SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois General Assembly failed this week to pass a landmark bill that would require data centers in the state to publicly disclose their water usage and adhere to strict energy and environmental standards.
Supported by climate change watchdogs and legal experts as a policy precedent for data center transparency across the country, the POWER Act did not advance to a vote in the General Assembly until the Legislature adjourned on May 31.
“Threats to our power grid, our wallets, and our environment will only increase,” Kari Ross, Midwest Energy Affordability Advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “It is extremely disappointing that the General Assembly failed to cross the finish line this year while deciding to continue providing millions of taxpayer dollars in incentives to data centers that go against the Governor’s vision.”
Illinois has 115 data centers operating and at least 67 new campuses planned. These include several mega-projects being proposed in areas of the northern half of the state where underground aquifers are soon to be depleted. A 1.6 gigawatt campus in Grayslake, a 1.8 gigawatt campus in Joliet, and another 1.8 gigawatt campus in Yorkville.
Combined, these three locations alone are estimated to require about 80 percent of the electricity currently used by homes across the state. By 2040, data centers are projected to account for at least 37 percent of Illinois’ total energy needs. Most of the demand is being met by increasing production or building new nuclear, coal-fired, and natural gas power plants.
If the power law had been passed, Illinois data centers would have been required to “develop, procure, or procure their own new and available clean energy and capacity resources” through solar, wind, or battery power generation in order to operate.
Illinois communities will also lose enhanced freshwater protection and reporting transparency. The law required data centers to provide a “detailed accounting” of water withdrawals, including distinguishing between withdrawals and consumption, and to submit publicly accessible quarterly water use reports to the Illinois Water Survey, a nongovernmental research agency in Champaign. All data centers would also have been required to be located at least 200 feet from drinking water sources and residences to reduce the risk of groundwater contamination and wastewater discharge during construction.
Importantly, concerns regarding cooling and indirect water use, i.e., water consumption and withdrawal for power generation sources, would also have been addressed. “A data center owner or operator shall include in its analysis an evaluation of water use at the data center and energy generation site, an evaluation of the impact of water use on raw water sources and deficiencies, and shall consider closed-loop cooling as one of the alternatives,” the bill reads.
Although closed-loop systems are a more energy-intensive method of cooling data center servers, they have been shown to reduce on-site water consumption from millions to thousands of gallons per day.
“This is exactly what big tech companies want: for legislative leadership to begin enacting these critical guardrails and approve as many data centers as possible,” Jen Walling, CEO of the Illinois Environmental Council, said in a statement. “How many more of these projects will be approved before state leaders take action, and what impact will the consequences of that inaction have on our power grid, water, land, and communities?”
Lawmakers’ failure to pass the POWER Act coincided with the release this week of the United Nations University’s first report warning of the impact of generative AI on the world’s energy and water.
According to a United Nations analysis, data centers used 1.2 trillion gallons of water to generate electricity around the world last year, which is more than the annual household needs of the entire state of Illinois. By 2030, this number is expected to more than double to 2.5 trillion gallons, enough to meet the annual domestic needs of sub-Saharan Africa’s 1.3 billion people.
On the same day, Google announced plans to replenish more fresh water than it consumes by 2030. A total of 165 projects across 97 U.S. watersheds will return 19 billion gallons of water to ecosystems and communities once fully completed, according to the company. This is more than double the amount the company self-reported in 2024.
Header image: A biofuel plant in Illinois. Photo by J. Carl Gunter/Circle of Blue
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