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In: Featured, Food, Grist, ipr, PFAS, University of Notre Dame, Water quality

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have developed the most comprehensive look yet at how PFAS moves through the food web in the Great Lakes.

The study published this spring in the Journal of Environmental Quality analyzed 42 years of studies and combined nearly 2,500 samples of algae, fish, birds and other organisms — in what’s called a meta-analysis — to identify trends.

PFAS refers to a group of man-made and long-lasting compounds linked to a range of human health issues. It can enter waterways through landfills, wastewater and industrial facilities.

“What we’re finding is that the food web itself is a vehicle for transferring these chemicals from one organism to another,” said Gary Lamberti, aquatic science professor at Notre Dame and a study co-author. “So it’s a more holistic view than we’ve known before.”

The study identified a dramatic decrease over the last two decades of one PFAS chemical known as PFOS, following a voluntary phase out by industries in the early 2000s.

“If we stop manufacturing these chemicals, they will eventually reduce in concentration in the food web,” Lamberti said. “That’s kind of good news for how we can manage these chemicals.”

Those declines were seen in the lower Great Lakes — Ontario and Erie — likely because these areas are home to the heavy industries that used the chemical.

But there was little to no decline in PFOS in the upper Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron, most likely because the water bodies are larger that the lower lakes. In contrast to the shallower Lakes Erie and Ontario, water can stay in the upper lakes anywhere from about 60 to 170 years.

The study also confirmed that these chemicals increase in concentration as they travel up the food chain. Algae and plants have the lowest concentration, according to the study, because they grow and die quickly.

A map showing where samples included in the study were taken from the Great Lakes. (Image courtesy of the Journal of Environmental Quality)

But predators like salmon and eagles had the highest concentration because they’re eating a large amount of prey that have a lot of accumulated PFAS.

Potentially dangerous levels of these chemicals in fish have prompted warnings across the state on how much is safe to eat. Michigan has been testing fish for PFAS since 2012.

“If we can understand what the PFAS levels are in the food web, we can better communicate the risk of consuming those potentially toxic food sources,” said Katherine Manz, an environmental health professor at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.

But because PFAS chemicals are in everyday products and they’re very hard to avoid, Manz said her best advice is to use less. Online databases can help consumers avoid certain chemicals.

Manz said the study also pointed out some interesting gaps in research on PFAS dynamics, like a lack of data on certain species.

It was easy to find PFAS data on salmon, trout, and some birds, Lamberti said. But information on the “less glamorous” smaller fish, invertebrates or algae was harder.

The study only focused on six of the PFAS chemicals most commonly tested for, but there are more than 15,000 types out there, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Tools to analyze the range of these chemicals are still evolving, said Vernon Lalone, CEO of Traverse City-based startup Wave Lumina that’s developing a rapid testing kit for PFAS in water and soil.

“It’s like a chicken and an egg situation,” said Lalone, who wasn’t involved in the study. “You’ve got to have an analytical method that’s robust and reliable enough to measure these things before you can regulate them at certain limits.”

Lamberti said there’s still plenty of questions about how these chemicals will shift in the lakes as temperatures rise due to climate change, ice formation shifts and as industries introduce new chemicals.

“Anything we put into the Great Lakes will be there for an extremely long time, not only the water, but all the chemicals that it has, so we have to be very cognizant of how we treat the lakes and what we put into them,” Lamberti said.

The post New study traces PFAS in Great Lakes food webs over 40 years appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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In: Chicago, Featured, Grist, Illinois, Inside Climate News, Lead, lead pipes, Water quality, wbez

By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, Keerti Gopal, and Clayton Aldern

This story is a partnership between Grist, Inside Climate News and WBEZ.

No city dealing with a lot of lead pipes spends as much as Chicago does to replace them.

With more than 400,000 lead water service lines, Chicago has the largest known inventory of lead pipes of any city in the country. Officials say replacing each one costs about $31,000 on average — more than six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s national estimate of $4,700 a line.

WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News surveyed other cities with the most lead service lines in the country, including Detroit, Milwaukee and New York, about the cost of fully replacing a lead service line. The 18 that responded provided averages between $6,000 and $25,000, with most spending less than half what Chicago does. Engineering firm CDM Smith, which works with cities across the country, pegs the national average at $12,500 per line.

Now, with a federal mandate to remove every lead pipe within roughly 20 years, Chicago is facing a daunting timeline and an astronomical price tag. Replacing the city’s inventory at the current rate will cost more than $12 billion.

