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LINCOLN — As demand for electricity grows across Nebraska, Gov. Jim Pillen expressed his preference for establishing public-private partnerships to shoulder some of the cost burdens of new infrastructure.
Pillen ceremonially signed Legislative Bill 1261 Tuesday alongside state lawmakers, public power representatives and other stakeholders. The bill alters the authority of public power districts to allow private companies to build energy infrastructure, like power plants, without the risk of having a public power board take them over using the power of eminent domain.
State Sen. Barry DeKay of Niobrara introduced the bill at the governor’s request. DeKay said the bill’s aim is to ease the cost burden on public power districts and ratepayers by allowing private industry to shoulder the costs of building new and expensive facilities. The idea is aimed at growing the baseline electricity production needed to power data centers and similar users.
State Sen. Mike Moser of Columbus, who prioritized LB 1261, said he felt pressure to get the bill right because there are “fantastic amounts of money” involved in building new power plants. Delette Marengo, vice president of government and public relations for Omaha-based power company Tenaska, estimated that new power plants come with a multibillion dollar price tag.
The risk in letting public power districts manage the infrastructure, Moser said, is if the market shifts or plans change, the costs could blowback on ratepayers. LB 1261 aims to avoid that possibility by keeping the costs private.
Marengo said Tenaska was named a top 50 company by Forbes Magazine, and it has the necessary infrastructure and equipment to meet the demand for electricity.
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“Power, energy costs … they are challenging everywhere to meet demand,” Marengo said. “And Nebraska is just uniquely situated to meet that demand.”
Pillen said the demand for electricity is growing at such a rapid rate that influential companies can’t expand in Nebraska at the pace they would like to. He said an associate of Cargill told him as much, which he blamed largely on the prevalence of data centers in the state.
Early in his administration, Pillen made clear that he was no fan of data centers. He said Nebraska uses about 11.5% of its electricity on data centers, ranking second in the U.S. by that metric.
Pillen said Tuesday that he has called for a pause on building new data centers, but he clarified that he would still like to see more investments in artificial intelligence. While the increase in data centers is driven largely by the growth of AI, Pillen said the two are not one and the same.
Pillen argued that AI is a key component in national security and nuclear deterrence. He said foreign adversaries like Iran and China are “making massive amounts of electricity” with coal, which he believes is being used to develop AI.
“We have to win the war on artificial intelligence,” Pillen said. “It’s a race.”
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