Ameren Missouri’s solar facility in Callaway County will not be its last, as the largest electric provider in Missouri aims to increase the production capability and diversity of its electrical grid, in part to meet the demand of large load users like data centers.

Concerns circle around the efficiency of solar energy investment as opposed to nuclear power, as well as potential impacts to the electrical grid and environment caused by an influx of large load customers. Elected officials, state regulators and Ameren staff have cited stringent consumer protections laid out in Senate Bill 4, passed in 2024, and have insisted that new energy production is intended for the benefit of all Missourians, not just the largest customers.

The facility

Ameren plans to bring the new facility online by 2028, according to Dan Stroh, senior renewable development manager at Ameren Missouri. It will mark Ameren’s largest Missouri solar facility.

The facility will take up 1,160 acres of land in Reform, Missouri, and be located adjacent to Ameren’s nuclear energy facility already on the site. Ameren will need no easements or conveyances for the project, as it already owns the land. Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) Strategic Communications Director Sarah Fontaine said last week that Ameren owning the land already made the proposal significantly more attractive.

The facility will generate 250-megawatts of power when it comes online in 2028, or roughly enough to power 44,000 homes. Ameren says constructing the facility will create 300 construction jobs, while Stroh added that long-term jobs will also be created when the facility comes online.

State Rep. Jim Schulte, R-New Bloomfield, said the investment from Ameren, part of a push to build new facilities in the natural gas and solar sectors, will be key to economic development in the county he represents.

“Energy is the key to growth of anything, and if you can produce energy, you’re going to have economic growth from businesses and development,” Schulte, a member of the House Utilities Committee, said in a Wednesday interview. “It’s a key component, and as long as they can meet those demands, we will continue to grow.”

The PSC echoed that sentiment May 13 when it gave Ameren unanimous approval to build the facility.

“Generally, Missouri needs more generation,” Commission Chairwoman Kayla Hahn said at the May 13 meeting. “The need comes from the need to replace aging generation and the need to meet the emerging demand position Missouri as a competitor for economic development projects.”

Footing the bill

Concerns from the Office of the Public Counsel, a state office designed to serve as representation for the public in utility affairs, center around who will foot the bill for building the new facility. The cost to build the solar facility is not publicly available, with the only known cost being a transmission switch on-site that will cost around $17.2 million, according to previous reporting.

The office did not submit a complaint against the facility, but in a separate filing, laid out its belief that large-load consumers should pay for the infrastructure in its entirety. Ameren, in its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan annual update, noted that the growth of data centers is “fundamentally reshaping traditional load forecast approaches for many utilities across the U.S.”

The company also said it would prioritize building new generation facilities to keep the consumption of data centers separate from residential consumption, to ensure reliable service to large load consumers.

“Data centers have already raised the cost of service for electric utilities through socialized transmission costs, volatile wholesale markets, and increased costs for generation, transmission and distribution investments driven by unprecedented demand,” OPC Chief Economist Geoff Marke wrote in a March 23 memo to the PSC. “Not directly assigning and collecting costs from data centers for generation they alone need and want will raise electric bills in St. Louis and for the rest of Ameren Missouri’s service territory.”

“It has been less than one year since the Commission approved a 12.5 percent rate increase for Ameren Missouri. We fear that future cost recovery requests will make that number look small in the face of the more than $20 billion in planned capital expenditures (“CAPEX”) over the next five years per the Company’s most recently filed plant in service accounting (“PISA”) plan,” Marke added.

The office also noted the potential for increased rate hikes as energy providers grapple with increased transportation costs as diesel fuel prices flirt with record highs.

Schulte and Ameren have both pointed to Senate Bill 4, passed in 2024, which, among other regulatory changes, created tariffs to ensure that large-load users pay a representative share of the cost incurred to serve them.

“Missouri has one of the strictest laws in the nation, requiring data centers to pay the cost to serve and service them, while providing robust protections for all customers,” Schulte said. “There are no incentives, there are no discounts, the data centers are going to pay the freight on this thing. But the income tax, the revenue generated for the community, is going to really help.”

Data centers pay for 100 percent of the power they use, and for any new infrastructure required to ensure transmission of the massive amounts of electricity generation needed, according to a Wednesday news release from Gov. Mike Kehoe. However, costs to build new generation facilities can and are shared among all consumers through rate changes.

“We do not believe it is reasonable for existing customers to foot the bill for solar generation they do not need,” Marke wrote in OPC’s memo. “When Ameren requests to recover the costs of the Reform Solar project in rates, the OPC is hopeful the Commission will protect other customer classes from paying higher rates due to this project.”

Rob Dixon, vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs at Ameren, said Thursday the new facility is a shared benefit among all customers, as adding energy to the grid will drive down prices and increase energy flexibility and reliability.

