(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – There’s plenty we still don’t know about data centers – and that has to change.

Gov. JB Pritzker (pictured) touched on the subject during a visit to the Rivian plant in Normal Tuesday morning.

“Data centers serve an important role in our newly AI-driven society and, whether we like that or not, we are going to see more and more technology available to people in their daily lives, in their work and so on. And I think, importantly, we need to focus on generating more electricity. It’s why we [assed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which has increased solar.”

And data centers or not, the governor said the need for more electricity would still be there. And Pritzker said there is now 35 times the amount of solar energy available since he took office.

Pritzker mentioned another natural resource in abundance in Illinois. “We’re an attractive place for companies to move to that need water, whether it’s in manufacturing, data centers, or anything else. My job – our job – is to make sure that we protect the fresh water that we have here,” said the governor. “Here in Illinois, we are on the shores of and sitting on top of eighty percent of the United States’ fresh water. Eighty percent. Twenty percent of the world’s fresh water.”