CHAMPAIGN COUNTY – Data center developers have approached several villages in Champaign County. They’re looking for land to build the often-sprawling buildings that hold servers and require large amounts of electricity and water. That’s happening while the county has a one-year moratorium on new data center development.
The county board passed the pause in April, giving time for a task force to develop zoning and permitting standards for unincorporated land in the county.
What villages have been approached?
The only village that was in active talks with a data center developer was Mahomet. Officials had been speaking with Clean Cloud Energy, a data center developer based on the east coast, about a proposal to build a data center in the village since at least January.
Residents were not pleased when they learned about this.
“You didn’t care one iota about the health of the students in the school nearby,” Champaign County resident Philip Hult told county board members last week. “You didn’t give a flying hoot for the health of Mahomet residents or the residents of the rest of the county.”
After hearing the backlash, Mahomet officials announced they had ended talks with the developer and stated that data centers do not align with the community’s priorities and long-term interests.
Two data center developers have also contacted the county with interest in building in Sidney and Tolono, according to the county’s Director of Planning and Zoning John Hall. ABEI Energy, a company based in Spain, contacted the county about a site just outside of Tolono in May of 2025. Nodiac, a data center developer based in Denver, contacted the county about a site outside of Sidney in August.
Neither company has submitted an application, Hall said.
“I don’t know how serious they are,” he said.
Sidney officials were completely unaware of the proposed data center until the news broke publicly.
“The village President John Finn did not know anything about it,” Trustee Leroy Schluter said. “I myself didn’t know anything about it, so that was news to us.”
Sidney residents would not support a data center inside the village, he added.
“We just don’t think that would be a very wise environmental decision, and it wouldn’t be a decision that our residents would support.”
Tolono officials did not respond to a request for comment on the proposal outside of their village.
Can data centers be built under the moratorium?
The county’s yearlong moratorium on data center development does not apply if the development were to take place inside city or village limits. The moratorium only applies to unincorporated areas, not villages like Mahomet that have their own governing bodies. Mahomet officials would be able to agree to a data center project even with the moratorium in place.
“We can do whatever we want as a county, and Mahomet can still put a data center in,” Champaign County Board Member and Vice Chair of the data center task force Aaron Esry said. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
The moratorium would apply for the projects outside of Sidney and Tolono, because both sites fall outside of the villages’ limits on property under county jurisdiction, which could be why applications have not been filed from either company yet.
What’s next?
The county’s data center task force has been meeting since March and is currently reviewing a draft of the ordinance that members hope to get approved before the moratorium expires in April. At their meeting last week, several residents urged the task force to pass strong regulations, given the news about potential development in the county.
This week, the county board also approved a resolution to prohibit tax abatements for data centers. Some board members have also shown support for banning county officials and employees from entering nondisclosure agreements about data center development.
State lawmakers have not enacted data center regulations thus far, but Governor JB Pritzker has called on legislators to take up the issue in the November legislative veto session. In the meantime, he paused the state’s data center tax incentive and released a framework to regulate data centers.