, two — We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. — have stranded assets on the books. Both companies are subsidiaries of Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group.
As of December 2024, when the company released its most recent annual report, We Energies estimated a remaining value of more than $700 million across three power plants with recently retired units: Pleasant Prairie, Oak Creek and Presque Isle, a plant on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Wisconsin Public Service Corp.’s December 2024 report listed roughly $30 million in remaining value on recently retired units at two power plants.
In total, utilities owned by WEC Energy Group will likely have over $1 billion in recently retired assets by the end of 2026.
The company also noted a remaining value of just under $250 million for its share of units at Columbia Generating Station slated to retire in 2029, alongside a remaining value of roughly $650 million for units at Oak Creek scheduled to retire next year.
Its customers will pay off that total, plus a rate of return, for years to come.
The company estimates that closing the Pleasant Prairie plant alone saved $2.5 billion, largely by avoiding future operating and maintenance costs and additional capital investments.
Both Wisconsin Power and Light and Madison Gas and Electric also own portions of the Columbia Energy Center, and Wisconsin Power and Light also operates a unit at the Edgewater Generating Station scheduled for retirement before the end of the decade. Neither company provided estimates of the values of those facilities at time of retirement. Andrew Stoddard, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Power and Light’s parent company, argued against treating plants scheduled for retirement with value on the books as future stranded assets.
In 1907, Wisconsin became one of the first states to regulate public utilities. The idea was that having competing companies installing separate gas or electric lines was inefficient, but giving companies regional monopolies would require regulation.
Utility companies get permission to build or expand power plants and to raise rates from the three-member state Public Service Commission. The commissioners, appointed by the governor, are charged with protecting ratepayers as well as utility company investors.
Stranded assets have occurred across the nation, partly because of the cost of complying with pollution control regulations. But another factor is that, while other utilities around the country moved to alternative sources of energy, Wisconsin utilities and, in turn, the PSC overbet on how long coal-fired plants would operate efficiently:
Various factors encourage construction and upgrades of power plants.
Building a plant can create upwards of 1,000 construction jobs, popular with politicians. Moreover, the Public Service Commission, being a quasi-judicial body, is governed by precedent. For example, if the PSC determined it was prudent to allow construction of a utility plant, that finding would argue in favor of approving a later expansion of that plant.
The PSC allowed utility companies “to overbuild the system,” said Tom Content, executive director of the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board, a nonprofit advocate for utility customers. “I think the mistake was that we allowed so much investment, and continuing to double down on coal when it was becoming less economic.”
Utilities “profit off of everything they build or acquire,” Stuart said, “and so there is a strong motivation to put steel in the ground and perhaps to even overbuild.”
Conway, the WEC Energy Group spokesperson, argued that the utilities’ plans to retire plants amount to a net positive for customers.
“We began our power generation reshaping plan about a decade ago,” he wrote in an email. “That includes closing older, less-efficient power plants and building new renewable energy facilities and clean, efficient natural gas plants. This plan reduces emissions and is expected to provide customers significant savings — hundreds of millions of dollars — over the life of the plan.”
The built-in profits that utility companies enjoy, typically 9.8%, add to the stranded assets tab.
When the Public Service Commission approves construction of a new power plant, it allows the utility company to levy electricity rates high enough to recover its investment plus the specified rate of return — even after a plant becomes a stranded asset.
“We give them this license to have a monopoly, but the challenge is there’s no incentive for them to do the least-cost option,” Content said. “So, in terms of building new plants, there’s an incentive to build more … and there’s incentive to build too much.”
When the Pleasant Prairie plant was shut down in 2018, the PSC ruled that ratepayers would continue to pay We Energies to cover the cost of the plant itself, plus the nearly 10% profit. The plant’s remaining value, initially pegged at nearly $1 billion, remained at roughly $500 million as of December 2024.
Eliminating profits on closed plants would save ratepayers $300 million on debt payments due to be made into the early 2040s, according to Content’s group.
As artificial intelligence pervades society, it’s hard to fathom how much more electricity will have to be generated to power all of the data centers under construction or being proposed in Wisconsin.
We Energies alone wants to add enough energy to power more than 2 million homes. That effort is largely to serve one Microsoft data center under construction in Mount Pleasant, between Milwaukee and Racine, and a data center approved north of Milwaukee in Port Washington to serve OpenAI and Oracle AI programs. Microsoft calls the Mount Pleasant facility “the world’s most powerful data center.”
Data centers are also proposed for Beaver Dam, Dane County, Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie.
The energy demand raises the risk of more stranded assets, should the data centers turn out to be a bubble rather than boom.
“The great fear is, you build all these power plants and transmission lines and then one of these data centers only is there for a couple years, or isn’t as big as promised, and then everybody’s left holding the bag,” Stuart said.
In an October Marquette Law School poll, 55% of those surveyed said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. Environmental groups have called for a pause on all data center approvals. Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for data centers to pay their own way and not rely on utility ratepayers or taxpayers to pay for their electricity needs.
