This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Coleman Peiffer, senior manager of economic and community development at Alliant Energy.
He discusses the Madison-based utility’s efforts to advance a tax credit for data centers in Wisconsin, which began early in the COVID-19 pandemic after neighboring states announced large data center projects.
“Ultimately, we were successful in getting new legislation passed as part of the governor’s budget last July, so a long journey of studying and understanding, but ultimately became fruitful,” he said.
Peiffer explains Alliant is interested in data centers because these facilities are major consumers of power, with the largest of these using more energy than 200 gas stations combined.
“It really helps us strengthen our infrastructure from a transmission standpoint, which really allows all of our industry — our residents, commercial, industrial — to have a more reliable service, so their power stays on longer,” he said. “And it really helps spread cost of upgrading that infrastructure, so they’re not all being charged right up front. You have a large user utilizing a lot of it.”
He said the “key component” of the law change is that data centers are exempt from sales and use tax on their personal property.
“Over a 20-year lifespan, you’re talking about significant savings from a tax standpoint,” he said. “And from a competitive playing field, if I’m siting a project and I’m looking at Wisconsin, or let’s say Iowa who already had one, I’m going to pick the state where I’m going to save roughly $100 million over my lifecycle.”
Peiffer also discusses Microsoft’s data center plans for Racine County and notes “you’re going to start seeing announcements probably in the next two to three years” for new data center projects in Wisconsin.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