“It is absurd,” said Cyndi Roper, a senior policy advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s safe water initiative. “You can’t play victim to your own policies. … You actually can make changes to bring the cost down.”

A review over seven months of hundreds of pages of program documents and contracts, plus dozens of interviews with city officials, policy experts, contractors and homeowners, found several key contributors. The most significant include inefficient early contracts, cumbersome permitting requirements, and the city’s reliance on one-off replacements rather than undertaking whole blocks at once.

A glaring lack of clarity from the Department of Water Management, which oversees the city’s replacement program, has also made it difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for the high cost. Its officials were unable to provide WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News with consistent figures for replacement costs and the number of lines replaced or to make clear whether the water department is tracking these costs systematically.

“It seems like the story here is how hard you have to work to get information that’s needed in order to figure out why the costs are so high,” Roper added.

A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson said in an emailed statement that he is committed to accelerating replacements and minimizing the burden to residents but did not respond to specific questions about the city’s unusually high costs.

“The Johnson administration is working across departments in coordination with local, state, and federal partners to accelerate replacements, streamline processes, and maximize every available dollar so more residents can access safe, reliable drinking water,” the statement said.

Officials with the water department said they see some room to bring expenses down as work ramps up. But they’ve also disagreed with outside experts who say Chicago’s high costs are unreasonable, and they don’t appear to be treating the drastic cost differential with other cities as a high priority to address.

“There’s a lot of people that claim they know lead service line replacement,” said a senior official with the water department who spoke with WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News on the condition of not being named. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who has been working to secure federal funding for lead service line replacements across the state, said she wasn’t aware of the cost discrepancy but hoped the city would be transparent with the public about why costs are so high.

“Cities just need to get their act together and get this done, and we’ve been slow to do this in Chicago,” Duckworth said. “Other cities have moved much faster than us.”

Replacing pipes on an entire block

Chicago replaces lead service lines through several programs, including emergency repairs, capital improvement projects and equity initiatives targeting low-income neighborhoods and daycares.

The city also replaces entire blocks of lead pipes at once. But that program accounted for just 3 percent of the approximately 15,000 lines swapped out between 2021 and the end of 2025, according to an analysis of city replacement data by WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News. Instead, nearly all of those lines were fixed piecemeal, mostly when crews were sent out to fix leaks and breaks.

Both city officials and experts agree that replacing lead pipes a full block at a time is cheaper. In Milwaukee, per-line costs dropped by nearly $2,000 since implementing a block level program. Chicago officials say they want to ramp up blockwide replacements, but there have been legal and logistical barriers to expanding that program.

In Illinois, property owners control half the service line, and the municipality is responsible for the other. State law forbids partial line replacement because the process can flush more lead into drinking water, and municipalities willing to replace private lines must first get the property owners’ permission. That’s harder and more time-consuming than it may seem, a key reason for the city’s low number of block replacements, according to officials.

Earlier this year, state lawmakers introduced a new bill at the water department’s request to fix that, granting city plumbers access to private lines without the owner’s permission. It passed in May and now awaits Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature.

“We need to accelerate, as much as humanly possible, this process,” said state Sen. Ram Villivalam of Chicago, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Still, it’s not clear how much block-level replacements will actually decrease Chicago’s costs. Water department officials pegged the average per-line cost for block-level work, which they have said is their cheapest program, at approximately $34,000, and the average for one-off replacements at $39,000. Both figures are well above the $31,000 overall average that department officials have cited.

Asked to explain how that could be, the water department did not respond. In her last email to the news organizations in May, water department spokesperson Megan Vidis said she would not answer any more questions on the topic.

Workers replace lead service lines in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood. (Photo credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times)

The toll on homeowners

Any lead pipe a property owner replaces on their own is one the city doesn’t have to pay for. But some homeowners are finding that far harder than they imagined, in part because of the city’s prohibitively expensive and complex permitting process.

Craig Hines and his wife, homeowners in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, discovered they had a lead service line last summer when they received a letter from the city. They were immediately alarmed: They cook regularly for young nieces and nephews, and Hines knows there’s no safe level of lead exposure.

They called 14 plumbers looking for a quote. Some refused to take them on or seemed to be trying to dissuade them from doing the work altogether, saying the job would be too expensive. One preliminary quote totaled $25,000. The couple were told permits alone could cost between $5,000 and $7,000.

