Michigan Data Centers: The Weekly Download

New Developments

• Clinton Township has joined the ranks of Michigan communities with a temporary moratorium on data centers. Anne Snabes of The Detroit News reports that the township’s Board of Trustees voted 6-0 to approve a 180-day pause on accepting and processing permitting applications and site plans for data centers within Clinton Township.
• The Lansing Economic Area Partnership on Tuesday announced a partnership with Lighthouse Sustainability to begin community engagement with the goal of constructing a $10 billion data center at a site in Holt and Delhi Township, Beth LeBlanc reports for The Detroit News. The group intends to work with community members over the next six months to develop a framework for what an acceptable data center would look like, with one of the developers penning a poem outlining his vision of a facility negotiated alongside residents.

One of the developers wrote a two-page poem that he read at a press conference announcing the process. https://t.co/aisFiYCGi2

— Beth LeBlanc (@DNBethLeBlanc) October 27, 2026

• In a statement released the following morning Delhi Charter Township Manager Tracy Miller announced that the township was ending its membership in the Lansing Economic Area Partnership. The township approved a 12-month data center moratorium last April
• On Friday, the Delhi Charter Township Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution in opposition to data center development within the community.

Updates

• Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is challenging the Michigan Public Service Commission’s decision to approve special contracts allowing DTE Energy to supply power to a hyperscale data center planned by Google in Van Buren Township. Filing a petition for rehearing, Nessel argues that the public service commission should accept a series of recommendations she proposed to strengthen DTE’s cost recoveries from Google and ensure costs do not fall on DTE’s existing customers, or reject the contracts outright.
• Members of the Pittsfield Township Board of Trustees approved an ordinance regulating data centers and other high-resource demand facilities after about a year of discussion on guardrails, WEMU’s Kevin Meerschaert reports.

News of Note

• Ahead of Election Day, the Sierra Club’s Michigan chapter has launched a data center position tracker asking sitting state lawmakers and candidates three questions: Will you vote for a temporary moratorium if it is put up for a vote; will you vote for permanent regulations to protect our water, energy grid, transparency, community benefits agreements, and require union labor, if put up for a vote; and will you vote for data center tax incentive repeal, if put up for a vote?
• Bridge Michigan’s Kelly House recaps a panel discussion centered on data centers held as part of Bridge’s inaugural Michigan Issues Summit. Panelists discussed the backlash against data centers and how this pushback is reshaping the state’s policy landscape.