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Illinois Data Center Intel
Latest data center news, projects, power and policy across Illinois — updated daily.
Recent Illinois data center news
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The United States Department of Commerce and the Government of the Republic of Korea Announce Strategic Investment in Project Star, a $22.3 billion Energy Infrastructure Campus in Encinal, Texas, being jointly developed by Related Companies and NextEra Energy, in partnership with Lewis Energy Group
The United States Department of Commerce and the Government of the Republic of Korea have announced support for Project Star, a new $22+ billion energy infrastructure campus in Encinal, Texas.
- Project Star will be developed by Related Companies and NextEra Energy Resources with Lewis Energy Group; it includes 6.47 GW of natural gas generation to support an adjacent 5 GW data center campus.
- The project is expected to be built in phases, with initial generation coming online as early as 2029, and is described as part of the U.S.-Korea Trade Deal and Strategic Investment MOU implementation.
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POWER Honors Bloom Energy’s KR Sridhar with 2026 Executive Leadership Award
POWER’s article announces that KR Sridhar, founder, chairman and CEO of Bloom Energy, received POWER’s 2026 Executive Leadership Award for advancing distributed, on-site power for data centers and AI demand.
- Bloom Energy’s history and commercial milestones are summarized, including its 2001 founding, 2006 first field trial, 2008 commercial launch, 2018 NYSE listing, and later manufacturing expansion in Fremont, California.
- The piece highlights major customer and financing relationships: Bloom’s arrangement with Equinix surpassed 100 MW in February 2025 across 19 data centers in six states; Oracle expanded its Bloom relationship in April 2026 to as much as 2.8 GW with an initial 1.2-GW deployment; Brookfield Asset Management committed $5 billion in October 2025 and raised that commitment to $25 billion in June 2026.
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Retired and Retiring Coal Plants Offer the Grid’s Fastest Path to New Capacity
Briggs White argues that retiring coal plants should be repurposed as the grid’s fastest path to new capacity. This is a commentary article, not a first-time corporate announcement.
- White says coal sites offer interconnection, transmission, water, industrial land, transportation access, and a trained workforce, making them attractive for data centers, manufacturing, electrification, solar, gas, and nuclear projects.
- Examples cited include D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments’ 240-MW solar-and-storage project in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana; Xcel Energy’s Sherco site in Becker, Minnesota with 710 MW online today and 910 MW by 2029; and TerraPower’s Natrium reactor near the Naughton coal plant in Wyoming. The article also notes a 2022 study finding coal-site reuse could cut a new nuclear plant’s capital cost by 15% to 35% versus greenfield.
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Data centre buildout uplifting US BESS market outlook, Wood Mackenzie says
Wood Mackenzie has released its Q3 2026 US Energy Storage Monitor, projecting stronger US battery storage growth and highlighting data-centre-driven demand as a key support for the market.
- The report says US storage installations will grow over 50% in MW terms over the next five years, with utility-scale storage projected to expand at an 8% average annual rate and over 130GW/534GWh of utility-scale BESS expected between 2026 and 2031.
- The report cites Q2 2026 record US BESS installations of 5.4GW/18.9GWh, notes Massachusetts DOER is distributing about US$40 million to 36 BESS projects, and references recent actions including Tumbleweed Energy Storage commissioning in California and Base Power’s US$1 billion Series D at a US$13 billion post-money valuation.
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Climate Change Solutions - September 22, 2026
Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) has published a climate-focused newsletter previewing an upcoming Super El Niño briefing and summarizing recent Capitol Hill activity.
- EESI announced an online briefing on Friday, September 25 at noon EDT about Super El Niño, with welcome remarks from Reps. Mike Flood and Eric Sorensen and RSVP links provided.
- The newsletter also notes the House and Senate action on several bills, including the Water Resources Development Act of 2026, the Ratepayer Protection Act affecting data center-related grid upgrades, and the Hydropower Licensing Transparency Act; it also promotes EESI resources and a new podcast episode.
