Montana energy task force tackles future power demands amid AI data center proposals

Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Energy Task Force is looking to address growing energy needs and the potential for hyperscale artificial intelligence data centers.

Sonja Nowakowski, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality director, serves as the task force’s chair, and says the group is still in the early phases.

“Right now we’re kind of looking at problem statements and defining what barriers are out there to energy development in Montana, and then the next steps will be moving towards solutions,” said Nowakowski.

Montana is no stranger to data centers. With Atlas Power in Butte drawing 75 megawatts of computing power, Beowulf Energy in Harden drawing 100 megawatts in crypto-mining load and smaller state and private centers that draw less than five megawatts.

But Nowakowski says the state’s power infrastructure isn’t ready for larger proposals — pointing to Sabey Data Centers proposed 250 megawatt datacenter in Butte, Beowulf Energy’s proposed 300 megawatts of data center load, and Quantica Infrastructure as high as 1,000 megawatts in Yellowstone County.

“We know that NorthWestern’s balancing authority isn’t really set up to deal with that. We have to make some moves and some changes if projects like that are going to move forward and be viable and so that’s why we’re having these hard conversations,” said Nowakowski.

Nowakowski says the state is discussing innovative uses of geothermal and nuclear power to increase supply, but says everything is on the table including wind, solar, coal, natural gas and enhanced hydro, which are already in use.

“It wholeheartedly has to be some of the all of the above, with a recognition though, that you’re going to have some of that baseload thermal power potentially, unless we’re going to make this big transition into nuclear,” said Nowakowski.

Nowakowski says the state and region have been slow to move toward new generation, due to efficiency gains and lack of economic demand growth. But the task force hopes to pivot toward rapidly increasing generation.

“We haven’t done that in 30 years at least or 40 years even, where we’ve been on that incline where we are building generation and we’re recognizing all that comes with that,” said Nowakowski.

Nowakowski says mitigating generation and transmission are critical to the task force’s discussion, but solutions aren’t short-term projects.

“How we make sure we protect Montana’s ratepayers Have those hard conversations and then have the larger broader conversation about how do we quicken some of these timelines? What steps can we as government take to facilitate Private market discussions that move these projects along a little bit more quickly,” said Nowakowski.

The task force will provide detailed reports to Gianforte in September 2026 and January 2027.