Wisconsin News

WE Energies plans new 750MW natural gas plant in Fox Valley

October 10, 2026

We Energies plans to build a new natural gas power plant in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley, the latest in a string of new natural gas plant proposals to draw criticism from environmental groups.

The utility filed an engineering plan with state regulators last week for a 750-megawatt natural gas power plant, dubbed the Fox North Energy Center. It would be built at the existing gas-fired Fox Energy Center site in the village of Wrightstown.

The engineering plan did not include an estimated project cost, and a spokesperson for the utility declined to provide a construction cost estimate. Environmental groups say it’s the seventh new gas plant proposal in roughly two years in Wisconsin as utilities rush to meet spiking energy demand from data centers.

“It’s astounding how much We Energies is investing in gas,” said Ciaran Gallagher, energy and air manager at the nonprofit Clean Wisconsin. “This is a 750 megawatt combined cycle power plant, which means it is designed to run continuously, unlike the plants that We Energies got approved in in southeast Wisconsin a couple years ago.”

In a statement, We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway said the Fox North Energy Center will help meet the state’s growing energy needs while improving grid reliability across the region.

“The engineering plan marks the first step in the review process,” Conway said. “Additional information about the project will be provided through regulatory filings in the coming months.”

The proposal comes as a draft report from state utility regulators found electricity demand in Wisconsin is expected to rise by 40 percent by 2032, driven by three large data center developments. The same report projected coal would fall to around 3 percent of Wisconsin’s energy generation, while natural gas would rise to about 50 percent by 2032.

Utilities and energy developers across the state are proposing new electricity generation in response to rising demand.

WEC Energy Group, the parent company of We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service, has received approval from regulators to develop seven solar farms, five battery storage projects, two wind projects, two natural gas power plants, a natural gas storage facility and a 33-mile natural gas pipeline project, according to a presentation to investors last month.

We Energies also plans to spend more than $2 billion to acquire a pair of natural gas projects that Chicago-based energy developer Invenergy has proposed in Kenosha and Walworth counties, able to generate a combined roughly 1,500 megawatts.

Invenergy also wants to build a pair of gas plants in Calumet County that would be able to generate a combined 1,900 megawatts. A spokesperson for We Energies declined to say whether the company planned to purchase those plants, but one was included in a spreadsheet it filed as part of its ongoing rate case.

We Energies hasn’t said whether the proposed gas plant in Wrightstown would serve a data center.

But Gallagher with Clean Wisconsin said the surge in gas proposals in recent years is responding to the massive energy needs of data centers, either directly or indirectly.

“There might be a solar plant or or a storage facility that they had previously thought would serve everyday Wisconsinites, and instead is now going to serve a data center,” she said. “Then they have to build a gas plant to serve the rest of us instead. We don’t know exactly who this is going to serve, but clearly this rush to build gas plants is fueled by this data center craze.”

While the construction costs for the new plant remain a question mark, Gallagher said gas power plants can carry costs for customers long after they’re built due to fluctuations in fuel costs.

She said one advantage of renewable energy projects, like wind turbines or solar farms, is that utilities don’t need to pay the wind to blow or the sun to shine.

“With coal and gas, there is a fuel cost that is mostly passed through directly to ratepayers, so there’s volatileness to that,” she said. “Gas price shifts up or down. That’s not something that the utility is going to feel in their bank account. That’s something that Wisconsinites will feel when we pay our electricity bills.”

Utilities have maintained that gas-fired power plants are necessary to keep the lights on at times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

The surge in gas-fired power plant proposals isn’t exclusive to Wisconsin.

Natural gas plant proposals nationally have almost tripled since early 2023 and increased by 44 percent in just the last eight months, according to a new report from the Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group.

Gallagher said these proposals come as Wisconsinites are just beginning to see the effects of climate change from Canadian wildfire smoke to increasing bouts of severe weather.

She said burning more fossil fuels will only make matters worse.

“These last three years have shown that climate change is here, and it’s affecting the Great Lake states as well, not just the coasts,” Gallagher said. “Our utilities are continuing to invest in electricity generation that will just make that worse.”