Opposition in one community led nearly 10,000 people to become members of the Stop the Menomonie Data Center group on Facebook. In Janesville, voters are trying to require referendums for data centers. In Port Washington, opposition to the data center there led to three arrests during a city council meeting.
Utilities are scheduled in early 2026 to request permission from the Public Service Commission to build new power plants or expand existing plants to accommodate data centers.
Some states, such as Minnesota, have adopted laws prohibiting the costs of stranded assets from data centers being passed onto ratepayers.
Wisconsin has no such laws.
Currently, ratepayers are on the hook for paying off the full debt of stranded assets — unless a financial tool called securitization reduces the burden on ratepayers.
Securitization is similar to refinancing a mortgage. With the state’s permission, utilities can convert a stranded asset — which isn’t typically a tradeable financial product — into a specialized bond.
Utility customers must still pay back the bond. But the interest rate on the bond is lower than the utility’s standard profit margin, meaning customers save money.
A 2024 National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners report noted that utilities’ shareholders may prefer a “status quo” scenario in which customers pay stranded asset debts and the standard rate of return. Persuading utilities to agree to securitization can require incentives from regulators or lawmakers, the report added.
In some states, utilities can securitize the remaining value of an entire power plant. Michigan utility Consumers Energy, for instance, securitized two coal generating units retired in 2023, saving its customers more than $120 million.
In Wisconsin, however, utilities can securitize only the cost of pollution control equipment on power plants — added to older coal plants during the Obama administration, when utilities opted to retrofit existing plants rather than switching to new power sources.
In 2023, two Republican state senators, Robert Cowles of Green Bay and Duey Stroebel of Saukville, introduced legislation to allow the Public Service Commission to order securitization and allow securitization to be used to refinance all debt on stranded assets. The bill attracted some Democratic cosponsors, but was opposed by the Wisconsin Utilities Association and did not get a hearing.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed additional securitization in his 2025-27 budget, but the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee later scrapped the provision.
Even Wisconsin’s narrow approach to securitization is optional, however, and most utilities have chosen not to use it.
We Energies was the first Wisconsin utility to do so, opting in 2020 to securitize the costs of pollution control equipment at the Pleasant Prairie plant. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission approved the request, saving an estimated $40 million. “We will continue to explore that option in the future,” Conway said.
But the PSC expressed “disappointment” in 2024 when We Energies “was not willing to pursue securitization” to save customers $117.5 million on its soon-to-retire Oak Creek coal plant. The utility noted state law doesn’t require securitization.
Stuart said that if utilities won’t agree to more securitization, they should accept a lower profit rate once an asset becomes stranded.
“It would be nice to ease that burden,” he said. “Just to say, hey, consumers got to suck it up and deal with it, that doesn’t sound right. The issue of stranded assets, like cost overruns, is certainly ripe for investigation.”
Avoiding future stranded assets could require a level of planning impossible under Wisconsin’s current regulatory structure.
When the state’s utilities propose new power plants, PSC rules require the commission to consider each new plant alone, rather than in the context of other proposed new plants and the state’s future energy needs. Operating without what is known as an integrated resource plan, or IRP, opened the PSC to overbuilding and creating more stranded assets. IRPs are touted as an orderly way to plan for future energy needs.
“There’s no real comprehensive look in Wisconsin,” Stuart said. “We’re one of the few regulated states that really doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for our utilities.
”We’ve been doing some of these projects kind of piecemeal, without looking at the bigger picture.”
Structured planning tools like IRPs date back to the 1980s, when concerns about cost overruns, fuel price volatility and overbuilding prompted regulators to step in. Minnesota and Michigan require utilities to file IRPs, as do a majority of states nationwide.
Evers proposed IRPs in his 2025-27 state budget, but Republican lawmakers removed that provision because it was a nonfiscal policy issue.
Northern States Power Company, which operates in Wisconsin and four other Midwestern states, is required by both Michigan and Minnesota to develop IRPs. “Because of these rules, we create a multi-state IRP every few years,” said Chris Ouellette, a spokesperson for Xcel Energy, the utility’s parent company.
Madison Gas and Electric, which only operates in Wisconsin, argued that its current planning process is superior to the IRP requirements in neighboring states. “A formal IRP mandate would add process without improving outcomes,” spokesperson Steve Schultz said. “Wisconsin’s current framework allows us to move quickly, maintain industry-leading reliability and protect customer costs during a period of rapid change.”
The devil will be in the details on whether the Public Service Commission adopts strong policies to prevent the expected wave of new power plant capacity from becoming stranded assets, consumer advocates say.
The current members, all appointed by Evers, are: chairperson Summer Strand, Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins.
The public can comment on pending cases before the PSC via its website, by mail or at a public hearing. The commission posts notices of its public hearings, which can be streamed via YouTube.
