Something big is happening with Montana’s energy future, and most people in the Heights haven’t heard about it yet. Big tech companies want to build massive data centers here, and how Montana handles that will affect your electric bill, your property taxes, and the kinds of jobs available in our community for years to come. I’ve been digging into this, and I want to share what I’ve found and hear what you think.
A data center is essentially a massive warehouse full of computers and cooling systems. They power things like artificial intelligence tools, cryptocurrency mining, and cloud storage. Every time you save a file to “the cloud” or use an AI assistant, that work is happening in a facility like this.
They are not like a typical factory or office building. Their energy and water demands are far beyond what most communities are designed to handle, and they operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
NorthWestern Energy, Montana’s largest utility and the company that powers most of our homes and businesses, has signed agreements to provide electricity to multiple data centers in Yellowstone County and elsewhere in the state.
NorthWestern currently uses about 760 megawatts of electricity to power all of its Montana customers. The data centers it has agreed to serve would need more than twice that amount, enough to power roughly 1.2 million homes. Montana has about 500,000 homes total.
To put it plainly: NorthWestern has promised data centers more power than it currently provides to every home and business in Montana combined, and it doesn’t yet have a plan for where that power comes from.
Because right now, there is nothing in Montana law preventing NorthWestern from passing the cost of building new power plants and upgrading the grid onto your electric bill. All of that new infrastructure would exist primarily to serve these data centers.
We have a real-world example of what can happen. In northern Virginia, where data centers are already dense, regulators predict that average residential electric bills will increase by up to $37 per month as utilities expand to meet data center demand. That is over $440 a year, on top of the rate increases Montanans have already seen.
That is not hypothetical. That is what happens when states do not put guardrails in place before the data centers arrive.
Honestly, not much, and some of what they did made things worse for homeowners.
In 2025, the Montana Legislature lowered the property tax rate for data centers to 0.9%, one of the lowest rates in the state, at the same time residential property tax rates were going up for families across Billings Heights.
A study resolution that would have examined the impacts of data centers on our energy grid did not even make it out of committee. Republican members on the Senate Energy Committee killed it before it could be studied.
Meanwhile, NorthWestern tried to pass two bills that would have let them sign contracts with data centers without any Public Service Commission oversight, effectively cutting the public out of decisions that affect every ratepayer in Montana.
Construction is, genuinely. Building a large data center facility means real union labor: electricians, ironworkers, pipefitters, operating engineers. That is significant work, and those are good Montana jobs. I support that, and I support the workers who do it.
But it is worth being honest about the full picture. Once a data center is built and operating, it typically employs between 20 and 50 permanent workers, for a facility that might have employed 1,000 or more during construction. The long-term economic return to the community is often much smaller than the initial jobs promise suggests.
Montana has seen this pattern before. Well-financed industries come in, take what they need from our resources, and leave locals holding the bag when the boom is over. That history is worth keeping in mind.
Some people are. Several states including New York, South Dakota, and Oklahoma have introduced moratorium bills that would pause new data center construction for a few years while they study the impacts on utilities, the environment, and local communities.
I have friends and colleagues who support a multi-year moratorium on large data centers in Montana. Their concerns are legitimate, covering our grid, our water supply, and whether we can regulate fast enough to protect people.
I also have friends who argue that a moratorium would shut down the conversation about good regulation before it can even start. Their view is that it is easier to require accountability from companies that have already committed to the state than from ones who have not arrived yet.
Both perspectives have real merit. I will tell you where I lean at the end of this post, but I genuinely want to hear where you stand first.
Data centers use enormous amounts of water for cooling, comparable in scale to large industrial facilities. And because Montana still relies heavily on coal for power generation, bringing massive new electricity demand online could extend the life of fossil fuel plants rather than accelerating the move toward cleaner energy.
There is a smarter path available. Requiring data centers to bring their own renewable energy generation, like solar or wind, as a condition of connecting to the grid would mean new industrial demand builds clean capacity instead of propping up old fossil infrastructure. Some states are already moving in that direction.
Quite a bit, actually. Other states have already shown the way:
- Create a separate rate class for data centers. Oregon and Virginia have done this. It means data centers pay their own infrastructure costs rather than having those costs spread across all residential customers.
- Require full cost accountability for grid upgrades. In Chelan County, Washington, Microsoft paid $86.5 million upfront to build the infrastructure needed to serve its data center, so ratepayers did not foot the bill. Montana can require the same.
- Restore Public Service Commission oversight. The PSC is supposed to protect ratepayers. NorthWestern has been working around them. The legislature can close that loophole.
- Require transparency. Right now, NorthWestern’s contracts with data centers are secret. The PSC has ruled they do not have to be shared with the public. That needs to change.
- Require renewable energy commitments. Data centers that need new power should be required to bring clean generation with them, not just tap into existing coal-dependent supply.
So where do you stand?
Personally, I want to welcome the jobs, protect the ratepayers, and make data centers pay their own way.
I’m not convinced a blanket moratorium is the right tool — mostly because I don’t want to walk away from the union construction jobs, and I think smart regulation is more durable than a pause. But I also think Montana is at serious risk of repeating a familiar mistake: letting a well-resourced industry write the rules in their favor before the public knows what’s at stake.
The legislature already gave data centers a property tax break while your taxes went up. I don’t want to see your electric bill be next.
That said — this is exactly the kind of issue where I think a representative should listen before they plant a flag. So I’m asking – let me know what you think!