Summary: This bill would create a rate class specifically for large energy users, like data centers. This will make sure that they are on the hook for 100% of their own costs, not residential ratepayers or other businesses. Large energy users will have to pay for their own energy, local infrastructure, and long-term investments in the grid.  The bill: Ends the obligation of the local utility to supply power to the facility; Includes early exit fees; Includes a must-buy provision for contracted power; Requirement for an Electrical Services Agreement that ensures the project's power supply is in line with state energy and climate policies; Requires that large loads pay a higher payment for our low-income and green energy fund; Removes an exemption for RPS compliance; Requires bonding; Requires local labor/prevailing wage; Applies an Incremental Cost Test to ensure all costs are being covered; Addresses curtailment (data centers go first); Addresses upcoming Reliability Auctions at PJM; and so much more!

Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature

Sierra Club Work: Since Project Washington, a proposed hyperscale 1.2GW data center in Delaware City, was announced last summer, advocates, legislators, and community members have been concerned that data centers were going to come to Delaware and stick us with the bill for their energy and infrastructure needs. It quickly became clear that neither Delmarva nor the state was ready to assign costs to data centers to ensure they were on the hook for both short- and long-term investments in the grid and energy. Alongside members of DE-CLEAR (Delaware Data Center Coalition for Local, Environmental, and Accountable Regulation), the Sierra Club and other organizations canvassed communities near proposed data centers, prepared multiple video series, held or participated in town halls, testified in committees, sent mailers, and so much more to help make these data center regulation bills happen.

Summary: Data Centers demand an inordinate amount of power and place an extreme strain on our electrical grid. This bill ensures that data centers must build NEW power generation resources to meet 100% of their demand within 10 years of coming online, and cannot come online until 25% of their demand is met. It also states that at least 50% of the backup power needed by data centers must be supplied by energy storage, rather than just dirty diesel generators, 25% of which must be energized before the data center can connect to the grid. The bill requires that a certain percentage of power be clean and prohibits coal, peaker plants, or diesel generators from being used for baseload power.

Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature

Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club worked with stakeholders, legislators, and the administration to ensure that this bill would not allow data centers to use the most polluting form of power generation to meet its mandates. We have seen firsthand in Tennessee and Texas what happens when you allow data centers to use as much power as they want. Namely, they use the cheapest, dirtiest power possible and be damned with the impact on communities around them. It happens that this power is also predominantly inefficient natural gas plants that also run up gas costs for the area, providing multiple hits on residents near the data center. We worked hard to ensure this would not happen in Delaware and that, instead, we would focus on a diverse energy mix with guaranteed clean power to meet the needs of these massive data center projects. We are proud that Delaware is now the first state in the nation to pass this type of legislation!

Summary: This bill would prohibit state agencies, counties, and municipalities from entering into non-disclosure agreements with data center developers and operators. For community members to meaningfully participate in advocacy on data centers, they need access to key details that can inform their approach. 

Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature

Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club worked with the coalition DE-CLEAR to push for guardrails for data center development. We have seen how difficult it is for communities across the country to fight back against data center developers due to NDAs and it was clear during our engagement with folks through canvassing and community meetings that this was something that folks cared about. Our coalition partners, members, and supporters worked together to contact legislators urging them to support the bill, provided public comments, and featured this bill in educational social media videos. 

Summary: This bill would prohibit state agencies, counties, and municipalities from entering into non-disclosure agreements with data center developers and operators. For community members to meaningfully participate in advocacy on data centers, they need access to key details that can inform their approach. 

Final Status: Passed and Awaiting Governor’s Signature

Sierra Club Work: The Sierra Club worked with the coalition DE-CLEAR to push for guardrails for data center development. We have seen how difficult it is for communities across the country to fight back against data center developers due to NDAs and it was clear during our engagement with folks through canvassing and community meetings that this was something that folks cared about. Our coalition partners, members, and supporters worked together to contact legislators urging them to support the bill, provided public comments, and featured this bill in educational social media videos. 

Summary: This was actually the first bill in the nation to amend the “obligation to serve” for utilities and electric cooperatives. Under current law, utilities have an obligation to serve when a business comes into their service territory, so long as the customer agrees to pay for any needed infrastructure upgrades. This bill changes that requirement for the Co-Op to say that if a data center comes into their area, they have to build any infrastructure that the development needs if the developer agrees to pay for it, but that they are under no obligation to supply them with the electricity to run on those lines. House Bill 233 has a similar provision for Delmarva Power.

Final Status: Passed and Signed by the Governor

Sierra Club Work: The Chapter was part of the conversations in the Energy Stakeholder group to ensure that this bill would be upheld if challenged in the courts, given that it was a first-of-its-kind bill. We were proud to support the bill in Dover and worked to have provisions included in HB 233.

Summary: In Delaware, data centers receive highly lucrative tax credits on multiple fronts. This bill addresses only one, but a significant one. For background, in Delaware, we do not tax personal property or business property that are contained within structures, so there is no tax on any of the equipment in a data center, just on the land on which it sits. Data centers used for AI Learning are also able to right off nearly 100% of their state tax liability by claiming credits for research and development equipment. These issues were not dealt with in this session, but what was dealt with was a lucrative tax credit that allowed up to 100% of state tax liability to be written off simply by creating 5 temporary jobs. This bill would make it so the only way a data center can claim this credit is if they bring their own generation under House Bill 445, ensuring that data centers are creating permanent jobs by investing in energy infrastructure and power plants, not just remote positions and short-term construction jobs at the data center itself.

Final Status: Passed, awaiting the Governor's signature

Sierra Club Work: The Delaware Chapter worked with Rep. Heffernan, Senator Hansen, the PSC, and the Public Advocate to ensure the legislation included meaningful metrics to measure how we could ensure real jobs are being created before any tax incentives are given out under the guise of job creation. We will be back to work on the other tax credit issues next session!

Summary: This one is a wonky bill amongst wonky bills. To break it down at a high level, Delmarva Power is our state’s transmission operator and must report to PJM, our regional grid operator, what it expects Delaware's power demand to be each year for the next several years. Inaccurate forecasting means that PJM thinks we need more power than we actually do, which increases costs for all customers. This bill would add Public Service Commission (PSC) oversight to ensure, among other things, that any large loads included in the load forecast have financial commitments to ensure they are actually built and come online. It also ensures that data centers that are proposing to build the same project in multiple states are not double-counted, driving costs up even further. 

Final Status: Passed, awaiting the Governor's signature

Sierra Club Work: The Delaware Chapter worked with Senator Hansen, the PSC, and the Public Advocate to make sure that the legislation included meaningful metrics to parse out what projects were included in the load forecast and what were left out, as well as ensuring that the double-counting issue was dealt with in the bill.