Among the upcoming hearings on requests by utilities to generate more electricity for data centers:
Feb. 12: We Energies’ request to service data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. We Energies says the fees it proposes, known as tariffs, will prevent costs from being shifted from the data centers to other customers. The “party” hearing is not for public comment, but for interaction between PSC staff and parties in the case, such as We Energies and public interest groups.
Feb. 26: Another party hearing for a case in which Alliant Energy also said its proposed tariffs won’t benefit the data center in Beaver Dam at the expense of other customers.
To keep abreast of case developments, the PSC offers email notifications for document filings and meetings of the commission.
The PSC would not provide an official to be interviewed for this article. It issued a statement noting that utilities can opt to do securitization to ease the financial burden on ratepayers, adding:
“Beyond that, the commission has a limited set of tools provided under state law to protect customers from costs that arise from early power plant retirements. It would be up to the state Legislature to make changes to state law that would provide the commission with additional tools.”
On Nov. 6, state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, and Rep. Angela Stroud, D-Ashland, announced wide-ranging data center legislation. One provision of their proposal aims to ensure that data centers don’t push electricity costs onto other ratepayers.
But there is no provision on stranded assets.
This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To republish, go to the original and consult the Wisconsin Watch republishing guidelines.
Enbridge pumping station, Mackinaw City, Feb. 7, 2023 | Laina G. Stebbins
A federal judge has deemed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s move to revoke the Line 5 oil pipeline’s easement to operate within the Great Lakes unenforceable, determining that the move is barred by federal law.
Judge Robert Jonker of the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan’s Southern Division issued an order Wednesday siding with Canadian pipeline company Enbridge in their case against Whitmer and the director of the Department of Natural Resources.
In his opinion, Jonker pointed to the Pipeline Safety Act of 1992, concurring with Enbridge’s assertion that the law preempts states from placing safety regulations on interstate pipelines. He also pointed to arguments from the government of the United States and Canada arguing that the state’s effort to shut down the pipeline violates a 1977 treaty between the two nations concerning the flow of oil and natural gas through pipelines across borders.
Consequently, Jonker granted Enbridge’s request for summary judgment, barring the state from enforcing the order terminating the pipeline’s easement to operate in the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet.
“Pipeline safety generally, and protection of the Straits of Mackinac, are critical interests to be sure,” Jonker wrote in his opinion. “But when it comes to Line 5, they are the responsibility of the United States and Michigan lacks the power to interfere.”
09917672711Line 5 has long been a point of concern for tribal nations and environmental advocates within the Great Lakes, as Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel each pledged to shut down the pipeline as part of their 2018 campaign.
The 645-mile-long pipeline, which runs from northwestern Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario includes a four-mile-long segment, where a set of dual pipelines operates on the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac.
Opponents of the pipeline point to a 2010 incident, where Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo river. Enbridge has also reported gaps in the protective coating in the segment running through the straits. These segments have also been damaged by anchor strikes, prompting the state to declare the region a “No Anchor” zone.
In a statement to the Michigan Advance on Wednesday, Enbridge Spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the company welcomes the ruling, arguing that state officials pursued a shutdown of the pipeline due to “unsupported” claims about its safety.
“Any dispute over its continued operation must be resolved through the 1977 Transit Treaty’s dispute resolution process, which Canada has already invoked,” Duffy said. “Today’s ruling makes clear that efforts by Michigan officials to permanently shut down Line 5 would interfere with U.S. foreign affairs – authority vested exclusively in the federal government.”
A spokesperson for Whitmer referred Michigan Advance to the Department of Attorney General, which is representing the governor and DNR Director Scott Bowen in the case.
Danny Wimmer, the attorney general’s press secretary, said they are consulting with the governor’s office and the DNR to review the opinion and determine their next steps, which could include an appeal of the ruling.
“From our own preliminary review, it appears this opinion is wrongly decided on the law and an affront to Michigan’s sovereign interests in managing the use and occupation of its submerged lands,” Wimmer said.
A separate case led by Nessel which aims to invalidate the pipeline’s easement remains pending in state court.
Attorneys for Whitmer and Bowen have also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh whether the state is immune from legal action in the case, after two previous courts determined the matter fell within exceptions to sovereign immunity.
This story was originally produced by Michigan Advance, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
By some measures, the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, once regarded locally as an “iconic industrial landmark,” had a good run.
Opened in 1980 near Lake Michigan in Kenosha County, it became Wisconsin’s largest generating plant, burning enough Wyoming coal, some 13,000 tons a day, to provide electricity for up to 1 million homes.
But over time, the plant became too expensive to operate. The owner, We Energies, shut it down after 38 years, in 2018.
We Energies customers, however, are still on the hook.
A portion of their monthly bills will continue to pay for Pleasant Prairie until 2039 — 21 years after the plant stopped producing electricity.
In fact, residential and business utility customers throughout Wisconsin owe nearly $1 billion on “stranded assets” — power plants like Pleasant Prairie that have been or will soon be shut down, a Wisconsin Watch investigation found.
That total will likely grow over the next five years with additional coal plants scheduled to cease operations.