“These fees seem so exorbitant when it’s like, this was a city screw-up,” Hines said, referring to Chicago’s history of installing lead lines long after the health consequences came to light. “I just cannot believe that the permitting fees are so high to help fix a problem that the city created.”

Replacing a single line can require permits from the water and transportation departments, as well as inspection-related charges, according to the city’s Department of Buildings. The fees vary based on the type of street and size of pipe.

The water department said it waives all its permit fees when the city pays for replacements. But it’s not so simple when property owners want to shoulder the cost. Some qualify for a city program waiving up to $5,000 in fees; others don’t. Water department officials could not provide an average cost for permits, saying it varies by project site.

After more than six months of research — including contacting their alderman, district commissioner and multiple city departments to track down answers about costs — Hines and his wife finally settled on a plumber who knew how to navigate the city’s permit waivers. He quoted them $22,000 for the job, which he said will include permits. They hope their replacement will take place in July.

Ryan Wilson (left) and Alaina Harkness stand next to their new water meter that was installed when they replaced lead water pipes in their home. (Photo credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times)

Several miles south, Ryan Wilson and his wife, Alaina Harkness, said they didn’t qualify for the fee waiver. They paid nearly $25,000 to replace the lead line at their Hyde Park home last year, but because they also upsized their service line while replacing it, they weren’t eligible for the waiver.

Wilson has worked in urban planning for decades, and even so, he said he found navigating the city’s permitting requirements extremely confusing. They never were able to figure out how much of their final bill was allotted to permits. If Chicago wants to improve citywide replacement efforts, Wilson said, improving the permitting process should be high on the list.

“There’s not a single person to talk to about this,” he said.

Inefficient contracts and funding woes

Water department officials pointed to two key reasons for the high costs. First, they said that the city lacked a firm grasp of costs when launching its replacement program in 2021 and also that its first round of contracts was inefficient. The early contracts also bundled jobs poorly, tasking contractors with work outside their specialization, like having plumbers work on restoration or outreach.

“Early on, the issue was … a lot of unknowns in our contracts,” the water department’s deputy commissioner, Michael Grillo, said in a webinar last fall. “We are trying to be smarter with our contracts that go out, be more specific, eliminate those unknowns.”

Plumbing companies overbid to cover worst-case scenarios in those early contracts, Grillo said. The water department’s Vidis confirmed via email that the city has implemented four new contracts this year focused on improving equitable access for small businesses to replace lead service lines but said the goal of those contracts was not to reduce per-line prices.

Grillo also blamed labor costs for part of the city’s high price tag, but that explanation doesn’t appear to pan out.

The base prevailing wage for a union plumber in the Chicago area is $99.52 per hour. By contrast, it’s about $97 in Minneapolis and roughly $121 in New York City, both of which replace their lead pipes for less than half of Chicago’s costs.

“I have a hard time believing that the prevailing wage would be the cost factor,” said Betony Jones, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and former director of energy jobs under the Biden administration.

The city says a lack of robust, flexible funding is compounding the problem. Chicago has to cobble together funding from a patchwork of local and federal sources in the form of grants and low-interest loans, which brings red tape and restrictions.

The Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act delivered a historic $15 billion for lead pipe removal, with Illinois getting about $1.2 billion, according to Duckworth’s office. This month, Duckworth’s office announced a separate $22 million federal grant earmarked for Chicago’s majority-Black Austin neighborhood — where 92 percent of service lines require replacement, according to last year’s lead service line inventory. At Chicago’s price point, the state estimates that $22 million will only replace about 650 lines out of the nearly 17,000 reported in city data for Austin last year.

“Chicago needs to explain where the money is going and justify the cost,” wrote Elin Betanzo, a national drinking water expert who helped uncover the water crisis caused by lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, in an email.

Betanzo, who has done extensive research on cost-saving tactics, said she has not seen a realistic cost breakdown that demonstrates why Chicago is paying as much as it is.

“They need to figure out how to complete the most cost-efficient lead service line replacements in the country, not the most expensive,” she added.

With funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set to run out this year, public health experts have been calling for more local, federal and state dollars to fund replacements, especially in overburdened cities like Chicago.

“It’s a critical part of the infrastructure,” Betanzo said. “It’s that final piece of public health protection.”

Amy Qin and Cam Rodriguez contributed data analysis for this story.

