Data Centers, Clean Energy & 54B’s Economic Future — Getting It Right

There is a building going up in Shakopee that most people in this district have not heard about, and it is worth five minutes of your time.

It is a data center — a warehouse full of computers — going into an existing industrial building in the Dean Lakes Industrial Park. The City of Shakopee put out a fact sheet about it this year, and the most important sentence in that fact sheet is not about the building. It is this: the property is zoned for industrial use, data centers are a permitted use in that zoning district, and under Minnesota law, when a project meets the zoning and building requirements, the city does not have the authority to deny it. No council vote. [City of Shakopee, ShakopeeMN.gov/datacenter]

That is not a scandal. It is how zoning works, and it works that way for your garage addition, too.

But it tells you exactly where the real decision gets made — in the ordinance and in state law, long before a developer ever files an application. By the time a project is on the agenda, the decision is already behind us.

So let us have the conversation now, while it is still early here.

Start with the part that shows up in your mailbox

A large data center is not a big office building. It is an industrial electricity customer. The two Google projects proposed near Rochester and Duluth would each exceed 100 megawatts of demand — enough electricity to power somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 homes. The Meta campus under construction in Rosemount is in the same category, and at least seven other large projects are in the works around the state. [Minnesota Reformer, March 27, 2026]

The obvious question is the right one: when a customer of that size plugs into the grid, and the utility has to build generation and transmission to serve it, who pays for that?

Minnesota has actually answered that question, and it answered it better than most states. A 2025 law created a separate class of “very large” utility customers, apart from residential, commercial, and ordinary industrial ratepayers. Their service agreements must cover the full cost of serving them, including the system upgrades they require; must not leave other customers holding the bag if the facility downsizes or closes; and must comply with Minnesota’s carbon-free electricity standard.

That law passed with a Republican House sponsor and a DFL Senate sponsor and took effect June 15, 2025. [Minnesota House Public Information Services, 2025 Special Session Ch. 12; Minnesota Reformer, March 27, 2026]

Then, in May 2026, the Public Utilities Commission put teeth in it.

It approved Xcel Energy’s framework for very large customers and strengthened it — defining the class as new loads of 100 megawatts or more, plus smaller 20-megawatt customers whose hookup requires significant system work; requiring a minimum 15-year contract; imposing a demand charge equal to 80 percent of the commitment if a facility walks away early; and tightening the cost test so the company has to show its assumptions and data. Those last changes came from the Attorney General’s office and the Citizens Utility Board. [Minnesota PUC news release, May 2026; Fresh Energy, May 15, 2026]

That is the model I want us to defend and extend: if you want to plug in, you pay what it costs to serve you. Not a subsidy from the retiree in Prior Lake on a fixed income. Not a rounding error on a Jordan family’s December bill. The full cost.

It matters because we can see what happens without it. In Oregon, an early data center hub, rates paid by Portland General Electric customers rose about 50 percent over five years. [Minnesota Reformer, March 27, 2026] Minnesota got ahead of that.

Staying ahead of it is a legislative job, every session, because these rules get revisited every session.

Then the part that comes out of the ground

Water is the piece people here ask about most, and they are right to. The same 2025 law set special conditions for any data center whose new consumptive water use would top 100 million gallons a year: the DNR has to ensure public health and safety are protected, has to weigh conservation measures like closed-loop cooling, water recycling, and reuse, and has to resolve conflicts with existing water users. The commissioner can require an aquifer test before issuing the permit. [Minnesota 2025 Special Session Ch. 12, amending M.S. 103G.271]

If you are on a private well in Jackson, Louisville, Sand Creek, or Spring Lake Township, that last part is the one that matters to you. “Water use conflicts are addressed” is a phrase in a statute. Whether it means anything depends entirely on whether the state has the staff, the data, and the spine to enforce it before a permit is signed rather than after a neighbor’s well drops.

I will vote to fund that enforcement. I would also support requiring the aquifer testing up front for these projects rather than at the commissioner’s discretion, so a township finds out what the drawdown looks like, while the answer can still change the outcome.

Now the jobs conversation, honestly

This is where I am going to say something that will not thrill anyone handing out ribbon-cutting scissors.

Meta’s Rosemount campus is a real investment: 715,000 square feet, more than $800 million, and more than 1,000 construction workers on site at peak. It will support about 100 permanent jobs. [Meta, March 14, 2024; MPR News, March 14, 2024]

Both of those numbers are true, and they deserve equal weight.

A thousand building trades jobs is a couple of years of good union paychecks in this region, and the 2025 law requires prevailing wage for laborers and mechanics building a qualified large-scale data center — a real protection that did not exist before. [2025 Special Session Ch. 12, M.S. 297A.68 subd. 42(l)] A hundred permanent jobs is also a hundred permanent jobs, not a thousand. Anyone who tells a city council that a data center is a jobs engine on the scale of a manufacturer is selling something.

