POWER Act data center regulation won’t move forward this spring
[June 01, 2026]
By Nikoel Hytrek and UIS Public Affairs Reporting (PAR)
Conversations about the POWER Act, a multifaceted data center regulation
bill, are not over yet —but those involved say the bill won’t be ready
by the General Assembly’s May 31 deadline.
That means pending data center projects will not be subject to
guardrails proposed in the bill, like water use reporting, community
benefits agreements and requirements that data centers pay for their own
energy from renewable sources.
Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, the chair of the House Energy and
Environment Committee and a sponsor of the bill, said at a Tuesday
hearing that at least one more subject matter hearing is needed so
lawmakers can hear from additional stakeholders.
“We’re just gonna finish out this session,” she said after a House
subject matter hearing. “We’ll work with staff and our stakeholders and
put something else on the books over the summer.”
She said she doesn’t know when the bill might be considered in the
future, but it could come up in the fall veto session later this year
after negotiations continue through the summer.
On Wednesday, the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, a collection of
environmental advocacy organizations, businesses and groups, called for
quick action.
“The ICJC supports continued education (about the POWER Act), but
communities around the state have spoken and are demanding action from
lawmakers to address the impact the influx of data centers has on our
utility bills, water resources, and communities,” said Hannah Flath, a
spokesperson for the Illinois Environmental Council, on behalf of the
Clean Jobs Coalition. “We’re calling on legislative leaders to convene a
negotiating table by the end of June to negotiate and work toward
passing the POWER Act.”
Pausing tax credits
House Majority Leader Robyn Gabel, a Democrat from Evanston who has led
the bill in the House, said at a Saturday rally hosted by the ICJC that
there’s another option for regulating data centers while negotiations
continue.
“The governor proposed a pause in the data center tax credit in his
budget address, and we need to get that done in this year’s budget,”
Gabel said. “The last thing we should be doing is handing out tax breaks
and incentives to these profitable corporations.”
Since 2019, Illinois has incentivized data center developers to come to
the state by offering tax credits, but Gov. JB Pritzker proposed
suspending those in February. According to the state’s 2024 report, at
least 27 data centers had received incentives totaling $983 million in
estimated lifetime tax breaks and benefits.
“With the shifting energy landscape, it is imperative that our growth
does not undermine affordability and stability for our families,”
Pritzker said at the time. Since then, he’s continued to call for
regulations, particularly for data centers to pay for their own energy
generation and to source it from renewables.
But advocates have lamented the governor’s lack of engagement on the
issue throughout the legislative session, outside of a few public
statements.
A group of lawmakers from both chambers sent a letter to House and
Senate leadership on Friday calling for a tax credit pause.
“We believe the responsible course of action is to pause the data center
tax credits and exemptions in the FY 2027 budget until common-sense
guardrails are in place,” they wrote in the letter, obtained by Capitol
News Illinois. “It is not only fiscally irresponsible, but also
unconscionable to continue to provide millions of taxpayer dollars to
Big Tech corporations harming our climate, straining our grid, and
making electric bills unaffordable for working families.”
What’s been discussed so far
Gabel said the House is ready to move forward with continued
negotiations, and there are signs of bipartisan support.
The House version of the POWER Act has been subject to four hearings
since it was introduced in February. Those have involved testimony from
a variety of stakeholders, from local leader to utilities and
environmental advocates.
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Rep. Robyn Gabel, D-Evanston, and Sen. Ram Villivalam, D-Chicago,
speak at a rally for the POWER Act, a bill regulating data centers,
about the bill’s next steps after the session ends. (Capitol News
Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)
Because the bill regulates a rapidly growing and changing industry,
lawmakers have wanted to ensure regulations are targeted correctly.
During the hearings, they’ve heard about the massive demand data centers
put on the grid, risks posed to water sources and impacts on
communities.
They also heard warnings that onerous regulations might lead to
developers pulling their projects from Illinois, meaning communities
could miss out on property and utility tax benefits.
The POWER Act requires data center companies to pay for their own energy
generation and for the energy to come from renewable sources such as
solar, wind and battery storage.
The bill would also require data center projects to track and report how
much water they use and to submit water management plans to the Illinois
Water Survey, a nonprofit, nongovernment research group connected to the
University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Another provision would require more transparency about data center
development, and for data center developers to sign community benefits
agreements in the places they’re constructed.
Rally for action
On Saturday, the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition held a rally with Gabel
and Sen. Ram Villivalam, D-Chicago, the lawmaker leading the Senate
version of the bill.
“This is, as has been mentioned, the most comprehensive data center
legislation in the nation,” Villivalam said. “This is a big bill for a
big problem, but big bills and big solutions take a lot of work.”
He called for rally attendees to continue reaching out to their
lawmakers and to use Saturday as an opportunity to talk to them in
person.
“The protections in the Power Act are the guardrails, the commonsense
guardrails we need to protect ratepayers, communities and our natural
resources,” Villivalam said. “The impacts of data centers are too big to
ignore. We’re going to keep fighting for transparency. We’re going to
keep fighting for fairness. We’re going to keep fighting to hold Big
Tech accountable.”
Advocates from around Illinois also spoke about the need for the bill.
“Data centers are coming,” the Rev. Darnell Tingle of United
Congregations of Metro East, said. “They are being proposed. They are
being negotiated and they are being approved. And too many communities
are being forced to respond one city at a time, one village at a time,
one zone meeting at a time.”
He said communities of color are too often forced to deal with the
downsides of industrial growth, and the POWER Act is a measure to
protect those communities.
“We need statewide standards, we need statewide guardrails, we need
statewide accountability,” he said. “Yes, we need protection that covers
all of Illinois, not just the communities with the most money, not just
the towns with the most lawyers, not just the places with the most
political access, but everybody.”
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