- This is a newsletter/update, not a standalone corporate deal announcement; it references prior and current legislative developments and upcoming events rather than announcing a new funding commitment.
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Meta, Apex Clean Energy agree to 144-MW Texas solar PPA
Apex Clean Energy and Meta have announced an expansion of their joint clean energy portfolio to 1.2 GW through a new power purchase agreement for Apex’s 144-MW Starling Solar project in Texas.
- The Starling Solar project will be developed in Gonzales County, Texas and is expected to begin commercial operations in 2027; ERCOT’s August queue report lists an anticipated COD of Jan. 28, 2028 and says it has completed the security screening study and entered the full interconnection study phase.
- Meta will receive exclusive rights to all environmental attributes from the project, including all renewable energy credits; Apex said the agreement structure is confidential. The companies said their combined portfolio now includes seven projects across Texas, Virginia, Illinois, Kansas and Iowa.
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Mobilizing for Techno-Economic War, Part 7: Transforming Regulatory Policy
ITIF has published a policy report arguing for a major transformation of U.S. regulatory policy to support national techno-economic competition with China.
- The report says Congress should centralize national issues such as AI regulation, preempt many state privacy/AI laws, and reduce federal barriers for nationally important projects such as industrial parks, infrastructure, and data centers.
- It also argues for NEPA repeal, Section 404 repeal, size-neutral rules, antitrust reform, and a new Commerce Department process to designate up to 100 projects per year for streamlined approval; it also proposes federally designated industrial readiness zones of 50–100 sites of at least 3,000 acres each.
- Monetary values mentioned include $98 billion–$112 billion annually in potential out-of-state privacy compliance costs, $1 trillion+ over 10 years, $650 million in a Facebook BIPA-related settlement cited in the report, and $100 billion a year for carbon removal referenced in a supporting example.
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New data center firm snatches JLL leader
Walbridge has announced the launch of L5 Mission Critical and the appointment of Matt Landek as president and CEO.
- The new data center services company will provide operational services for enterprise facilities and gigawatt-scale campuses; Landek previously led JLL Work Dynamics’ global data center and critical environments business.
- L5 said it is targeting third-party clients with an integrated construction-to-operations model and is also developing a data center workforce training curriculum to address staffing constraints.
- The article also references prior JLL moves, including the 2024 acquisition of SKAE Power Solutions and a November agreement with InfraPartners, as background, not as new announcements.
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The amount of e-waste caused by AI is underestimated: we can’t only include the servers
Basel Action Network has published a report arguing that AI data center equipment replacement is generating far more e-waste than enterprise calculations typically capture.
- BAN says prior AI e-waste estimates focused mainly on servers and accelerators, which it says are only 13% of a data center’s electromechanical infrastructure; it estimates about 70,000 metric tonnes per GW across five equipment categories including networking, power distribution, storage/backup, and cooling.
- The report projects 196–211 million metric tonnes of global e-waste per year by 2050, with 31Mt–46Mt attributed to AI waste alone; analysts quoted in the article say some assumptions, especially the 2.5-year accelerator retirement cycle and long-term growth forecasts, may be overstated.
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11 AI Bills Cleared Committee this Summer, But None Has Reached the House Floor
Rep. Jay Obernolte said the bipartisan AI package he co-authored could be combined into a single bill for a House floor vote in December.
- 11 bills from the Great American AI Act were split and routed to relevant committees; the House Science, Space and Technology Committee cleared the science-related bills in July, while the FRONTIER Act remains with the Energy and Commerce Committee.
- The package includes preemption of some state AI laws for three years, frontier-model disclosure and risk-management requirements, and potential federalization of frontier safety laws in California, New York, and Illinois; Obernolte and Lori Trahan introduced the original 269-page draft on June 4, and Obernolte spoke at Tarana Wireless’ Connecting Communities Summit in Milpitas, California.