Silver Bow County

Moratoriums and bans

1. Sept. 24, 2026 Butte-Silver Bow: Citizen ballot initiative (proposed), kept off the 2026 ballot; appeal pending. A citizen initiative requiring a public vote before data center construction will miss the November 2026 ballot after the state Supreme Court lifted its own short-lived order on Sept. 24, 2026, because ballots were already printed and mailed; the organizers' appeal of a district court ruling that kept it off the ballot is still pending. (Montana Free Press, Sept. 24, 2026)

Updates, newest first

1. Oct. 24, 2026 Sabey Data Centers, Butte (SDC Montana) · Sabey's project website still described a planned campus serving Butte and Anaconda, in due diligence, with no site named. (Sabey Data Centers (developer), Oct. 24, 2026)
2. Sept. 24, 2026 Butte-Silver Bow: Citizen ballot initiative (proposed), kept off the 2026 ballot; appeal pending · A citizen initiative requiring a public vote before data center construction will miss the November 2026 ballot after the state Supreme Court lifted its own short-lived order on Sept. 24, 2026, because ballots were already printed and mailed; the organizers' appeal of a district court ruling that kept it off the ballot is still pending. (Montana Free Press, Sept. 24, 2026)
3. Aug. 6, 2026 Sabey Data Centers, Butte (SDC Montana) · Reporting said the Public Service Commission had released the three letters of intent earlier that week with most redactions lifted; Sabey's covers two sites of up to 250 MW each, and no service agreement was active. (The Livingston Enterprise (Lee Newspapers), Aug. 6, 2026)
4. June 2026 Atlas Power Butte · Legislative staff listed the site as operating for crypto-mining at 75 MW, with an expansion planned. (Montana Legislative Services Division, June 2026)
5. May 13, 2026 Sabey Data Centers, Butte (SDC Montana) · Sabey ended the purchase agreement after an existing park tenant moved to buy the land under an older right of first refusal. (Montana Legislative Services Division, June 2026; DatacenterDynamics, May 29, 2026)
6. April 2025 Sabey Data Centers, Butte (SDC Montana) · Butte-Silver Bow commissioners voted 10-1 to sell Sabey 606 acres in the county's business park for about $1.21 million, with clawback terms if no data center is built. (Montana Standard (via KULR-8), 2025; Montana Public Radio, April 22, 2025)
7. Dec. 9, 2024 Atlas Power Butte · Atlas Power and NorthWestern Energy signed a nonbinding letter of intent for up to 150 MW of supply. (NorthWestern Energy Group, Inc. (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), 2026; The Livingston Enterprise (Lee Newspapers), Aug. 6, 2026)
8. Dec. 2024 Sabey Data Centers, Butte (SDC Montana) · NorthWestern Energy disclosed a nonbinding letter of intent to supply power to a Sabey data center in Montana. (NorthWestern Energy Group, Inc. (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), 2026)
9. Dec. 2019 Atlas Power Butte · Reporting in December 2019 said the majority owner of CryptoWatt, the crypto-mining company that earlier owned and ran this site, was being held without bail after a federal indictment in New Jersey over BitClub Network, a separate venture that officials said had no connection to CryptoWatt; the Butte operation stopped and its 32 workers were laid off. The case never went to trial: on July 28, 2026, at prosecutors' request, a federal judge dismissed the charges with prejudice. The reporting concerns a former owner, not Atlas Power, which acquired the site later. (Flathead Beacon (Associated Press), Dec. 30, 2019; DatacenterDynamics, Dec. 20, 2024; Bloomberg Law, July 28, 2026)

Statewide

Montana taxes a 'qualified data center' (at least 300,000 square feet and $150 million, or 25,000 square feet of new space and $50 million over 48 months) as class seventeen property at 0.9% of market value, instead of the usual commercial rate; a 2025 amendment added on-site power generation and storage that opened after May 13, 2025 (MCA 15-6-162; Ch. 438, L. 2017, amended by Ch. 678, L. 2025). (Montana Legislature, 2025) A new customer with an average monthly demand of 5 MW or more may buy power supply from a regulated utility such as NorthWestern only if it shows, to the Public Service Commission's satisfaction, that serving it will not harm the utility's other customers over the long term (MCA 69-8-201); the commission and NorthWestern have disagreed in letters since 2025 over how this applies to data centers (Docket 2022.09.087). (Montana Legislature, 2025; Montana Public Service Commission (to the Legislature's Energy and Telecommunications Interim Committee), Jan. 2026) On March 31, 2026 NorthWestern Energy filed a Large New Load Tariff Rule (Rule No. 24) with the Public Service Commission for new loads of 5 MW or more, with minimum contract terms, minimum bills, collateral and exit costs, and commission approval of each service agreement for loads of 50 MW or more; the case was pending when checked, and the state Department of Environmental Quality asked in June 2026 to join it. (NorthWestern Energy (filed with the Montana Public Service Commission), March 31, 2026; NorthWestern Energy, Oct. 24, 2026; Office of the Governor of Montana, June 18, 2026) On Nov. 17, 2025, nine advocacy groups represented by Earthjustice (Big Sky 55+, Butte Watchdogs for Social and Environmental Justice, Climate Smart Missoula, Golden Triangle Resource Council, Helena Interfaith Climate Advocates, Honor the Earth, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Public Interest Research Group and NW Energy Coalition) filed a complaint against NorthWestern Energy with the Public Service Commission (Docket 2025.11.084). Pointing to NorthWestern's letters of intent with Atlas Power, Sabey and Quantica (about 1,400 MW in all), they argued that under MCA 69-8-201 the utility may not supply those data centers until the commission finds that doing so will not harm its other customers over the long term, and they asked for an investigation with a hearing, a separate customer class and tariff for large data centers and, in a companion petition, a ruling on what the law requires. As reported, NorthWestern said it would not supply data centers before the commission approves their contracts and a data center tariff, and on Feb. 24, 2026 it asked the commission to dismiss the complaint; that request was pending in mid-March 2026. On May 13, 2026 the groups asked to combine the complaint with the tariff case (Docket 2026.04.023), and a later filing by their lawyers lists that request as pending in July 2026. The complaint is read from the copy the groups' lawyers posted; the commission's own docket has not been pulled. (Earthjustice, for the complainants (filed with the Montana Public Service Commission), Nov. 17, 2025; Daily Montanan, Nov. 18, 2025; Montana Free Press, Nov. 18, 2025; Montana Public Radio, Nov. 20, 2025; Daily Montanan, March 17, 2026; Earthjustice, for intervenors (filed with the Montana Public Service Commission, Docket 2026.04.023), July 9, 2026) The Right to Compute Act (Senate Bill 212, 2025; MCA 2-10-201 to 2-10-207, Ch. 150, L. 2025) says government limits on owning or using computing resources for lawful purposes must be narrowly tailored to a compelling interest; county officials in Yellowstone County have said it constrains local data center rules, and it has not been tested in court. (Montana Legislature, 2025; Montana Free Press (Capitol Tracker), April 16, 2025; Montana Free Press, Sept. 7, 2026) House Bill 877 (2025), a 'Montana data center development act', was tabled 8-6 in the House energy committee on March 31, 2025 and died. (Montana Free Press (Capitol Tracker), May 20, 2025) Montana data centers →