Customers must pay not only for the debt taken on to build and upgrade the plants themselves, but also an essentially guaranteed rate of return for their utility company owners, long after the plants stop generating revenue themselves.
“We really have a hard time with utilities profiting off of dead power plants for decades,” said Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group.
The $1 billion tab looms as Wisconsin utility companies aim to generate unprecedented amounts of electricity for at least seven major high-tech data centers that are proposed, approved or under construction. By one estimate, just two of the data centers, which are being built to support the growth of artificial intelligence, would use more electricity than all Wisconsin homes combined.
All of which raises an important question in Wisconsin, where electricity rates have exceeded the Midwest average for 20 years.
What happens to residents and other ratepayers if AI and data centers don’t pan out as planned, creating a new generation of stranded assets?
Of the five major investor-owned utilities operating in Wisconsin, two — We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. — have stranded assets on the books. Both companies are subsidiaries of Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group.
As of December 2024, when the company released its most recent annual report, We Energies estimated a remaining value of more than $700 million across three power plants with recently retired units: Pleasant Prairie, Oak Creek and Presque Isle, a plant on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Wisconsin Public Service Corp.’s December 2024 report listed roughly $30 million in remaining value on recently retired units at two power plants.
In total, utilities owned by WEC Energy Group will likely have over $1 billion in recently retired assets by the end of 2026.
The company also noted a remaining value of just under $250 million for its share of units at Columbia Generating Station slated to retire in 2029, alongside a remaining value of roughly $650 million for units at Oak Creek scheduled to retire next year.
Its customers will pay off that total, plus a rate of return, for years to come.
The company estimates that closing the Pleasant Prairie plant alone saved $2.5 billion, largely by avoiding future operating and maintenance costs and additional capital investments.
Both Wisconsin Power and Light and Madison Gas and Electric also own portions of the Columbia Energy Center, and Wisconsin Power and Light also operates a unit at the Edgewater Generating Station scheduled for retirement before the end of the decade. Neither company provided estimates of the values of those facilities at time of retirement. Andrew Stoddard, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Power and Light’s parent company, argued against treating plants scheduled for retirement with value on the books as future stranded assets.
In 1907, Wisconsin became one of the first states to regulate public utilities. The idea was that having competing companies installing separate gas or electric lines was inefficient, but giving companies regional monopolies would require regulation.
Utility companies get permission to build or expand power plants and to raise rates from the three-member state Public Service Commission. The commissioners, appointed by the governor, are charged with protecting ratepayers as well as utility company investors.
Stranded assets have occurred across the nation, partly because of the cost of complying with pollution control regulations. But another factor is that, while other utilities around the country moved to alternative sources of energy, Wisconsin utilities and, in turn, the PSC overbet on how long coal-fired plants would operate efficiently:
Various factors encourage construction and upgrades of power plants.
Building a plant can create upwards of 1,000 construction jobs, popular with politicians. Moreover, the Public Service Commission, being a quasi-judicial body, is governed by precedent. For example, if the PSC determined it was prudent to allow construction of a utility plant, that finding would argue in favor of approving a later expansion of that plant.
The PSC allowed utility companies “to overbuild the system,” said Tom Content, executive director of the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board, a nonprofit advocate for utility customers. “I think the mistake was that we allowed so much investment, and continuing to double down on coal when it was becoming less economic.”
Utilities “profit off of everything they build or acquire,” Stuart said, “and so there is a strong motivation to put steel in the ground and perhaps to even overbuild.”
Conway, the WEC Energy Group spokesperson, argued that the utilities’ plans to retire plants amount to a net positive for customers.
“We began our power generation reshaping plan about a decade ago,” he wrote in an email. “That includes closing older, less-efficient power plants and building new renewable energy facilities and clean, efficient natural gas plants. This plan reduces emissions and is expected to provide customers significant savings — hundreds of millions of dollars — over the life of the plan.”
The built-in profits that utility companies enjoy, typically 9.8%, add to the stranded assets tab.
When the Public Service Commission approves construction of a new power plant, it allows the utility company to levy electricity rates high enough to recover its investment plus the specified rate of return — even after a plant becomes a stranded asset.
“We give them this license to have a monopoly, but the challenge is there’s no incentive for them to do the least-cost option,” Content said. “So, in terms of building new plants, there’s an incentive to build more … and there’s incentive to build too much.”
When the Pleasant Prairie plant was shut down in 2018, the PSC ruled that ratepayers would continue to pay We Energies to cover the cost of the plant itself, plus the nearly 10% profit. The plant’s remaining value, initially pegged at nearly $1 billion, remained at roughly $500 million as of December 2024.
Eliminating profits on closed plants would save ratepayers $300 million on debt payments due to be made into the early 2040s, according to Content’s group.
As artificial intelligence pervades society, it’s hard to fathom how much more electricity will have to be generated to power all of the data centers under construction or being proposed in Wisconsin.
