Public comment period extended for natural gas project

  • March 26, 2025
870 450 Tom Content

State energy regulators on Tuesday, March 25, ended a hearing before everyone who attended had the chance to voice their comments about $1.7 billion in natural gas projects proposed by We Energies in Oak Creek.

Frustrated members of the public objected to the hearing ending after less than two hours, after the earlier afternoon hearing lasted more than four hours.

As a result, Administrative Law Judge Michael Newmark agreed to extend the deadline for written comments about one of the two projects in Oak Creek, the $1.2 billion proposal to build a new natural gas-fired power plant on the site of the original Oak Creek coal plant.

Public comments in that case had been allowed to be sent in by Thursday, March 27, but now the deadline for comments has been extended to Monday, April 7. 

Members of the public who missed out on a chance to weigh in on March 25 can type up their comments and submit them here.

April 7 is also the deadline for comments in the other big case that was the subject of the hearing — the proposal to build an LNG storage facility. Submit comments on that case here.

Hundreds of people showed up in person at the Oak Creek Community Center or via Zoom to submit comments on the proposal. 

CUB hired a national expert to review the We Energies proposal, driven largely by energy demand linked to the Microsoft data center project in Racine County. CUB is calling for the PSC to reject the LNG project and build at most a portion of the $1.2 billion project at this time. CUB’s recommendation is based on the feverish hype over data centers that is raising questions about how much energy demand these centers will need, and when that increased demand will materialize. In addition, CUB’s analysis found that We Energies vastly overestimated the cost of a competing technology, battery energy storage, and gave short shrift to energy efficiency and demand response.

Check out the media coverage below, starting with this story from Milwaukee’s TMJ4:

 

 

Natural gas opponents call on PSC to block largest piece of We Energies’ $2B plan – Wisconsin Public Radio

We Energies’ plan for $2 billion natural gas plant faces criticism at public hearing – CBS 58 Milwaukee

We Energies wants a new gas plant in Oak Creek. The public weighs in – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Oak Creek We Energies natural gas plant sees pushback – Fox 6 News Milwaukee