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Meta broke ground on the facility in DeKalb County in 2020. The
facility represents a $1 billion investment and is expected to
create hundreds of jobs.
“We chose DeKalb because it offered excellent infrastructure,
access to renewable energy, a strong pool of talent for both
construction and operations staff, and great community partners
that have helped us move forward quickly, and we’re happy to
call it home,” Meta’s Data Center Community and Economic
Development Director Brad Davis said.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker says a 4-year-old law is helping to bring
these types of facilities to the Land of Lincoln.
“Illinois has quickly become a hub of data center expansion
thanks to a law that we enacted back in 2019 to create new
incentives to attract data centers to Illinois,” Pritzker said.
That law exempts qualifying data centers from having to pay
state and local sales taxes on the equipment in the facilities,
including cooling and heating equipment and servers. Included in
the tax incentive package is a 20% income tax break to new data
centers built in high poverty areas of the state.
Before the incentives were implemented, many companies were
locating their data centers in neighboring states because of a
friendlier tax climate.
The Midwest has become a favorite spot for data center
construction. Industry experts point to lower costs,
connectivity and even a cooler climate as some of the factors
that make the region an ideal location for data center
expansion.
Meta has 10 operational data centers in the U.S., with three in
the Midwest and two more slated for construction in the region.
The DeKalb Data Center is run on 100% renewable energy, and is
powered by a wind farm in DeWitt County, Meta said.
In 2021, Illinois lawmakers passed the Reimagining Energy and
Vehicles Act, a tax incentive program to lure electric vehicle
and parts manufacturers to Illinois. The REV Act was conceived
in the wake of the state passing the Climate and Equitable Jobs
Act.
The fifth company to take advantage of REV Act tax incentives,
Gotion, Inc., announced that it will build a lithium battery
plant in Manteno, but that proposal is being met with opposition
because of the company’s Chinese ties.
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