We Energies alone wants to add enough energy to power more than 2 million homes. That effort is largely to serve one Microsoft data center under construction in Mount Pleasant, between Milwaukee and Racine, and a data center approved north of Milwaukee in Port Washington to serve OpenAI and Oracle AI programs. Microsoft calls the Mount Pleasant facility “the world’s most powerful data center.”
Data centers are also proposed for Beaver Dam, Dane County, Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie.
The energy demand raises the risk of more stranded assets, should the data centers turn out to be a bubble rather than boom.
“The great fear is, you build all these power plants and transmission lines and then one of these data centers only is there for a couple years, or isn’t as big as promised, and then everybody’s left holding the bag,” Stuart said.
In an October Marquette Law School poll, 55% of those surveyed said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. Environmental groups have called for a pause on all data center approvals. Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for data centers to pay their own way and not rely on utility ratepayers or taxpayers to pay for their electricity needs.
Opposition in one community led nearly 10,000 people to become members of the Stop the Menomonie Data Center group on Facebook. In Janesville, voters are trying to require referendums for data centers. In Port Washington, opposition to the data center there led to three arrests during a city council meeting.
Utilities are scheduled in early 2026 to request permission from the Public Service Commission to build new power plants or expand existing plants to accommodate data centers.
Some states, such as Minnesota, have adopted laws prohibiting the costs of stranded assets from data centers being passed onto ratepayers.
Wisconsin has no such laws.
Currently, ratepayers are on the hook for paying off the full debt of stranded assets — unless a financial tool called securitization reduces the burden on ratepayers.
Securitization is similar to refinancing a mortgage. With the state’s permission, utilities can convert a stranded asset — which isn’t typically a tradeable financial product — into a specialized bond.
Utility customers must still pay back the bond. But the interest rate on the bond is lower than the utility’s standard profit margin, meaning customers save money.
A 2024 National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners report noted that utilities’ shareholders may prefer a “status quo” scenario in which customers pay stranded asset debts and the standard rate of return. Persuading utilities to agree to securitization can require incentives from regulators or lawmakers, the report added.
In some states, utilities can securitize the remaining value of an entire power plant. Michigan utility Consumers Energy, for instance, securitized two coal generating units retired in 2023, saving its customers more than $120 million.
In Wisconsin, however, utilities can securitize only the cost of pollution control equipment on power plants — added to older coal plants during the Obama administration, when utilities opted to retrofit existing plants rather than switching to new power sources.
In 2023, two Republican state senators, Robert Cowles of Green Bay and Duey Stroebel of Saukville, introduced legislation to allow the Public Service Commission to order securitization and allow securitization to be used to refinance all debt on stranded assets. The bill attracted some Democratic cosponsors, but was opposed by the Wisconsin Utilities Association and did not get a hearing.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed additional securitization in his 2025-27 budget, but the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee later scrapped the provision.
Even Wisconsin’s narrow approach to securitization is optional, however, and most utilities have chosen not to use it.
We Energies was the first Wisconsin utility to do so, opting in 2020 to securitize the costs of pollution control equipment at the Pleasant Prairie plant. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission approved the request, saving an estimated $40 million. “We will continue to explore that option in the future,” Conway said.
But the PSC expressed “disappointment” in 2024 when We Energies “was not willing to pursue securitization” to save customers $117.5 million on its soon-to-retire Oak Creek coal plant. The utility noted state law doesn’t require securitization.
Stuart said that if utilities won’t agree to more securitization, they should accept a lower profit rate once an asset becomes stranded.
“It would be nice to ease that burden,” he said. “Just to say, hey, consumers got to suck it up and deal with it, that doesn’t sound right. The issue of stranded assets, like cost overruns, is certainly ripe for investigation.”
Avoiding future stranded assets could require a level of planning impossible under Wisconsin’s current regulatory structure.
When the state’s utilities propose new power plants, PSC rules require the commission to consider each new plant alone, rather than in the context of other proposed new plants and the state’s future energy needs. Operating without what is known as an integrated resource plan, or IRP, opened the PSC to overbuilding and creating more stranded assets. IRPs are touted as an orderly way to plan for future energy needs.
“There’s no real comprehensive look in Wisconsin,” Stuart said. “We’re one of the few regulated states that really doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for our utilities.
”We’ve been doing some of these projects kind of piecemeal, without looking at the bigger picture.”
Structured planning tools like IRPs date back to the 1980s, when concerns about cost overruns, fuel price volatility and overbuilding prompted regulators to step in. Minnesota and Michigan require utilities to file IRPs, as do a majority of states nationwide.
Evers proposed IRPs in his 2025-27 state budget, but Republican lawmakers removed that provision because it was a nonfiscal policy issue.
Northern States Power Company, which operates in Wisconsin and four other Midwestern states, is required by both Michigan and Minnesota to develop IRPs. “Because of these rules, we create a multi-state IRP every few years,” said Chris Ouellette, a spokesperson for Xcel Energy, the utility’s parent company.
