With proposals of large-scale data centers spreading across Michigan, U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Thursday released what he called “terms of engagement” aimed at protecting communities from higher utility bills, grid strain, and environmental harm.
El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat running in the 2026 Senate primary, said at least 15 data center projects have been proposed across the state in the past year, including a planned 1.4-gigawatt facility tied to Oracle and OpenAI. His campaign said a project of that size would consume more electricity than the entire city of Detroit.
“We’ve watched as data center projects have proliferated up and down our state, raising alarm and concern about the impacts on water resources, electric bills, and safety,” Abdul said in a statement. “That’s because our local utilities have bought off the politicians who are supposed to regulate them–and because there simply hasn’t been the leadership to take on powerful corporations. These terms of engagement represent the bare minimum that data center projects should be able to guarantee if they want to move into our communities.”
He argued that utility companies are pushing to fast-track approvals without adequate oversight, even as residents face rising rates and persistent reliability problems.
The plan targets investor-owned utilities such as DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, which El-Sayed said have a history of rate hikes without improvements in service. His campaign accused utilities and developers of “steamrolling” local governments and regulators as communities scramble to understand the long-term impacts of energy-hungry data centers.
Under El-Sayed’s “Our Communities, Our Terms” framework, data center projects would be required to meet a series of conditions before receiving approval:
- No rate hikes: Data centers would be required to pay for their own energy demand, preventing costs from being passed on to residential ratepayers.
- Community transparency: Local residents would have a meaningful role in approvals and in negotiating community benefits.
- Energy reliability guarantees: Projects would need enforceable commitments to improve, not weaken, grid reliability, funded by data center revenues.
- Jobs guarantees: Developers would face penalties if promised local jobs fail to materialize.
- Water protection: Data centers would be required to use closed-loop cooling systems to limit water use and pollution.
- Community benefits agreements: Binding agreements would be required to deliver tangible benefits, such as grid upgrades, buried power lines, and improvements to water infrastructure.
- No clean-energy loopholes: Utilities would be barred from using data center demand as a justification to weaken Michigan’s clean-energy laws.
- Enforceability: All commitments would have to include clear penalties for noncompliance.
El-Sayed is competing in the Democratic primary against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak. His campaign said his opponents have supported tax exemptions for data center development without enforceable protections for ratepayers or the environment.
The campaign also emphasized that El-Sayed has never taken campaign contributions from utility companies that could benefit from rapid data center expansion.
A former Detroit health director and Wayne County health executive, El-Sayed has built his Senate run around challenging corporate power and prioritizing public health, affordability, and environmental protection. His campaign said the data center policy is part of a broader push to ensure that large infrastructure projects deliver measurable benefits to the communities that host them, rather than shifting costs onto residents.