“We’ll work with a potential large customer, and we’ll come up with an approach that continues to serve not just new customers, but all of our customers,” Dixon said. “If you think about these new large data centers, I mean, they’re like most of our customers who are looking for reliable and affordable power, so that’s really our most important responsibility.”

Who’s got the juice?

A week after Ameren got approval for its solar facility project, Kehoe and Google issued a joint press release announcing a $15 billion campus in New Florence, Missouri, that will include a data center about 20 miles, as the crow flies, away from Ameren’s solar facility.

In the press release, the governor’s office included information on a partnership between Ameren and Google to bring “more than 500 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity” onto the energy giant’s grid.

Ameren did not provide information to the News Tribune regarding how much energy the New Florence data center would draw from Ameren’s Nuclear or planned solar facility. Google did not respond to a Thursday morning email inquiring about energy consumption and sourcing by Friday afternoon.

Dixon said “some data centers are looking for clean energy sources,” though he added that the decision to build the solar facility was not based solely on meeting data center energy preferences. Some data center developers have shifted to a preference for renewable energy sources as concerns, like a 2026 report from the National Chapter of the NAACP, mount over increased emissions caused by meeting energy demands.

OPC was not convinced of the shared benefit and need for additional solar capacity, writing in its filing to the PSC: “This investment does not make sense unless you are building explicitly at the request and with the full financial support of a large data center who needs generation as quickly as possible and wants to pay a premium for less reliable but clean generation.”

The percentage of energy from the planned solar used by large load users, and the rate increase that Ameren will propose to recoup its investment, will be hashed out at a later rate case hearing, where Ameren and OPC representation will make their case to the PSC.

The Nuclear Option

The Missouri House Utilities Committee is nearly unanimous in its preference for nuclear energy, which cuts emissions while remaining more reliable than renewable sources, Schulte said.

Schulte told the News Tribune he’s received comments and concerns from constituents over the choice to build a solar facility as opposed to expanding the existing nuclear facility, as nuclear reactors generally take up smaller footprints and produce greater power generation.

Solar panels also degrade and solar facilities often have a shorter operating lifespan than their nuclear or natural gas counterparts, Schulte added. According to Solar Magazine, a publication focused on renewable energy issues, solar panels lose about 0.5 percent of maximum generation capability each year, with extreme cases causing annual degradation up to 1.4 percent. A 20-25 year life of service is the best case for most solar facilities, Schulte said, while the Callaway nuclear facility shows no signs of stopping since opening in 1984.

However, Schulte said, Ameren’s hands are tied, as energy providers in the state are statutorily required to meet renewable energy quotas.

“I think people need to understand that the people passed an initiative petition that forced utility companies into a certain percentage of renewable energy as part of the utility,” the Callaway County representative said. “So, Ameren is having to do this, whether it makes sense or not, they’re bound by law to do so much green energy, renewable energy growth in the form of solar or wind.”

Schulte added that there will still be room for a smaller nuclear reactor at the facility after the solar facility is built.

Ameren’s long-term plan includes a balanced energy make-up, with it hoping to generate a third of its energy from renewable generation, a third from fossil fuels and a third from nuclear generation by 2030, Stroh said.

“Our integrated resource plan points to the long-term planning that we have when we look far out in the future … supporting Ameren’s balanced energy mix for reliability and predictable operating,” the Ameren renewable energy specialist said.

Time is of the essence for energy generation, in the opinion of the Missouri PSC, and getting increased generation online is one of the commission’s biggest priorities, Fontaine said.

Schulte echoed that sentiment, saying that nuclear facilities often take a decade or more to plan, study and build, while solar facilities can be put up much more quickly.

“One of the things that we’re looking at right now is there’s a need for, you know, an increase that can happen fairly quickly,” Fontaine said last week. “I think they value all of the different types of generation, so I don’t know that it’s necessarily a priority. It’s just a matter of ‘What can we get online when we need it?'”

Looking forward

Data centers, and the building of increased energy output to meet their demands, aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, officials from each sector of the issue said.

Amazon plans to put up a data center in New Florence as well, marking two big tech giants putting down roots in the city of 635 people.

Schulte, PSC commissioners and Ameren said the state, its utility providers and regulators will have to continue balancing the issue of protecting consumers while investing in financial growth and capitalizing on an expanding industry.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there …. I heard a great comparison the other day from another rep. He said, ‘Think of this as the industrial revolution of the 21st century,'” Schulte said. “We’re facing a lot of the same negative publicity and scare tactics that were used back then, for a time that turned out to be the biggest economic boom and growth for middle-class people in America. I think the data center situation is going to be very similar.”