The Illinois state legislature failed in the final hours of its session to pass an energy omnibus bill aimed at storing energy and spurring renewables at a time when data centers threaten to sap the state’s grid and spike customers’ bills.
The latest iteration of the energy bill unveiled Saturday, the session’s last day, included incentives for battery storage and would have lifted a moratorium on the construction of large nuclear power plants in Illinois. Missing from that bill were any restrictions on data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity to operate.
Environmentalists had pushed for measures that would have required data centers to bring in their own energy or pay higher fees to meet Illinois’ renewable portfolio standard , a state program that funds renewable ener