If green energy is Michigan’s future, why isn’t it the answer when data centers come to town?
To let Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tell it, Michigan will someday be powered by solar panels and wind turbines.
Yet when data centers come to town, they never run on wind and solar, and energy bills rise for their neighbors.
“Michigan’s clean energy future is bright,” Whitmer said in November 2023.
Whitmer had just signed a law requiring Michigan utilities to run on 100% green energy by 2040.
“I am proud that these bills make Michigan the best state in the Midwest for climate action,” Whitmer said.
Two years later, Whitmer’s priorities had shifted. Gone was the talk of “climate action”—which is to say, using the power of the state to enforce net-zero energy policies. Now it was all about “the next big thing”—data centers.
“The reality is that data centers are going to be a big part of America’s future,” Whitmer said in December, urging her appointees to approve Project Stargate, a massive data center in Saline Township.
Project Stargate is supported by several heavy hitters, including billionaire Stephen Ross’s Related Companies. As fellow Enjoyer Anna Hoffman has reported, Jocelyn Benson’s husband, Ryan Friedrichs, is a top official at Related.
What Whitmer presented as good business was actually a friends-and-family plan, imposed on a local community that didn’t want it and tried to stop it.
A Bloomberg News report found that people’s energy bills almost triple when a data center becomes their neighbor. People fear this. Communities don’t want data centers. But Lansing is forcing them to accept their new neighbors anyway.
“The question isn’t whether they (data centers) will be built,” Whitmer said, “but rather: Can Michigan benefit from these jobs and build data centers in a smarter way while upholding our strong environmental laws to protect our precious natural resources? We have an opportunity to do both.”
Notice what Whitmer didn’t say here.
Whitmer didn’t say that data centers would run on green energy. She didn’t say that Project Stargate would cover the data center in solar panels and be surrounded by wind mills. If green energy is what Whitmer claimed in 2023, this arrangement would cover its energy needs and provide “good-paying jobs” too.
“Upholding our strong environmental laws” is code. It means that you and I will bear the costs and burdens of unreliable, weather-driven energy. And it means that Stephen Ross’s data center can never go offline. Certainly not for the sake of climate action.
A 2025 University of Michigan study—What Happens When Data Centers Come to Town?—told the real truth about why data centers don’t run on green energy: They can’t, because it doesn’t work.
“Data centers cannot fully operate on renewable energy alone,” read the study, in a section called ‘The impossibility of an environmentally friendly data center.’
“Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are inconsistent and cannot meet the uptime (time during which a machine, especially a computer, is in operation) requirements of data centers,” the study explained.
James David Dickson is host of the James Dickson Podcast. Join him in conversation on X at @downi75.
