Illinois POWER Act Briefing - 03-19-26
The short version: A Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines briefing lays out how Illinois' data center boom is straining the grid, water supplies, and communities under the proposed POWER Act.
Our Take
Credit to the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines for pulling this briefing together — Illinois is fast becoming one of the Midwest's hottest data center corridors, and most residents have no idea what's landing in their backyard until the substations and cooling towers show up. The POWER Act briefing is exactly the kind of unglamorous, procedural content that matters: who gets to weigh in before a hyperscale campus locks in decades of electricity and water demand, and who's left holding the bag when rates climb or wells run low.
Illinois sits at a pressure point. It's got nuclear baseload, a grid operator (MISO/PJM overlap) already juggling capacity shortfalls, and plenty of farmland and river water that looks cheap on paper to developers. None of that is unique to Illinois — it's the same playbook running in Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio — but the fights over legislation like this are where communities actually get a seat at the table, if they show up. Bills like the POWER Act are attempts to force disclosure and planning before the concrete gets poured, not after.
We'll keep tracking how this legislation moves and who's lobbying against it. If you want to see what's already been approved or proposed near you, check our facility map, and if you want to push for the kind of transparency this briefing is asking for, our take-action page has next steps.
This is GridWatch the USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.