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BETTESWORTHConstruction
data centers

What’s at Stake in Minnesota’s Data Center Debate?

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Minnesota’s 2025 policy reset keeps long tax exemptions for qualifying data-center equipment and software, but makes electricity taxable, adds fees and utility protections for the largest facilities, and tightens water, labor and sustainability conditions. The central question is whether construction and economic gains justify the public costs and infrastructure commitments.

The incentive bargain changed in 2025

Minnesota still offers a substantial incentive to qualifying data centers, but the benefit is no longer an across-the-board sales-tax break. Under current guidance, electricity used by qualifying centers became taxable on July 1, 2025. Enterprise information-technology equipment, servers, routers, storage, cooling systems, power-management equipment and related software can remain exempt for as long as 35 years when a project meets the statutory requirements.

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Facility category Minimum investment and timing Potentially exempt property
New qualifying center At least $30 million invested within 48 months; generally at least 25,000 square feet Qualifying IT equipment, servers, networking, storage, cooling, power-management equipment and software
Refurbished center At least $50 million invested within 24 months The same categories of qualifying equipment and software
Large-scale center At least $250 million invested by the facility and its tenants within 60 months Qualifying equipment and software, subject to additional labor, sustainability, utility and fee requirements

The distinction matters to a construction budget. A project can receive a long equipment and software exemption while its electricity consumption is taxed. The exemption is also conditional: a facility that misses investment, timing or certification requirements risks losing the benefit or having to repay it.

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Will a data center raise other customers’ electric bills?

The 2025 framework directs the Public Utilities Commission to approve arrangements for “very large customers” and to keep their attributable costs from being shifted to other utility customers. The protection covers both the cost of serving the facility and stranded costs if generation, transmission or interconnection assets are built and the project later scales back or leaves.

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Large-scale centers also pay an annual fee based on peak demand. The law restricts that revenue to programs benefiting low-income households.

Peak demand Annual fee
100–250 megawatts $2 million
251–500 megawatts $3 million
501–750 megawatts $4 million
More than 750 megawatts $5 million

Those rules do not make a project’s power impact automatic or uniform. The relevant documents are the approved tariff, interconnection agreement, generation and transmission plan, cost-allocation provisions and any exit or downsizing protections. Residents should ask whether the contract requires the facility to pay the costs it causes before construction begins, rather than relying on a general promise that rates will be protected.

Water use is a permitting issue, not just a conservation pledge

A project that consumes more than 100 million gallons of water per year faces special permit conditions. Minnesota Business First Stop coordinates state permitting with water, pollution-control, health and natural-resource agencies, so the permit record—not a marketing estimate—should establish the source, withdrawal, discharge and consumptive use.

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For any proposed facility, the useful questions are specific:

  • Is the water municipal, groundwater, surface water or a combination?
  • How much is withdrawn and how much is actually consumed through cooling or evaporation?
  • What drought, aquifer or municipal-supply conditions trigger operating limits?
  • Where does discharged water go, and what treatment is required?
  • Does the permit address cumulative demand from other industrial users?

Large-scale centers must also certify within three years of entering service under specified sustainable-design or green-building standards. Failure to certify can require repayment of the tax exemption. That creates an enforceable deadline, but it does not substitute for reviewing a project’s water permit and operating data.

Labor rules attach to the biggest projects

Construction and refurbishment labor for qualified large-scale centers must be paid at prevailing wages. That requirement affects bids, schedules and workforce planning for general contractors and subcontractors. It also gives communities a clearer way to test claims about job quality: the question is not only how many positions are announced, but which phases are covered, what wage determination applies and how compliance will be documented.

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One legislative supporter, Rep. Greg Davids, called data centers “one of the most successful programs that there’s ever been in this state” and said thousands of jobs would result. Those are arguments for the policy, not a statewide job count or an independent return-on-subsidy calculation.

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What the fiscal record actually shows

A 2026 evaluation by the Minnesota Legislative Budget Office and Tax Expenditure Review Commission counted 42 qualifying data centers since 2011: 16 new constructions and 26 refurbishments. The supplied Department of Employment and Economic Development data showed no new centers qualifying after 2020. That record describes projects that qualified for the program; it does not by itself establish how many jobs, wages or private investments were caused by the exemption.

The same evaluation estimated that electricity exemptions represented about 30% of data-center tax exemptions from 2011 through 2024. In 2024, the electricity exemption was estimated to equal roughly 1% of all Minnesota sales-tax exemptions. These percentages are different denominators: one measures the composition of data-center tax benefits over a period, while the other compares one exemption with the state’s entire sales-tax-expenditure portfolio for a single year.

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For a project-level decision, the relevant accounting should put tax expenditure beside direct and indirect jobs, payroll, local tax receipts, utility infrastructure, water and wastewater work, road upgrades and the cost of enforcing permits. A headline investment number is not a net public return.

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Large project numbers in the debate need careful attribution

At an April 1, 2025 Minnesota House committee hearing, stakeholders cited a proposed Becker facility estimated at 600 megawatts and a Farmington proposal estimated at 900 million gallons of annual water use. Testimony also claimed that at least 10 hyperscale proposals were in play and that their combined electricity demand could be comparable to the consumption of all Minnesota homes.

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Those figures are advocacy testimony estimates, not an official statewide inventory or forecast. A project may be redesigned, delayed, downsized or abandoned. Before treating any number as current, check the facility’s permit applications, utility tariff and interconnection filings, water source, construction status and final zoning decision.

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Minneapolis is using zoning, but local power has limits

Minneapolis has paused most new data-center proposals while it develops rules addressing the facilities’ scale, locations, energy and water reporting, and noise. The city says state control of the building code limits some local requirements, so a zoning pause does not give the city unlimited authority over construction standards or utility decisions.

For an applicant, that means zoning, building-code jurisdiction and state environmental or utility approvals must be treated as separate tracks. For residents, it means a city hearing can influence siting, reporting and noise conditions without resolving every question about electricity, water or tax treatment.

How to evaluate a proposed facility

Construction stakeholders, local officials and neighbors can use the same seven-part checklist when a proposal reaches the public record:

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  1. Jobs and subsidy: Compare documented direct and indirect jobs, wage levels and construction duration with the value and duration of tax exemptions.
  2. Peak demand: Identify the facility’s firm and peak megawatt requirement and determine who pays for generation, transmission and interconnection.
  3. Water: Separate annual withdrawal from consumptive use and identify impacts on the aquifer or municipal system.
  4. Emissions and noise: Review backup-generator testing, air permits, sound levels, hours of operation and mitigation at nearby properties.
  5. Enforceable commitments: Look for prevailing-wage provisions, sustainability certification deadlines, reporting duties and penalties written into permits or agreements.
  6. Transparency: Request the utility, water, tax and development agreements, including confidential-cost or exit provisions that affect the public risk.
  7. Reversibility: Ask what happens if the project is delayed, downsized or abandoned and who remains responsible for unfinished infrastructure or stranded costs.

What is at stake

Minnesota is no longer choosing between unrestricted incentives and a blanket rejection of data centers. It is testing a conditional bargain: preserve equipment and software benefits for projects that meet investment and operating rules, tax their electricity, charge the largest facilities, and require utilities and regulators to expose who bears the costs. The outcome will depend less on a statewide slogan than on the enforceable terms of each project’s tax status, utility agreement, water permit, labor plan and local approval.

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