Madison Gas and Electric, which only operates in Wisconsin, argued that its current planning process is superior to the IRP requirements in neighboring states. “A formal IRP mandate would add process without improving outcomes,” spokesperson Steve Schultz said. “Wisconsin’s current framework allows us to move quickly, maintain industry-leading reliability and protect customer costs during a period of rapid change.”
The devil will be in the details on whether the Public Service Commission adopts strong policies to prevent the expected wave of new power plant capacity from becoming stranded assets, consumer advocates say.
The current members, all appointed by Evers, are: chairperson Summer Strand, Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins.
The public can comment on pending cases before the PSC via its website, by mail or at a public hearing. The commission posts notices of its public hearings, which can be streamed via YouTube.
Among the upcoming hearings on requests by utilities to generate more electricity for data centers:
Feb. 12: We Energies’ request to service data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. We Energies says the fees it proposes, known as tariffs, will prevent costs from being shifted from the data centers to other customers. The “party” hearing is not for public comment, but for interaction between PSC staff and parties in the case, such as We Energies and public interest groups.
Feb. 26: Another party hearing for a case in which Alliant Energy also said its proposed tariffs won’t benefit the data center in Beaver Dam at the expense of other customers.
To keep abreast of case developments, the PSC offers email notifications for document filings and meetings of the commission.
The PSC would not provide an official to be interviewed for this article. It issued a statement noting that utilities can opt to do securitization to ease the financial burden on ratepayers, adding:
“Beyond that, the commission has a limited set of tools provided under state law to protect customers from costs that arise from early power plant retirements. It would be up to the state Legislature to make changes to state law that would provide the commission with additional tools.”
On Nov. 6, state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, and Rep. Angela Stroud, D-Ashland, announced wide-ranging data center legislation. One provision of their proposal aims to ensure that data centers don’t push electricity costs onto other ratepayers.
But there is no provision on stranded assets.
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As energy-hungry data centers loom, Wisconsin ratepayers owe $1 billion on shuttered power plants 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 Bad River in Mellen, south of the Bad River Band's reservation. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, challenging the corps’ decision to grant a permit allowing the oil company Enbridge to reroute its Line 5 pipeline around the tribe’s reservation in northern Wisconsin
The lawsuit, filed in the Washington D.C. federal circuit court, is another step in the long legal history of the Enbridge pipeline and the company’s effort to move it from its current route through the tribe’s land. The tribe is asking that the permit approval be vacated.
In October, the corps approved Enbridge’s permit to reroute the pipeline off the reservation despite significant public opposition.
The new route moves the pipeline south but it still runs across land on three sides of the reservation and crosses the Bad River upstream of the reservation. The permit was approved as the administration of President Donald Trump has moved to more aggressively support oil and natural gas projects. Earlier in the year, the corps approved a fast-tracked permitting process for Enbridge to construct a tunnel across the Straits of Mackinac so Line 5 can cross from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to its Lower Peninsula.
The tribe’s lawsuit alleges that the corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by not properly conducting required environmental reviews or following the proper procedures.
“For hundreds of years, and to this day, the Band’s ancestors and members have lived, hunted, fished, trapped, gathered, and engaged in traditional activities in the wetlands and waters to be crossed by the Project,” the lawsuit states. “The Project would encircle the Reservation on three sides and damage areas the Band highly values for their ecological and cultural significance. The Corps’ failure to properly review and address the Project’s environmental impacts to wetlands and waterways harms the Band’s interest in maintaining its Reservation homeland and resources in the ceded territory.”
The lawsuit alleges that the corps violated the NEPA by not giving proper consideration to the “environmental effects of construction, maintenance, and operation of the Project,” including how it will harm the health of resources on and near the reservation.
Under the Clean Water Act, the corps cannot approve permits until the state or tribal government responsible for water quality in the project area certifies the project won’t harm the local water. While the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources did previously approve the state permits for the Line 5 reroute, those permits are currently being challenged in a separate legal process.
The tribe alleges in the lawsuit that the corps should not have moved forward with its permits until after the state process is complete.
[The corps] violated the Clean Water Act by issuing the Permit without ensuring that construction and maintenance of the Project would not adversely affect Wisconsin and the Band’s water quality,” the lawsuit states. “This includes issuing a … permit while the required … state water quality certification is not yet final, pending state administrative proceedings; without addressing the inadequacies the Band identified with Wisconsin’s Water Quality Certification; or ensuring compliance with the Band’s water quality standards.”
The lawsuit also states the permit approval does not address how the project construction will affect the tribe’s “ability to exercise treaty-protected rights to hunt, fish, trap, and gather in ceded territory,” “failed to evaluate the risks and impacts of oil spills along the pipeline route” and “failed to evaluate the risks and impacts of blasting as a construction method.”
In a statement, tribe chairwoman Elizabeth Arbuckle said the tribe would do whatever it can to protect the health of the Bad River, Lake Superior and surrounding watersheds.