The post Why Is It So Expensive to Replace Lead Pipes in Chicago? appeared first on Great Lakes Now.

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In: Grist, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, ipr, Latest News, Michigan, University of Michigan, wave energy

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

A group of University of Michigan researchers will test devices that convert wave energy into electricity off the shores of Beaver Island this week, as part of an ongoing effort to improve power reliability for residents.

The prototypes — which look like small boats framed with PVC pipes — were designed with input from Beaver Island residents over the course of two years. The upcoming demonstration will help researchers improve their devices and get public feedback.

“We need to work with the community together to identify the need and design together with them,” said Lei Zuo, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan and lead researcher on the wave power project.

Through workshops with the research team, residents told researchers that they want more reliable power to the local airport, especially during emergencies.

Power to the community of about 600 permanent residents comes from the mainland through diesel generators and sensitive underwater electric cables. Outages are common during storms.

These frequent blackouts on the island have led to a natural interest among residents around local renewable energy sources, said Seamus Norgaard, a part-time island resident.

Several residents already power their homes and businesses with solar panels or geothermal energy. And the remote island has previously received federal funds to improve access to clean power.

“It’s a combination of looking at cost savings and also wanting to be independent and not dependent on the mainland for everything. And then also the environmental outlook,” he said.

Despite how much potential wave power has, it isn’t commonly used to power local electric grids because of how expensive and challenging it can be to install. The technology is still new and there isn’t a standardized design yet, said Saied Bayat, one of the researchers on the team.

So while waves on the Great Lakes are smaller and more seasonal than on oceans, research here could help improve this technology as a whole, he said. And it’s an ideal experimental bathtub.

“The Great Lakes provide real-world wave conditions while being much easier, safer, and less expensive to access than most ocean sites,” Bayat said.

After the demonstration, the U of M researchers will go back to improving the prototype. They plan to install a final version in the coming years.

The wave power demonstration will take place during Beaver Island’s 10th annual sustainability fair.

“There is that excitement about these new futures and cleaner sources, and more locally produced, dependable sources of energy,” he said.

The fair is this Saturday, featuring events across the island. The wave energy demonstration starts at 10 a.m. at the Central Michigan University boathouse near Whiskey Point.

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In: Agriculture, Farming, Grist, ipr, Latest News, Michigan

By Vivian La, IPR

This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

As Michigan faces an aging farmer population, communities are looking for ways to shore up the next generation of growers. But people looking to get in the field face challenges like high costs, access to land and a shifting climate.

Tucked on farmland at the southern edge of Traverse City, one program wants to solve some of these problems by letting aspiring farmers learn by doing.

The Great Lakes Incubator Farm attracts students from all over the country. Over the course of seven months, they learn topics like pest management, how to drive a tractor and what to include in a farm business plan.

“Nobody gets into farming for sane reasons, other than the sanity of knowing where your food comes from and just general health,” said 33-year-old Rachel Greenberg, a student farmer from Indianapolis. “The challenges are pretty never-ending.”

Those challenges include high costs, access to land and volatile weather. Farm bankruptcies last year were up 46% nationally, according to a National Farm Bureau report. As land prices rise due to demand from developers, more than 50,000 acres of farmland has been lost in the last two decades, according to research.

Despite headwinds, the student farmers said they’re driven by wanting to know where their food comes from, to contribute to local communities and teach others to do the same.

‘Pay it forward’

The farm training program — a project of the Grand Traverse Conservation District — has fewer economic pressures than running a farm business, Greenberg said. The fruits and vegetables that students grow will go to locals who have already committed to buying the season’s produce, and leftovers will go to food rescue operations. Unlike a traditional business, the goal isn’t to make a profit.

“The whole incubator idea is something you see a lot in the world of entrepreneurship, and it’s beautiful that somebody saw that and was like, ‘Why don’t we just do that with farming?’” Greenberg said.

Troy Saruna, 28, said at a time where climate change is driving more severe weather, he wants to better understand his impact on the natural world. Saruna worked in conservation around the country prior to the program, and has no farming experience.

Student farmer Troy Saruna waters seedlings in the greenhouse at the Great Lakes Incubator Farm. (Photo credit: Vivian La/IPR News)

The training program focuses on teaching regenerative agriculture, which refers to practices that could reduce the pollution causing climate change by improving soil health.

