A tech-forward alternative

I am not on a bandwagon against data centers. I founded multiple tech businesses in Lansing, including one co-located at ACD.net, one of our own local micro data centers. I have worked in economic development and believe in distributed data infrastructure. I spent 35 years as an ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 auditor — assessing management systems and evaluating risk. I am writing against Deep Green because this project is not primarily a data center. It is a non-clean energy power plant with a data center attached, and what it asks this community to accept on faith is not acceptable.

Before any vote to sell or rezone this land, the council needs answers it has not been given. The service contract between Bloom Energy and BWL has not been made public — the council is being asked to approve a 20-year energy commitment without seeing its own terms. No independent environmental impact study has been completed. No noise study has been conducted for a facility running industrial-scale fuel cells and cooling systems around the clock. No independent economic analysis has been commissioned — only numbers from the developer and an estimate using an inflated assessment basis. This is not due diligence. This is a leap of faith with permanent consequences.

Even if every promise holds, the deal is not worth it. Right now, $660 million in investment is actively being built within blocks of this site — the Tower on Grand, the new Public Safety Complex, Riverview 220, the new City Hall, Ovation Center and Brick Row. Our downtown is not desperate. It is in a once-in-a-generation moment. Deep Green’s commitment to this community is fifteen permanent jobs. Fifteen. That is a bad trade for a prime parcel at the center of everything we are building.

The $900,000 annual property tax claim does not reach residents the way it was presented. The property sits in the Downtown TIFA district, which captures tax increment before it reaches the general fund — the mayor himself estimated only about $200,000 actually gets there. The headline number is not money for residents. Most of it is already spoken for.

These solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) run on natural gas and produce CO2. The claimed 50% emissions reduction is measured against the dirtiest power on the regional grid — not the status quo, not a clean energy standard — and SOFCs still emit 60 to 70 percent of what direct combustion produces. Bloom Energy’s record makes this worse. In 2013, Bloom told a waste contractor their canisters were nonhazardous and could be dumped at any public landfill. The contractor tested them and found benzene. The EPA later designated Bloom a Large Quantity Generator of hazardous waste and fined them over $1 million for mishandling it. Last month, Bloom’s VP told your city council that fuel cells do not contain or generate any toxic chemicals. Don’t take my word for it — search Bloom Energy and the EPA, then search Bloom Energy and Delaware, and read what their own legislators said after a decade of promises.

The risks here are structural and permanent: land committed, emissions added, energy obligations locked in. The benefits are uncertain, conditional, and — even at their best — modest. Fifteen jobs. Tax revenue that mostly won’t reach us. Aesthetic promises not written into the contract. Forty-three residents spoke against this at the public hearing. Six spoke in favor. The council should not vote until the Bloom service contract is public, independent environmental and noise studies are complete, and an independent economic analysis has been conducted. Lansing deserves answers before a decision — not promises after.

Jerry Norris
Founder, The Fledge
Lansing, Michigan