“For more than a decade, we have had to endure the unlawful trespass of a dangerous oil pipeline on our lands and waters,” Arbuckle said. “The reroute only makes matters worse. Enbridge’s history is full of accidents and oil spills. If that happens here, our Tribe and other communities in the Northwoods will suffer unacceptable consequences. From the Bad River to Lake Superior, our waters are the lifeblood of our Reservation. They have fed and nurtured our Tribe for hundreds of years. We will do everything in our power to protect them.”
Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in an email that while the Army Corps made an initial permit decision, it has not been signed by the corps or the company and therefore isn’t a final decision that can be challenged in court. She said the company would intervene in the lawsuit to defend the permit approval.
“Enbridge submitted permit applications to state and federal regulators in early 2020 to build a new segment of pipeline around the Bad River Reservation,” she said. “Enbridge’s permit applications are supported by thorough and extensive environmental analysis and modeling by leading third-party experts confirming project construction impacts will be temporary and isolated, with no adverse effect to water quality or wetlands.”
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In a new lawsuit, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa alleges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated federal environmental laws when it granted a permit to Enbridge for its proposed Line 5 reroute.
The post Bad River tribe sues Army Corps to overturn federal permit for Line 5 reroute appeared first on WPR.
A bill in the state Legislature would allow for community solar projects outside the control of utility companies and cooperatives, which are currently the only entities in Wisconsin allowed to provide solar power to paying customers.
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Midwest Environmental Advocates, a nonprofit law center, filed a lawsuit against the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin Wednesday after the agency denied an open records request seeking unredacted documents.
The post Lawsuit seeks release of expected energy demand from Meta data center in Beaver Dam appeared first on WPR.
As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Wisconsin Public Service Commission seeking to force the release of unredacted documents showing how much electricity will be used at Meta’s planned data center in Beaver Dam.
In a news release, MEA said it had sought electrical load projections for data center projects in Beaver Dam and Port Washington in an October open records request. The PSC initially provided the firm with versions that redacted the electrical load information. MEA sent a follow-up request seeking unredacted versions of the document.
The PSC sent the unredacted version of the Port Washington project but denied the request for the Beaver Dam project, claiming it contained trade secrets.
Wisconsin’s open records law allows government agencies to deny records requests if the information within the document is a trade secret, however MEA disputes that the amount of energy Meta plans to request for its data center counts.
“It appears the PSC is unlawfully withholding this information because either Meta or a public utility is claiming the electricity demand for the data center is a trade secret,” MEA legal fellow Michael Greif said in a statement. “We call on Alliant Energy, American Transmission Company and Meta to be forthright with the public about their plans. These companies are asking a lot of the public and the public deserves, at least the very least, basic information about the data center’s massive energy needs.”
Data center projects across the country are often shrouded in secrecy. A study in Virginia found that at least 80% of local governments involved with data center proposals had signed non-disclosure agreements with the data center companies — though it’s unclear how an NDA would be enforceable against Wisconsin’s public records laws.
Earlier this year, MEA filed a separate lawsuit to force the city of Racine to release records related to the projected water use at Microsoft’s planned data center in Mount Pleasant.
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The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine is topped with a green roof planted with sedum and covered with solar panels. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
A Wisconsin Senate Committee held a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would allow private companies to construct small solar projects on underutilized farmland and commercial rooftops across the state.
The bill, which would encroach on the monopoly the state’s existing utility companies are allowed to maintain under state law, is being considered while people across the country worry about rising energy costs amid a boom in the construction of data centers and the increased use of electric vehicles and appliances.
Environmental groups in the state have also regularly complained that the utility companies aren’t constructing enough renewable energy projects or sunsetting existing coal and natural gas power plants quickly enough.
The bill, authored by Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) and Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), would allow people in Wisconsin to subscribe to get some of their power from a local “community solar” installation. The subscribers would receive credits they can put toward their utility bill. Because the power developed at the local solar installation will still need to travel through the utility company’s infrastructure, the bill includes a provision that all subscribers to the program would have to pay at least $20 per month on their electric bill.
In the hearing of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Local Government, the bill’s authors said allowing community solar projects would increase people’s energy choices while allowing the expansion of solar power in the state that avoids the objections from local residents that often come with large, utility-scale solar projects.
“This change will open a new market sector in a high energy industry, attract economic investments in Wisconsin, create local jobs, drive innovation and competition, and ultimately save consumers and small businesses money on their energy bills,” Testin said.
But the authors also acknowledged there is still a lot of disagreement over the details and the bill is not yet in its final form.
“We’re not exactly there yet. We’re not all agreeing on this being the best way forward just yet, but this public hearing is a really important step to vet that out a little bit more to get us closer to that answer,” Krug said. “So yes, there are still some kinks to work out between the utilities and individuals who want a more market-based approach to solar. I hope we can work through those issues here.”
Over the hearing’s three and a half hours, the testimony split among two groups — the utility companies who are opposed to the bill and a coalition of solar companies, economists, farmers and employers who are in favor.
