HB6264 — Businesses: other; clean and renewable energy requirements for data centers; provide for.…

What it does: requires every data center in Michigan to procure clean or renewable energy equal to 100% of its annual energy use — by January 1, 2040. Enforced by civil fine of up to $10,000 per day, brought by the county prosecutor or the Attorney General.

Introduced by members of the Washtenaw delegation and publicly backed by Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has urged state legislators to support it.

Does it reach the Textile Road project?

Structurally, yes — and this is the bill’s real strength.

Most of the data center legislation before the Legislature works by telling a local government to withhold a permit. That does nothing to a project exempt from local zoning and building permits.

HB 6264 does not work that way. Section 5 places a duty directly on the owner or operator, and Section 3 defines “person” to expressly include a governmental entity. Section 7 makes it enforceable by the Attorney General in court. There is no permit to be exempt from and no local approval to bypass. That is the same architecture as HB 6138, the water bill, and it is the right model for reaching an institution that has opted out of local regulation.

So the mechanism is sound. The problem is what the mechanism is asked to enforce.

Four weaknesses

1. The deadline is 2040

The clean energy obligation does not bite until January 1, 2040. The Textile Road facility is expected to be fully operational by 2030.

This bill would therefore impose no clean energy requirement on this project for roughly its first decade of operation — the decade in which its electricity demand lands on the grid and on ratepayers. Computing hardware at facilities like this is typically refreshed every three to five years, so the equipment running on day one will have been replaced two or three times before the obligation applies.

2. No size threshold

HB 6264 uses the same definition as the rest of the House package: a facility housing equipment to centralize the storage and processing of data. No megawatt threshold, no square footage, no distinction between a server closet and a 100-megawatt campus.

That definition is arguable, and the University has already published the argument — that this is a specialized research hub rather than a commercial data center. SB 1047 solved this by defining a data center as a facility with a maximum aggregate demand of 20 megawatts or more, plus a backstop category, “large energy use facility,” at the same threshold. Adding that language here is a one-clause fix.

3. No additionality requirement — the most consequential gap

Section 5(2) permits compliance through on-site generation, power purchase agreements, or other energy instruments, credits, or contracts approved by the Public Service Commission. Section 5(3) directs the Commission to approve any such instrument if it determines the energy procured will be clean or renewable.

Nothing requires that the clean energy be new.

As written, a facility could buy unbundled renewable energy certificates from existing generation and comply fully, without a single additional megawatt of clean capacity being built in Michigan. The grid carries the same load, fed by the same mix, and the paperwork says otherwise.

Two documents already say how to fix this. SB 1047(j) requires clean energy equal to 90% of forecasted usage and states expressly that a facility relying on its utility’s existing compliance with Michigan’s renewable portfolio standard does not satisfy the requirement. And the University of Michigan’s own Ford School of Public Policy, in its July 2025 policy brief, recommended precisely a renewable energy additionality clause — requiring data centers to generate new renewable capacity rather than draw on existing infrastructure, so they expand clean supply rather than competing with households for it.

4. The penalty is small relative to the subject

The maximum fine is $10,000 per day — about $3.65 million a year if assessed continuously at the cap.

Set that against this project’s own figures. The University told the State that annual operating costs would run $78 million, and an earlier version of the same application put them at $150 million. A penalty in that range is a line item, not a deterrent. For comparison, HB 6138 sets water violations at up to $1,000,000 per day.

The tie bar

HB 6264 does not take effect unless all eight of House Bills 6135 through 6142 are enacted. Those eight are sitting in the House Government Operations Committee.

Note the asymmetry: HB 6264 needs all eight, but the eight do not need HB 6264 — their enacting sections reference only each other. So this bill is the most dependent piece of the package and the least load-bearing. Nine bills must now clear committee for a clean energy requirement that begins in 2040.

Amendments worth asking for

1. Add an additionality clause. Require that procured clean or renewable energy represent new capacity, and state expressly that reliance on a utility’s existing renewable portfolio compliance does not satisfy the requirement — matching SB 1047(j).
2. Move the deadline forward, or tie it to commencement of commercial operation rather than a fixed calendar date, with interim milestones.
3. Add the 20-megawatt alternative to the definition of “data center,” matching SB 1047.
4. Raise the penalty to a level a facility with nine-figure operating costs would notice.
5. Reconsider the tie bar. A standalone clean energy standard should not be hostage to eight other bills.

Our position

Support it, and ask for it to be strengthened. The enforcement architecture is right, and it is one of the few bills that reaches a project exempt from local zoning. But as drafted it would not require this facility to procure a single megawatt-hour of clean energy until 2040, and even then could be satisfied with certificates from generation that already exists.

The fix is three clauses, and two of them are already written in other bills before the same Legislature.

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Analysis based on the text of HB 6264 as introduced. Bill numbers and status change — verify at legislature.mi.gov before citing. Operating cost figures are from the University’s application to the Michigan Strategic Fund; comparison provisions are from SB 1047 and HB 6138. We are residents reading public documents, not lawyers. If we have read this bill wrong, tell us and we will correct it.