“Our food systems are just so inextricably tied to the health of the planet,” Saruna said. “I’m just really interested in striking up a new balance where I can understand, interpret and just develop some new instincts in terms of feeding myself and having thriving communities that also support wildlife.”

Farmers with some experience also find the program helpful to dive deeper into certain skills. Shanaya Holmes, 49, runs a small 4-acre farm in Alabama.

Student farmer Shanaya Holmes kneels by a row of spinach. (Photo credit: Vivian La/IPR News)

She’s looking to learn how to grow in a different climate and to improve her record keeping — tracking what’s been planted, what soil was used or how much money was spent on equipment.

“It’s a challenge to switch that button off to come inside and do bookwork, bookwork, bookwork when you’re so used to outside, outside, outside,” she said.

Adam Brown, the farm’s manager and instructor, said the farmer training program is meant to be a stepping stone.

“It’s really built for anybody who can then filter out and work anywhere in the food system, either manage a farm, start their own business, or any rung of that ladder where people can just help out in the food system,” Brown said.

Brown wouldn’t have pursued farming himself if it wasn’t for a similar training program he did 15 years ago on the West Coast. He has a background in ecology.

“I can pay it forward, my lessons, and all the wisdom that I learned throughout my years of farming, and be a mentor to these other people, and I feel like it’s super important,” he said.

Funding the future

The training program, now in its second year, is one of the only programs of its kind in northern Michigan, according to data from Michigan State University.

The Great Lakes Incubator Farm relies mostly on a nearly $700,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture aimed at supporting beginner farmers. That grant ends after this season and Brown plans to reapply for USDA funding this year.

Still, the agency is undergoing changes as it works to match the president’s priorities. Last year, the USDA canceled $148 million in grants — including some in the beginner farmer program — to comply with the president’s early executive orders targeting climate action, environmental justice, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Brown said there’s not many large pools of money like this USDA grant program that support efforts to train the next generation of farmers. The Great Lakes Incubator Farm is also supported by some state grants.

Adam Brown sits on a tractor at the Great Lakes Incubator Farm. He teaches students at the farm and says there needs to be more training programs like this to support an aging farmer population. (Photo credit: Vivian La/IPR News)

Lack of consistent funding is a big reason we don’t see more of these training programs, said Jon LaPorte, a farm business management educator for Michigan State University Extension.

“It’s almost like a double-edged sword that they’re trying to help people get started, but then they’ve got the same struggles of staying sustainable themselves,” he said.

That means as the share of young people in farming grows in Michigan, programs to support them might be harder to come by, LaPorte said. Farmers under the age of 45 increased by more than 3,000 people between 2017 and 2022, according to the USDA’s census. Sustaining that growth is a challenge.

“Because of those hurdles, they don’t all stay in, and what we want to see is more of those people being able to stay in, having more farms, more diversity of farms,” he said. “More people involved in agriculture at that level is really, really important.”

There are still resources available, said Katie Brandt, who leads MSU’s Organic Farmer Training Program in East Lansing. MSU Extension put together a beginner farmer’s guide in partnership with the USDA last year. And many farms across the state often accept volunteers for work, she said.

Brown, the farm manager, said students in the training program learn that the growing season doesn’t always go smoothly — and things like frost damage on plants is just part of the job.

“This is a great space for failure too, right? Because there’s not a whole lot of risk here,” he said. “It’s a perfect, experimental type of atmosphere.”

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In: data centers, Energy, Grist, Industry, Energy, Economic Development, infrastructure, Latest News, utilities

By Naveena Sadasivam

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Last month, President Trump sat alongside executives of the largest tech companies in the country as they pledged to pay a fair share of the energy costs of their data center buildout. “Data centers … they need some PR help,” Trump said at the gathering. “People think that if the data center goes in, their electricity is going to go up.”

It’s not an entirely unfounded assumption.

As the tech industry has funneled billions of dollars into the AI boom over the last several years, it has simultaneously been expanding its fleet of computing powerhouses, which require vast amounts of energy to run. These facilities have been cropping up all over the country, from rural communities in eastern Pennsylvania to the cities of northern Utah. 

This boom coincides with a dramatic rise in U.S. electricity prices, driven by inflation and the rising cost of adapting to wildfires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather. But these massive facilities have also strained the grid — and in some cases — contributed to rising prices. For instance, last year, an independent monitor for PJM, the grid operator that serves 13 northeastern states and Washington, D.C., projected that powering data centers would result in higher electricity generation costs, which would ultimately be passed on to consumers. And in cases where the buildout hasn’t yet led to price hikes, utilities and grid operators expect that it’s just a matter of time if tech companies follow through on their plans. Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates that with data center electricity demand expected to double in the next five years, wholesale power prices could rise by as much as 50 percent.

