“Politicians must hold corporations to the same standards as constituents”
With new, hyperscale data centers popping up all over Wisconsin, from Mount Pleasant to Port Washington, the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin urges elected officials to listen to the concerns of the voters they represent, in addition to the well-founded anxieties of Great Lakes environmental groups.
“The true level of resource consumption from these massive centers is staggering,” says Reese Wood, Chair of the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin. “Officials need to consider the fiscal and the environmental price tags and be honest with voters about who will absorb them. When state electricity and water needs skyrocket, who’s going to be stuck with the bill?”
Wherever data centers crop up, electricity costs soar; and with states doling out corporate kickbacks to attract big businesses at the expense of local entrepreneurs, those centers rarely shoulder much of that burden themselves. On average, electricity consumption surges about 267% where new tech centers are established. In Virginia, data centers are already using 40% of state electricity. By 2028, those centers are anticipated to be responsible for 12% of nationwide power consumption.
And taxpayers are being punished for it.
“Funding these sites costs $800 billion in revenue and 50 GW of energy,” says Wood. “Our utility bills are already rising. Politicians are moving at a breakneck pace to entice big tech to set up shop here, but what are the second-order economic and environmental effects? Once again, our leaders are putting their own profit before the people they serve.”
The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin urges officials to consider the potential impact of these centers before they are built, not in hindsight after the damage has been done. The Party also demands transparency around the resource costs of new, hyperscale data centers and the corresponding burden to taxpayers.
True economic growth comes from encouraging local entrepreneurship and pursuing sustainable, scalable solutions for market needs—not crowding out constituents in favor of centralized firms that gobble up energy while expelling even more waste.
The party calls on officials to disclose further details about the construction, operation, and resource-consumption of these centers and to allow environmental groups, such as the Alliance for the Great Lakes, to continue studying their impact. Officials must seriously consider these findings and share them with impacted communities before allowing even more big tech centers to flood into our state and drown out constituents’ needs.
