Decatur residents and environmental advocates rallied outside Google’s Chicago headquarters on 12 November and asked the company to break its power deal with Broadwing Energy, a planned gas-fired plant with carbon capture in Decatur, Illinois, Capitol News Illinois reported. They delivered a letter seeking a response by 3 December. Neither Google, ADM nor Broadwing Energy’s parent company responded to the outlet’s request for comment.
The plant would have over 400 MW of capacity, Google said when it announced the deal on 23 October 2025. At full output all year, that is 3.5 TWh, or 11.4% of the 30.8 TWh Google’s data centres used in 2024, by our arithmetic from Google’s 2025 Environmental Report. That is a ceiling, not a forecast. The plant’s stated storage potential of over 2 million tons of CO2 a year is about 3.7 times what ADM’s Decatur site sequestered in 2023, by our arithmetic from EPA data.
Business Pill · Grid Cost Allocation
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on grid cost allocation: who pays for new power lines. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Google or Broadwing.
The key insight: As we read Google’s post and the protest report, the Broadwing deal turns a gas plant into part of Google’s data-centre power supply on the promise of capturing about 90% of its CO2, and the 12 November rally puts that promise to a local test before the plant exists.
Google called it a “first-of-its kind corporate agreement to support a gas power plant with CCS”. It said Broadwing “will capture and permanently store approximately 90% of its CO2 emissions” and that by “agreeing to buy most of the power it generates”, Google is helping connect the plant to “the regional grid that supports our data centers”. Google did not give a price, a contract length or which data centres the power reaches.
The plant sits at an industrial facility run by Archer Daniels Midland. Google said the CO2 will be stored in ADM’s “adjacent EPA-approved Class VI sequestration facilities more than a mile underground”, and that it looks forward to commercial operation “by early 2030”. It cited an estimated 750 full-time jobs over four years of construction.
Broadwing is the first project in a longer collaboration with developer Low Carbon Infrastructure, an I Squared Capital portfolio company. Broadwing’s project page says the plant will supply electricity to Google and ADM, plus steam for ADM’s processing, and that it has “the potential to permanently sequester over 2 million tons of CO2 emissions per year”.
Google data-centre electricity use, 2022-2024, from its 2025 Environmental Report, against the Broadwing plant’s ceiling of 400 MW running all year. The ceiling and the 11.4% share are our arithmetic; Google said it will buy most of the output.
What the Protesters Want
The coalition asked Google to make a comparable investment in renewable energy and batteries instead, and to bring Decatur residents into future talks, Capitol News Illinois reported. Kavi Chintam, Illinois campaign manager for the nonprofit Vote Solar, urged lawmakers to pass the POWER Act, a bill that would regulate data centres’ energy and water use.
“How we require data centers to power their operations today will define this state’s climate legacy,” Chintam said. The outlet reported that whether data centres can use natural gas is a contested point in the POWER Act talks.
Residents raised water. A retired teacher who organizes with Illinois People’s Action said: “Lake Decatur is where 70,000 Decatur residents, myself included, get our drinking water”. A resident who lives near the site said a gas plant next to ADM would bring “more fossil fuel pollution to Decatur instead of new clean energy investments”.
Some residents also say ADM lost their trust after leaks at its CO2 monitoring wells went unreported and violated the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to the outlet, which cites an earlier EPA finding.
Key dates for the Broadwing plant, from Google’s announcement and Capitol News Illinois. Spacing is not to scale; the 21 days are our arithmetic.
Where the Illinois Fight Stands
Illinois’ 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act requires power plants to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2045. Asked in October about the phaseout, Gov. JB Pritzker told Capitol News Illinois: “we believe the technology is advancing quite fast, and so will allow those folks to apply the technology to bring down emissions and make it possible for gas plants to keep going”.
As we read the numbers, a 400 MW plant running all year would equal 11.4% of what Google’s data centres used in 2024, by our arithmetic; Google has said it will buy most of the output, not all of it.
As we read the EPA and Broadwing figures, the plant’s stated potential of over 2 million tons a year is about 3.7 times what ADM’s Decatur site sequestered in 2023, by our arithmetic.
Google, Our first carbon capture and storage project, 23 October 2025
“By agreeing to buy most of the power it generates, Google is helping get this new, baseload power source built and connected to the regional grid that supports our data centers.”
Three Implications
FOR GOOGLE The coalition’s letter asks for a reply by 3 December; Google did not respond to Capitol News Illinois’ request for comment.
FOR ILLINOIS Whether data centres can use natural gas is a contested point in the POWER Act talks, the outlet reported.
FOR OUR COVERAGE We will add Google’s, ADM’s or LCI’s reply when one is published.
The framework puts it this way: “The structural bottleneck isn’t computing, it’s electrons.”
As we read it, Broadwing is Google buying those electrons from gas with carbon capture, and the Decatur rally shows that where the electrons come from is now argued over locally. The framework predates this deal and does not discuss Broadwing or Decatur.
What Is Not Established
Google has not said which data centres the Broadwing power serves, what it pays, or how much of the output it buys beyond “most”. The 11.4% share assumes full output all year and is a ceiling. Broadwing’s “tons” may not be the metric tonnes EPA uses, so the 3.7 times comparison is approximate. We did not read the coalition’s letter, and none of the companies has answered it publicly.
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The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Google’s first gas-with-carbon-capture deal now has an organised local opposition and a 3 December deadline for a reply. The plant’s ceiling output equals 11.4% of Google’s 2024 data-centre electricity, by our arithmetic, and its storage target is about 3.7 times ADM’s 2023 volume. Whether gas can count toward a data centre’s new power is an open point in the POWER Act talks in Springfield.
A note on sourcing. The rally, the protesters’ quotes and the comment requests come from Capitol News Illinois’ report of 13 November 2026, read in full; residents are identified by role only. Deal terms come from Google’s 23 October 2025 blog post and Broadwing Energy’s project page. ADM’s 2023 sequestered volume comes from EPA’s FLIGHT greenhouse gas data and Google’s electricity use from its 2025 Environmental Report.
The 3.5 TWh ceiling, the 11.4% share and the 3.7 times comparison are our arithmetic. We did not read the coalition’s letter.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
