NOTE: This opinion piece appears in The Des Moines Register (6/28/26), titled “Pick solar over risky natural gas to power Iowa data centers“
It’s common to hear we’re in a global “energy crisis”, but we’re not. We’re in a fuel crisis.
The Hormuz-driven oil (and fertilizer) crisis will likely pass sooner or later, but dependence on volatile fuel markets and limited infrastructure for energy is never a good idea.
And yet, Iowa is barreling towards over-dependence upon another imported fuel now. The rush to build natural gas generating plants to power data centers could lock all ratepayers – gas and electric – into a generation of rising prices, infrastructure bottlenecks, and repeated price shocks.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We have good options to protect ratepayers, and to choose near and longer term fuel independence and energy affordability, but we need quick action from policymakers.
Iowa’s growing and dangerous natural gas dependency
Alliant and MidAmerican currently have applications at the Iowa Utilities Commission to build 3,845 MW of natural gas generating plants, virtually all designed to meet data center demand. These plants could rapidly double Iowa’s power sector natural gas use, which already represents roughly 15% of Iowa’s total natural gas consumption.
This rush to gas power plants is happening in nearly every state, and it is folly. Over 70% of the 28 GW of projects approved for fast-tracking by the regional power grid operator are natural gas plants.
All natural gas is imported to Iowa, and we pay for it coming and going – directly in gas bills for heating and industrial processes, and indirectly in electric bills. How much we pay depends on national wholesale market prices, pipeline costs, and volatile price spikes during peak periods.
Industry analysis such as ICF, Wood Mackenzie and Rystad are all predicting structural market prices rising steadily, thanks to AI power demands, LNG export growth, and the de-coupling of “associated” gas from the slowing shale oil boom. As CoBANK succinctly states, “the long-held expectation of ‘stable, cheap, domestic’ natural gas is reaching the end of its lifecycle.”
Iowa can’t control national gas wholesale markets, but we surely can control our ratepayer’s exposure to them by avoiding over-reliance in our power sector. We can also avoid overloading Iowa’s pipeline network, and contributing to more price shocks for natural gas ratepayers like the 2021 polar vortex, which cost Iowans somewhere between a quarter and a half billion in higher bills.
Data Center Best Practices
Data center regulation is an extremely active topic for policymakers in states of all stripes across the country. On energy, certain best practices are increasingly clear now.
The first thing policymakers should do at state and local levels is to ban non-disclosure agreements, and insist on full transparency in resource use, rates and service agreements. This is the foundation of community rights and corporate citizenship. It’s also critical to ensuring tariffs and power supply agreements do not raise rates or create grid emergencies for the rest of us.
Then policymakers should require new large load tariffs for data centers. An LLT would require that data centers are assigned all costs of service, and that there is no cross-subsidization of data center costs by other ratepayer classes. And it should require customers to enter into long-term contracts (minimum 15-20 years) so they can’t walk away and leave existing ratepayers with expensive stranded assets.
Finally, policymakers should implement a requirement that all new large electrical loads agree to curtailment plans to ensure they do not contribute to peak load grid outages, and fuel price spikes. If Texas can do this, so can Iowa.
Solar Energy Permitting Reform
We need to meet electricity demand growth with fuels other than natural gas. While nuclear and geologic hydrogen may be viable options long term, the only cost-effective solution that maintains grid reliability near and mid-term is renewables (mainly solar) plus storage.
Once installed, solar and storage operate on free Iowa fuel forever.
Yes, there are understandable concerns in Iowa communities about land use, and many counties have effectively banned utility solar. But there are also landowner property rights to consider, and extensive local tax revenue to be had, and the urgent public good of building electricity generation not dependent
on imported and volatile natural gas.
Surveys repeatedly show most Iowans support solar energy, and there are surely compromise approaches. Here’s one idea: counties follow state solar permitting guidelines for the first 1% of county acres under solar panels, after which siting authority returns to counties.
Yes, utility scale solar can be built to improve soil health and reduce flooding, and even be integrated with crop and livestock agriculture. And yes, we rural Iowans can get used to large solar fields if we believe they’re providing affordable and reliable power to our communities.
If we’re OK enrolling over 4% of Iowa’s acreage in CRP, and dedicating over 20% of Iowa acreage to vehicle fuel, surely 1% is worth dedicating to ensuring an affordable and reliable power grid for the foreseeable future.
Whatever the compromise, we urgently need state policymakers to keep the Iowa door open to renewable energy, avoid staking our energy future on natural gas, and ensure the data center boom does not threaten the future of Iowa’s grid, communities, and ratepayers.
Posted: June 29, 2026
