Daily Herald opinion: The data center pause: It has its detractors, but Pritzker’s action does emphasize a problem’s urgency
A shiny-object theory contends that Gov. JB Pritzker announced a pause on state incentives for data centers because of legislative inaction in order to distract attention from the Chicago Bears’ decision to focus its stadium interests on Indiana because of legislative inaction.
Maybe so. But whatever the governor’s political motive, the announcement nonetheless emphasizes an urgent problem in need of legislative solutions.
In a meeting with our editorial board last week, ComEd CEO Gil Quiniones described in detail the practical impact that these projects are having just on Illinoisans’ electricity bills.
“Now, we have about 100 data center applications totaling 33 gigawatts, or 33,000 megawatts,” he said. “It’s like one and a half times larger than our highest-ever recorded peak, so it just tells you how big this is … It is one of the reasons why there is a supply-and-demand imbalance.”
Quiniones said that imbalance has let to an average increase of $12 a month in residential customers’ electricity bills since 2022.
He added in a Capitol News Illinois report last week that the outlook could be even more striking because new data centers are filing applications for projects requiring four to five times the power sought in previous projects. He also told us that ComEd has implemented a number of policies intended to control the impact that data center operations have on the availability of electrical power, but government regulations are still need to establish and clarify the rules.
Nor are electricity bills alone the cause for concern about managing data centers. A Union of Concerned Scientists report in January predicted a potential $24 billion impact from the pollution, water demand and other costs associated with the centers. Communities throughout the suburbs and the entire state are reeling under complaints regarding noise and zoning concerns from neighbors of existing installations.
They are a problem that demands immediate attention. But, they also are a reality that needs to be recognized as an unavoidable resource to meet the demands of technologies on which society is increasingly coming to rely.
That tension produces the complexities that House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch told CNI “just don’t get done right away.”
Again, maybe so. But, as the Bears situation amply demonstrates, when the Illinois General Assembly has the excuse of “complexity” in its pocket, the “just don’t get done right away” excuse has a way of becoming a convenient authorization for government by delay.
The practical merits of Pritzker’s pause are open to some debate. CNI obtained a letter to the governor from representatives of both the House and Senate pleading for the action to prevent “Big Tech corporations harming our climate, straining our grid and making electric bills unaffordable for working families.” But labor interests oppose it, saying the incentives fuel job creation and withholding them pushes developers to pursue opportunities in nearby states. Welch said the House Democratic caucus is “not even close” to supporting it.
The move does, however, emphasize the urgency of legislation that, among other things, would have required data centers to pay for and supply some of their own renewable energy, track and report water usage and reach agreements with communities involving the impact on local resources and quality of life.
That is a significant consequence. It doesn’t merely buy time for lawmakers to address this rapidly growing problem. It provides some pressure to avoid the procrastination that seems all too tempting when this General Assembly confronts “complex issues.” As the Bears case is increasingly coming to demonstrate, such pressure apparently needs to be applied more often to get difficult things done.