At a time when the cost of living has become untenable for many Americans, and consumers are setting aside ever greater shares of their income to pay energy bills, the possibility of further rate hikes to line the pockets of tech companies has prompted a massive backlash across the country. The White House gathering of tech executives appeared to be a response to the backlash. On March 4 at the event, they signed onto the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”

The pledge itself has few specifics or teeth. It’s a voluntary agreement by several prominent tech companies — including Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon — to secure their own power for data centers, pay for any powerlines or other infrastructure that utilities may need to build to move that power, and hire locally from the communities they build in. While in theory the agreement could help prevent Americans from having to bear the cost of the data center expansion, the White House hasn’t set up oversight mechanisms to ensure that they do. Several consumer and environmental advocates called the agreement “meaningless,” “unenforceable,” and ultimately, “nonsense.”

The United States has become ground zero for the global data center boom. The rapid buildout has left developers, tech companies, and the utility industry scrambling to secure more power. As a result, the wait for a data center to connect to the grid can be years in many parts of the country. Hyperscalers — companies that operate large data centers and provide vast computing power — have been trying to get around these wait times by signing long-term power purchase agreements with solar developers, building their own natural gas plants, and even retrofitting jet engines to generate electricity. 

“Every single data center in the future will be power limited,” said NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang last year. “We are now a power‑limited industry.”

Outside of the White House, utilities, local regulators, and lawmakers have also been proposing various solutions to address the community backlash and allow for the continued building of more data centers. Some have implemented measures requiring data centers to pay the costs of generating and moving the electricity they use. Others have suggested that data center developers install solar and battery systems on-site, or that rates should be frozen for residents while utilities figure out how to handle the additional costs. And at least 11 states are considering legislation to temporarily ban new data centers while their impact on electricity prices and other concerns are addressed.

“You’re seeing states try to move quickly,” said Meghan Pazik, a senior policy associate in Public Citizen’s climate program. But “every state’s going to have a different approach to how far they want to go on data centers.”  

Many states are utilizing additional tariffs for data centers and other customers that pull large amounts of power from the grid. These facilities — referred to as “large load customers” — are required to pay more to make up for the added infrastructure costs that come with supplying them, as well as the risk if they end up walking away from the project, which would leave consumers on the hook for the investments. More than 30 states have proposed or implemented measures of this sort. 

Some hyperscalers are changing their approaches, too. In Minnesota, Google inked a deal with Xcel Energy, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, to bring 1,900 megawatts of clean energy onto the grid. The company is fully funding wind turbines, solar panels, and battery storage, as well as the costs of grid infrastructure upgrades to serve its data centers. And in Louisiana, Meta signed a deal with Entergy to help fund the construction of seven natural gas plants, more than 200 miles of transmission lines, and battery systems, among other infrastructure upgrades.

A recent report from the Searchlight Institute, a policy think tank, argues that this piecemeal approach to regulating the tech industry misses an opportunity to fund a large-scale upgrade of the grid. Although the surge in demand has largely been framed as a looming crisis, the report contends that the boom also creates a rare policy window: a chance to modernize the country’s electrical system and make long-delayed investments needed for the clean energy transition.

Utilities make roughly $35 billion in investments in transmission infrastructure every year — far short of what’s actually needed. Electricity demand is projected to double or triple in the next 25 years. The Searchlight Institute report proposes creating a dedicated grid infrastructure fund to accelerate the expansion. Under the plan, hyperscalers would pay into the fund in exchange for speedy connections. Money from the fund would be directed to utilities and other companies to build out the system, prioritizing clean energy along the way. And consumer and environmental advocates, along with other policymakers, would oversee the process to ensure funds are being distributed equitably and serve the needs of the public. 

Such a mechanism would ensure increased investments in clean energy, rather than the natural gas projects many tech companies are currently backing, while protecting consumers from increases in electricity prices.

“The hyperscalers need power,” said Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute and author of the report. “They have a ton of capital. And rather than letting them continue to cut these one-off deals with utilities, we’ve got to find a better way to take advantage of the potential upside here and avoid the downside of them basically building a secondary grid behind the existing grid that benefits only them.”

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