Where Dakota Resource Council Stands on Data Centers in North Dakota

Data Centers and the Uneasy Growth in North Dakota

Dakota Resource Council members have grown more and more uneasy about how fast these data centers are popping up across North Dakota. In 2025, several big data centers were either proposed or quietly approved in Williston, Harwood and Ellendale while the state, maybe too eager, promised around $100 million to attract even more sites and gave away tax breaks that feel a bit too generous. Many of these deals happen behind closed doors, through non-disclosure papers and those closed executive meetings where local people can’t even sit in. It’s strange because the talk is always about jobs and progress but the proof, the real proof, is missing or at least very thin.

There’s no clear rule for what happens if a project collapses, no plan for the land that’s left behind. Meanwhile, these centers eat up power and water like there’s no tomorrow and they hum all night, lights spilling into windows, and electric bills go higher, not lower. With barely any state regulation or ethical watch, DRC members say it’s time to slow the rush, to build real guardrails and demand public say before another server farm sets its roots.

Our friends down in South Dakota, are facing the same fight. In Deuel County people from Scandinavia Township and a few of those tiny towns nearby have been showing up at the county meetings, talking about the proposed Applied Digital data center location. Some are worried and confused what it even means for them and their farms. Meanwhile the Legislature’s pushing a bill of fifty years of sales tax rebates. You can watch the video, it’s just regular folks standing up for where they live.

Data Centers in North Dakota: What They Mean for Our Electric Bills, Our Grid, and Our Communities

What Is a Data Center?

A data center, in the simplest way to put it, is like a huge warehouse but instead of boxes, it’s full of humming computer servers stacked in endless rows. Some have thousands, others hundreds of thousands of machines, all blinking and breathing heat. They run the cloud, the AI models, the crypto rigs, the streaming videos you forget are even stored somewhere. It’s strange because companies call them “clean,” sometimes “low-impact,” but that’s not really true, not completely. These are some of the most power-hungry buildings ever made, like industrial beasts dressed in digital clothes.

Why Data Centers Are a Big Deal for Electric Bills

They Use Enormous Amounts of Power

A single large data center can swallow as much electricity as a small city, or tens of thousands of homes, or several big manufacturing plants all together. It’s almost unbelievable but that’s how it is. Many of the ones proposed in North Dakota would run day and night, every day of the year, no pause for weather or season or grid stress. The power draw never sleeps, it just keeps asking for more.

Utilities Must Build New Power Infrastructure

To feed these digital factories, utilities have to build new things: new power plants, often gas-fired because they can’t rely on wind or sun for constant supply, new transmission lines, new substations. It’s like rebuilding parts of the grid for one customer. The cost doesn’t stay with the company either, it spreads quietly across everyone’s bill. Farmers, small-town families, cafes on Main Street, they all end up paying for wires and turbines meant mostly for a few corporate giants.

In North Dakota, you can already see this pattern in the Integrated Resource Plans, in the “load growth” justifications, in the natural gas projects that appear right after a data center announcement. They call it “economic development,” but the math often says otherwise.

Electric Bills Can Go Up, Even If You Don’t Use the Data Center

Utilities recover those investments by raising rates. Sometimes it’s a base rate hike, sometimes a fixed charge, sometimes a long-term adjustment regulators approve quietly. Even if the data center gets a discount, the rest of us shoulder the risk. If the project shuts down or the demand never reaches what they promised, the infrastructure still exists and someone must pay for it. That someone is usually the ratepayer.

Grid Strain and Diesel Generator Pollution

The Grid Is Not Built for This Kind of Load

North Dakota’s electric grid, especially in rural co-op areas, wasn’t designed for this type of constant industrial appetite. It’s meant for farms, homes, small industries, not for a 24/7 computational furnace. When the grid can’t keep up, these facilities flip on their backup diesel generators, and that’s where the story gets messy.

Diesel Generators Are Not “Emergency-Only” in Practice

Every big data center comes with rows of diesel engines. They’re supposed to be for emergencies, but in practice they run more often, testing, grid congestion, weather events, or just to keep reliability indicators. So you get more diesel exhaust, more nitrogen oxides, more fine particles in the air. It’s not always disclosed clearly in permits, and local residents may not realize how often those engines run.

Who Bears the Risk?

Data centers negotiate special deals: long-term contracts, tax breaks, discounted rates. But when they leave or underperform, the utility doesn’t just walk away. The infrastructure stays, the debt stays, and ratepayers keep paying. For rural cooperatives, this can be dangerous. Their mission is to provide affordable power to members, not to gamble on speculative digital industries that may vanish in five years.

Sometimes the math doesn’t add up, but the projects move ahead anyway, and then everyone wonders later why the bills crept higher.

Data Centers Don’t Create Many Local Jobs

Despite their enormous power draw, these facilities employ surprisingly few people. Maybe 20 or 30 full-time workers, sometimes less. Construction brings a short burst of activity, then silence. Communities are left with higher electric costs, more strain on infrastructure, and not much else to show for it. It’s like building a factory that makes heat instead of products.

Water Use and Cooling Concerns

Cooling is another quiet problem. Many data centers need huge amounts of water to keep servers from overheating. In dry or rural areas, that can strain local wells or municipal systems. Sometimes the water use is disclosed late in the permitting process, or not fully explained. It’s easy to underestimate until the first summer drought arrives.

Why Rural Communities Should Ask Tough Questions

Before approving any of these projects, local boards and regulators should ask hard questions. Who pays for the new power plants and lines? What happens if the company leaves? Are co-op members protected from higher rates? How many permanent jobs are guaranteed? How often will the diesel engines run, and who checks that? And maybe most important, does the community actually benefit, or just host the risk?

DRC’s Position

Dakota Resource Council believes North Dakotans shouldn’t subsidize massive corporate power users. Electric cooperatives must stay true to their member-owners, not outside investors. Communities deserve transparency, accountability, and genuine economic benefit, not promises that fade when the lights flicker. The question isn’t whether data centers belong here, but whether they belong here under these terms, and that’s something worth arguing about until it’s clear who really pays.