The honest case for these projects is construction employment, property tax base, and grid investment — not headcount. Make that case, and you can have a real conversation with residents. Oversell it, and you get what communities around the state are now producing: in April 2026, the Nobles County Board voted 3 to 2 to reject a rezoning for a computing facility near Worthington, and several Twin Cities suburbs have tightened their data center zoning or paused approvals entirely while they study the issue. [Minnesota Reformer, April 27, 2026]

What I would actually do

• Hold the line on cost causation. Very large customers pay the full cost of serving them, with no cost-shifting onto households and small businesses, and the exit protections stay in place. This gets attacked every session; it needs a vote that will not trade it away.

• Fund the water review and make aquifer testing standard for the biggest projects, before the permit, not after a complaint.

• Give local governments the tools earlier. Cities should not learn their options after an application is filed. I support ending nondisclosure agreements between developers and local governments — a bipartisan bill on that was moving at the Capitol this year — so a council can talk to its own residents about a project in its own city. [KAXE, March 23, 2026]

• Keep the trades in it. Prevailing wage on large-scale construction stays, and apprenticeship pipelines get funded, so the people building these facilities are from here.

• Tie the buildout to the buildout of generation. These projects are required to comport with our carbon-free standard. That is not a slogan; it is the mechanism that turns a new industrial load into new Minnesota generation and transmission that everyone else gets to use afterward.

Getting it right is the whole job

I am not running to be the candidate who says no to everything, and I am not running to be the one who says yes to anything with a jobs number attached to it. Scott County has spent thirty years absorbing growth that happened to it. We are good at it in some ways, and we have been caught flat-footed in others — roads behind schedule, wells stressed, taxes climbing on people who were here first.

Data centers are the next version of that test. The state has decent rules on the books right now. My job at the Legislature would be to keep them, strengthen the two places they are thin — water enforcement and local notice — and make sure the benefits land here rather than the bills.

That is neither an environmental nor a business position. In this district, it is the same position.

— Chris

Sources

Every number and legal claim in the article, in the order it appears.

1. City of Shakopee, “City shares information about data center at Dean Lakes” and the accompanying fact sheet, ShakopeeMN.gov/datacenter — existing industrial building in Dean Lakes Industrial Park, data centers a permitted use in the district, project reviewed administratively with no separate City Council vote.

2. Minnesota House Public Information Services, New Laws summary of 2025 Special Session Chapter 12 (SSHF16/SSSF19), house.mn.gov/NewLaws/story/2025/5641 — effective June 15, 2025; sponsored by Rep. Greg Davids (R-Preston) and Sen. Ann Rest (DFL-New Hope); creates the very large customer class; large-scale data center defined as 25,000+ sq ft with $250M+ invested within 60 months after June 30, 2025; consumptive water use above 100 million gallons per year triggers special permit conditions.

3. Minnesota Laws 2025, 1st Special Session, Chapter 12 (revisor.mn.gov) — M.S. 103G.271 water permit conditions (public health and safety, conservation and reuse measures, water use conflicts, aquifer testing under 103G.287); M.S. 297A.68 subd. 42(l) prevailing wage for laborers and mechanics on large-scale construction.

4. Minnesota Laws 2025, Chapter 13 (tax bill) — modifies the data center sales and use tax exemption to remove the exemption for electricity.

5. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, “PUC strengthens consumer protections as state prepares for new very large electricity customers,” May 2026 — very large customers defined as new loads of 100 MW or more, plus system-intensive loads of at least 20 MW; strengthened Incremental Cost Test per the Attorney General’s Office and the Citizens Utility Board. Fresh Energy regulatory update, May 15, 2026 — 15-year minimum contract, 80% demand charge on early exit, separate rate class for data centers.

6. Minnesota Reformer, “With new law in effect, data centers shouldn’t mean higher electric bills for the rest of us,” March 27, 2026 — 100 MW threshold equals roughly 50,000–100,000 homes; Google projects near Rochester and Duluth; Meta Rosemount in the same class; at least seven other large projects statewide; Portland General Electric rates up about 50% over five years in Oregon.

7. Minnesota Reformer, “Minnesota’s long-predicted data center boom is on shaky ground,” April 27, 2026 — Nobles County Board voted 3–2 on April 21 to deny the rezoning near Worthington; several Twin Cities suburbs have tightened data center zoning or imposed temporary construction bans.

8. Meta, “Hello, Rosemount!” March 14, 2024, and MPR News, “Meta to open data center in Rosemount in 2026,” March 14, 2024 — 715,000 sq ft, more than $800 million, approximately 100 long-term jobs, more than 1,000 construction workers at peak.

9. KAXE, “Lawmakers advance bills to lift secrecy surrounding data center projects,” March 23, 2026 — bipartisan measure to prohibit nondisclosure agreements between tech companies and local governments.