How Data Centers Could Impact Montanans
Cost-shifting means the public pays for data center energy and infrastructure. Backdoor deals are a common tool used by utilities, like NorthWestern Energy, to avoid disclosing that they are using revenues from existing residential and small business customers to subsidize electricity for data centers.¹ Montana has no protective regulatory framework, such as a separate rate class for data centers or large load tariffs, to protect existing customers from subsidizing data centers.² NorthWestern Energy’s negotiations with fourteen data centers are hidden from public view, three of which by a Protective Order granted by the Montana Public Service Commission.³ In Montana, data centers and everything related to that operation enjoy one of the very lowest property tax rates of 0.9%.⁴ In one recent instance, litigation revealed that an east coast utility was planning for existing customers to pick up an extra $325 million for discounted energy costs to the data center.⁵ People on the east coast who are served by the largest grid operator in the US "were hit with an extra $9.4 billion in electricity bills as proposed data centers drove up prices.”⁶
Data centers strain water supplies and bring air and noise pollution. Just one data center can consume as much as five million gallons of water in a day.⁷ The majority of water consumed on-site at data centers is drinking water grade.⁸ Communities’ wells have gone dry when large data centers move into their neighborhoods.⁹ Data centers are prone to fires. In Ohio, two Amazon data centers called out a fire department 84 times in one year (2021) and those two data centers pay zero in property taxes.¹⁰ In Montana, a now defunct data center in Bonner was a years’ long noise nuisance to neighbors.¹¹ For neighbors of data centers, noise can reach 90 decibels.
Montana Environmental Information Center
February 2026