Meta, Micron projects will guzzle Idaho electricity, lawmakers say. Who’s going to pay?

BOISE – Idaho lawmakers said that the state’s electricity rates, which are some of the lowest in the country, have attracted out-of-state investment for data centers and other power-intensive projects. But they worry those benefits may come with a catch.

Such rates attracted investments from companies such as Meta, which has invested in an $800 million data center, and Micron, which is planning a $15 billion semiconductor plant in Boise, lawmakers said. The companies have promised the projects would entail massive investments in the Treasure Valley that bring economic growth, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

But these projects will also draw heavily on the state’s power grid, lawmakers said at a recent public hearing on a new bill. Several said they feared the added cost of that energy would fall on customers.

“How are you going to tell Grandma it’s OK for her – on a fixed, limited income – that she’s going to subsidize the next major AI plant somewhere?” Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, asked at the hearing.

House lawmakers Wednesday passed House Bill 395, which would require businesses using significant power to cover the full cost of that electricity to prevent the large corporations from shifting costs onto Idaho residents. It’s unclear how the state would enforce such a law, or what the “full cost” of energy would include.

State legislators also asked about whether these power-intensive projects would benefit Idaho residents and what the tradeoff for added costs would be. Meta, for example, has said it will employ just 100 workers at its data center.

It’s a conversation power companies, utility commissions and lawmakers are having around the country. Amid the growth of cloud-based technologies and remote work, companies have continued to expand their data centers and drawn scrutiny over their revenue, jobs, and business model to absorb the price of those projects.

Power company representatives pushed back on lawmakers’ assertions that ordinary customers would bear the brunt of the costs.

Large customers are required to fund all costs to connect to Idaho Power’s system, including paying up front for any local infrastructure required to support their facilities, Jordan Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Idaho Power, told the Statesman. Large customers must enter a “special contract” to ensure that the costs associated with serving them are incorporated into the rates they pay, he added.

Such contracts “are designed with protections in place to ensure rates for other Idaho Power customers do not increase as a result,” Rodriguez said.

Energy companies work with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission to fairly distribute the costs of large projects, Megan Ronk, the director of customer experience and economic development for Idaho Power, told a legislative committee.

“I feel comfortable with the provisions we have in place,” Ronk said at the public hearing. “There are already provisions in place for large users to make sure that they’re paying their fair share of system costs.”

But Rep. Todd Achilles, D-Boise, raised questions about the public utilities commission and power companies’ approach to defining that “fair share.”

He said the public utilities commission “lacks the tools” to know the impact of data centers and other power-intensive projects, especially those that create few job opportunities.

Power threshold targets local businesses, IACI says

Opponents of the bill argued it would impede economic development in Idaho, driving away the out-of-state projects attracted to Idaho’s low power rates and catching smaller or local projects in its dragnet.

“This is an economic engine for the state of Idaho, and this legislation really works against it,” Alex LaBeau, the president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, a powerful business lobbying group, told the committee.

The bill requires any company using more than 30 megawatts of power to pay the full cost of that power. Some testifiers advocated for a higher cutoff point, around 50 or 100 megawatts, for considering a business to be a significant consumer of power.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission did not testify in committee and declined to comment for this story. Idaho Power argued that the state’s current system of allocating power use doesn’t need an overhaul.

“For many, many decades, the system that we’ve had has been effective, and we’ve been able to serve customers, and we keep our costs low,” Ronk said Thursday.

“We’re about 20 to 30% lower than the rest of the country, so I would suggest that what we’re doing today is working.”

The bill still needs approval from the Senate and the governor’s signature to become law.