Who Pays to Make Big Tech Green?

Companies like Google have leverage over local utilities as their power use climbs

In the otherwise flat Minnesotan expanse, the whitish-gray mound of coal ash looks mountainous, a permanent cemetery of contaminants next to the twin smokestacks of the Sherburne County Generating Station. This power plant doesn’t just run the town of Becker; it pretty much is the town. But within a decade it will close completely. One frigid morning, Greg Pruszinske, Becker’s administrator, is staring at the field across from the coal ash pile, where he’s placed his hopes for the future.

Overhead, bands of high-tension cables connect to towers near the plant. That infrastructure is one reason Google has pledged to put a $600 million data center here. It needs access to massive amounts of uninterrupted power. “The transmission won’t go away” when the coal plant closes, Pruszinske says. “Electrons can come this way, same as they can go the other way.”

For almost four decades, Sherco, as locals call the plant, has done two things in abundance: burn coal and pay taxes. It emits more greenhouse gases than anything else in Minnesota, but it also covers 75% of Becker’s tax base. Taxes from the plant subsidize a public 18-hole golf course, an uncommon amenity for a town of fewer than 5,000 people, and Sherco employs more than 300 locals to create cheap power for millions. Its transmission towers can deliver more than 2,200 megawatts of power—four times the output of a typical coal plant and enough to run 2.6 million homes, roughly half the state.