Congressman Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., doesn't want to block data centers from coming to Illinois. He also doesn't want them arriving without conditions and he's worried some data center developers will try to cut corners to get there.
"It scares me that some are willing to skirt the rules," he said after a town hall in Peoria Thursday night. "I don't support that."
But the alternative scares him too. If Illinois says no, or makes the conditions too steep, the state might not be left out of the discussion.
"That just means that the data center is going to be built in a right-to-work state," he said. "In Kentucky or Tennessee or Alabama or Texas."
Sorensen said he sees a way to do it right, and laid out three conditions he wants attached to any data center in Illinois: no facility should be allowed to drive up utility costs for residents; every data center should generate its own renewable power and use gray water that would otherwise need treatment; and they should be sited in industrial corridors, away from neighborhoods.
He also wants project labor agreements on any construction. "I want to see good PLAs attached to these data centers, so that we are putting our skilled labor, our union labor, to work on these things," he said.
Sorensen said he helped introduce the Energy Bills Relief Act in March to prevent the data center industry from passing electricity costs onto families, but said it isn't enough on its own. “We're going to have to make sure that there's guard rails in place”
A moratorium, he argued, would only push the problem elsewhere. "They're just going to go to China," he said. "It must not come at the taxpayer's expense," but Illinois, he said, needs to be in the conversation.
"We need to make sure as we move forward, especially as Quantum comes online, that we're able to harness that energy, harness that innovation, and have Illinois be a leader."
