Guardrails for Data Centers

Most recent update: 

New Analyses show Opposition to Data Center Costs 

New comment analyses have found that Wisconsinites across the state and across political affiliations strongly dislike data data centers, citing concerns around affordability, energy and water. Staff and volunteers from the Sierra Club Wisconsin and  Wisconsin Eco-Justice Basebuilders (the WEBB) examined comments from two Public Service Commission (PSC) cases: WEC’s large customer tariff and bespoke resources docket, and Alliant Energy’s customer contract for the Beaver Dam data center. Both cases demonstrated widespread concern over data centers in Wisconsin.

• Key findings include:
  98.5% of comments disapproved of WEC’s tariff structures on data centers as currently proposed.
• 93% of verbal comments and 85% of written public comments in the Alliant Energy customer contract for a Beaver Dam data center case said that data centers should pay for 100% of their costs.
• Recent polling by Wisconsin Conservation Voters found that 93% of Wisconsinites think that data centers should be required to pay for all of their own energy use and 84% expressed concern about the cost of electricity.
• In many local elections this April, candidates who ran on platforms opposing data centers won by significant margins.

Read the findings of the analyses here.

Watch the press conference here. 

Attend the Hearing: No Air Permit for Vantage Data Center

Tues, April 14, 2026; 1 pm

Hyperscale data centers including Vantage, in Port Washington, have turned to diesel generators as a source of backup power. Diesel exhaust is a type 1 carcinogen linked to cancer, heart, and lung disease. In Ozaukee county, levels of ozone have already surpassed what’s deemed healthy, and the pollution from these generators would only exacerbate the issue.

RSVP and we’ll send you talking points and information about our prep meetings in advance. 

Button to RSVP

The Sierra Club, along with our partners at Healthy Climate Wisconsin, Midwest Environmental Advocates, and Wisconsin Green Fire, created this toolkit to help Wisconsinites understand what hyperscale data centers are, what impacts they have, and what local communities and concerned citizens can do to mitigate the worst impacts.

Download the toolkit, Big Tech Unchecked: A toolkit for community action here. 

The toolkit is 34 pages. Download individual sections of the toolkit here. 

The launch of the toolkit kicked off a series of webinars about the impacts of Data Centers and what you can do. Find the recordings here:

• Big Tech Unchecked: Join Healthy Climate Wisconsin, the Midwest Environmental Advocates, the Sierra Club-Wisconsin Chapter, and Wisconsin's GreenFire as we walk through the new toolkit: Hyperscale Data Centers in Wisconsin: Big Tech Unchecked, A toolkit for Community Action. 

• No Discounts for Data Centers: Data Centers should cover their costs. There are major decisions being made about whether or not they will have to. Tune in to learn more about data centers' hungry electricity needs -- and how it could cost us all if the Public Service Commission doesn't make the right decisions.

Why it Matters

Hyperscale data centers are exactly what they sound like: massive facilities built to handle enormous volumes of data. They support the growing demand for cloud computing, cryptocurrency, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. These large-scale operations can house thousands of servers and require complex systems to manage power, data processing, and cooling. Because they operate continuously, hyperscale data centers rely on extensive energy infrastructure and backup generators to prevent downtime and ensure constant access to data.

Some hyperscale data centers are owned and operated by major tech companies like Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Others are developed by third-party companies that either sell entire facilities to clients or lease space within them to businesses that need large-scale data storage and computing power.

Electric utilities like We Energies and Alliant have been recruiting data centers because these massive facilities use huge amounts of electricity, allowing utilities to justify building new power plants and infrastructure—projects that boost utility profits. This dynamic creates a powerful push to bring in more data centers, even when the public may end up bearing the financial and environmental costs.

Currently, there are no guardrails for data centers, including clean energy requirements, protections for customers of the utilities that will be powering these massive energy users, or limits on water use. 

Here are some of the concerns around data centers:

• Data centers use a staggering amount of energy.   Just two data center proposals (Vantage data center in Port Washington and the Microsoft data center in Mt. Pleasant) would use as much energy as the entire state of Wisconsin. The Vantage data center would use more electricity than the city of Los Angeles. Using that much energy means Wisconsin utilities will have to 
   
• Data centers consume an enormous amount of water. Data centers use an enormous amount of water to keep their servers cool—often millions of gallons every single day for just one facility. As these centers multiply, their combined water demand can put real pressure on local rivers, lakes, and community water supplies.
   
• Wisconsinites could be left footing the bill. When a single, massive user like a data center comes online and consumes all the power a gas plant produces, or requires new transmission lines to serve it, all ratepayers share in the costs, even though only one customer reaps the benefit.
  Data centers can and should be built in ways that minimize these impacts.  Data centers should be powered by new, clean energy sources so that the growth of data centers doesn’t exacerbate the climate crisis. Finally, other states have processes in place to ensure that utility customers' bills do not increase once data centers arrive in an area and create a demand for a massive amount of energy.