Take Action: No Tax Breaks for Dirty Data Centers

In 2024, state lawmakers approved new tax exemptions to attract large-scale data centers to Michigan. While we opposed these giveaways, we successfully secured a critical safeguard: data centers in Michigan must operate on at least 90% clean energy to qualify for tax breaks. 

Now, that requirement could be treated as optional rather than the standard, and  Michigan’s clean energy progress is at risk if we hand out tax breaks to massive data centers that don’t follow the law. 

Data centers are extremely energy-intensive, consuming more energy than small cities in many cases. When they come online, they can: 

• Spike energy demand
• Drive up electricity costs for households and small businesses
• Slow Michigan’s transition to clean energy 

We are already seeing in other states that if data centers don’t secure clean power up front, utilities are building new fossil fuel power plants and leaving ratepayers with the bill. 

The Michigan Strategic Fund Board is a group of state officials that decides which big economic projects Michigan invests in – and how public money is used to support them. They decide which data centers qualify for tax breaks. Right now, the Board is allowing a loophole that lets companies claim they’ll eventually meet the 90% clean energy standard simply because utility companies are required to reach 100% clean energy by 20240. That’s not what the law says. 

Michigan law is clear: Data centers must actually use 90% clean energy after coming online – not decades later. Granting tax breaks without real, enforceable clean energy commitments undermines the law, rewards polluters, and risks building more big, expensive gas plants that would drive up energy costs. 

Tell the Michigan Strategic Fund Board: Don’t Give Tax Breaks to Dirty Data Centers →