The utility companies accused the bill of creating a “shell game” that would lower the costs for the subscribers of a given project while raising electric bills for everyone else. Zack Hill, testifying on behalf of Alliant Energy, said the utility estimated that community solar would result in an additional $8.75 billion in costs for ratepayers over the next 25 years.
“How does [the bill] pay for subscribers 10 to 20% energy savings? The short answer: It will shift costs to your other constituents,” Hill said. “Some have said this sounds like community solar voodoo economics, but all you have to remember is this, when a company promises you a discount, someone else has to pay for it.”
People in favor of the bill argued that the generation of more energy could only help lower energy costs while disputing the utility companies’ claims. Will Flanders, the research director at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, also said the utilities’ estimates undervalue the benefits that community solar can add.
“This is a model that expands energy choice without large subsidies, without mandates, without turning more power over to monopoly utilities,” Flanders said. “In fact, it introduces competition at a time when Wisconsin needs it the most.”
“We argue that community solar can deliver net savings to the entire system,” he continued. “When we talk about a shell game, what we’re really saying is there’s no real additional resources being put into the system, but obviously there is additional resources being put in when we have these with these programs in place.”
Karl Rabago, a Denver-based energy consultant who testified with Flanders, said that the Alliant $8.75 billion estimate amounted to a threat that if the utilities don’t get to sell the energy, they’ll charge consumers for that loss.
“No one knows where this number comes from, but having seen how utilities make their case in other states, I am 99.9% confident they are basically saying, ‘If we don’t get to make the electricity and sell it, we could potentially lose $8.75 billion and and if we don’t make that money, we’re going to charge you for it anyway,’ and that’s how customer costs could go up,” Rabago said. “That’s the most likely explanation for a histrionic number. The utility position, to summarize, seems to sound a bit like ‘let us do it all and no one gets hurt.’ We’ve heard those kinds of exhortations. Monopolies do it particularly well.”
Toward the end of the hearing, a number of Wisconsin property owners testified, touting the benefits they’ll receive if they’re able to allow solar projects to be constructed on their land.
Duane Hinchley, a Cambridge dairy farmer, said community solar is an “innovative solution” that can give farmers a stable income to hedge against the risks in the agriculture business. Plus, he said, allowing farmers to participate will prevent land that has been farmed for generations from being developed into subdivisions.
“With the right policies in place, our state’s proud agricultural heritage can be a cornerstone of Wisconsin’s clean energy future,” Hinchley said.
But throughout the day, lawmakers from both parties appeared skeptical of the bill’s benefits.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said repeatedly he didn’t understand how the program would work for the utility companies.
“It sounds like a shell game to me,” he said. “I just, I’m really having a challenge with trying to figure out how that would work, because it would seem to me that the energy company, the regulated company, is the one that’s going to be footing the bill for this.”
Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) questioned how the program wouldn’t eventually raise energy costs for non-participants, but said one selling point for the bill was that it would encourage the increased development of renewable energy.
“I heard you say this is going to force more solar to be built, whether or not you need it,” Spreitzer said to a utility company representative. “And I guess that, to me, is the one selling point of the bill. Is that I look at where we’ve been in the landscape lately, where we have, unfortunately, federal incentives for solar that are going away. We have increasing demand for power from data centers. We’re seeing new natural gas plants get built. We’re seeing coal plants not being retired, when we hoped they would. To me, there’s plenty of need for solar.”
If the utility companies won’t support a community solar proposal, Spreitzer wondered, what do they need from the Legislature to encourage more solar development?
“And so if we’re not going to go down this route, what are the incentives that you all need to make sure that we can continue to drive solar development without increasing rates for customers and without saying, ‘let’s go build a natural gas plant instead?” he asked.
Also on Tuesday, the committee heard testimony on a bill from Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) that would prohibit local governments in Wisconsin from enacting “rights of nature” ordinances, which grant natural elements legal rights that can be protected in court.
Nass said in his testimony that the idea is anti-American and is contrary to the values of the U.S. Constitution.
“This is a radical departure from our current law. Rights are something that human beings have,” Nass said. “This concept of granting nature rights is something that has been done primarily in foreign countries … and many of these countries lean dramatically towards socialism and communism, and their attitude is not compatible with private property rights in our country.”
But proponents of rights of nature resolutions frequently point to the fact that corporations are granted rights under U.S. law. Communities including Green Bay and Milwaukee have passed or begun drafting rights of nature ordinances and some Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would grant Devil’s Lake State Park some rights that can be protected in court.
In a statement after the hearing, Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the co-authors of the Democratic proposal, wrote, “As we heard from advocates today, Rights of Nature is one of the strongest tools local governments have to protect clean air, clean water and healthy soil for future generations — so that our grandchildren, and their children after them, can drink our waters, eat food grown in our soils, and hunt in our forests.”
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Boston, MA – Last night, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that Donald Trump’s executive order banning wind projects in the United States was unlawful and vacated the order. Donald Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his administration that paused all leasing, permitting and approvals for wind projects, killing tens of …
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