The proliferation of power-hungry data centers is making it difficult to predict the future of the Pacific Northwest’s energy needs.

That has implications for the region’s efforts to invest in renewable energy sources, and may affect the cost of electricity for consumers in the years ahead.

So far, Oregon has more than 120 data centers across the state, and more are in development.

According to an analysis published this month by Energy + Environmental Economics, the region is expected to build data centers that consume about 3 gigawatts of electricity by 2030 – enough energy to power 2.25 million homes.

But other experts predict data centers could demand far less electricity than that.

A single data center might require as much energy as it takes to power a small city like Ashland, where about 21,000 people live.

Another might need as much energy as it takes to power Eugene, which has nearly 10 times as many residents.

It depends on the size of the data center and whether it’s powering artificial intelligence or hosting servers for cloud storage.

With multiple technology companies in different stages of developing data centers across the Northwest, it’s impossible to get a precise estimate of just how much energy these high-tech projects will collectively require.

Elaine Hart, ​​co-founder and principal at Sylvan Energy Analytics based in Portland, said that’s making it hard to develop plans for an electrical grid that meets the region’s needs.

“We’re kind of at a point of unprecedented uncertainty, which is very scary for planners, and it means we need solutions that are kind of robust to a lot of different possibilities,” she said.

Growing energy gap

Earlier this month, Energy + Environmental Economics, known as E3, released the second phase of a study that looks into the greater Pacific Northwest’s long-term energy needs. The study was commissioned by 22 electric utilities across the region to look at energy resources in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and portions of Utah and Wyoming.

It found that much of the region’s need to bring new electricity sources online is unrelated to data centers – population growth and economic development are pushing up energy demand, and the region is not moving fast enough to address energy gaps left by retired coal power plants.

Add a modest amount of data center expansion in the Pacific Northwest to the equation, and the six-state region is facing a 9-gigawatt energy gap by 2030.

That’s the average amount of energy consumed by the entire state of Oregon, and if power companies don’t find new sources of electricity to meet that growing need, the region’s grid could struggle to deliver enough energy to power electric heaters during extreme cold or cooling systems during heat waves.

Looking further ahead, the E3 study says the gap between how much energy the region needs and how much is available could double, to as high as 18 gigawatts by 2035.

“We find that, in the near term, we really aren’t on track to fill that gap, and there’s a wide variety of market and institutional and other barriers that have really gotten in the way of the industry and the region,” E3’s senior partner Arne Olsen said during a webinar this month.

And these estimates could be much higher, “if we assumed a more aggressive data center build out in our study,” Olsen said.

Unclogging an energy bottleneck

Oregon and Washington face major challenges that could affect how well these states are able to meet the energy needs of the future.

An OPB and ProPublica investigation found that the Bonneville Power Administration, which owns 75% of the region’s power grid, has a sluggish process for adding new transmission lines necessary for developers of new electric power sources.

That’s slowed efforts to develop large-scale wind and solar energy projects to meet the region’s needs. Oregon’s and Washington’s renewable power development ranks near the bottom in the nation due to the lack of available transmission lines.

E3’s report called that transmission bottleneck an obstacle to addressing future energy needs west of the Oregon and Washington Cascades, where energy demand is already strained and expected to grow significantly more.

Building transmission will be key to unclogging that bottleneck, it found.

Both states have laws that require their electric utilities to deliver carbon-free energy by mid-century, but the slow-moving pace of permitting and siting of these developments is contributing to regional power gaps.

The Trump administration has also rescinded billions of dollars originally allocated toward climate action that would have helped both states accelerate the addition of renewable energy sources.

And while both states are moving away from fossil fuel-generated electricity, E3’s analysis found the region may need to hold on to natural gas for a little longer.

They found that gas-fired plants could help with grid reliability during peak energy moments.

Natural gas power plants generate more than a third of the electricity consumed in Oregon, and about a fifth of the electricity consumed in Washington.

But the study’s authors cautioned against overbuilding new natural gas plants, which could push up already-high electric bills.

Hart, with Sylvan Energy Analytics, agreed that natural gas has an important role to play in the near term. But she said it should be a last resort when considering new sources of electricity.

“If we’ve got investments in natural gas happening because of data center demand, that’s a tough one,” she said. “We need to be clear-eyed about and thoughtful about who’s paying for it, and what’s being done to reduce the utilization of those plants. The best thing we can do to reduce utilization of natural gas plants in the region is to build renewable energy.”

Data center demand response

Sylvan Energy Analytics did an independent study looking into E3’s initial findings.

That study also forecast a major gap between what the six-state region will need and how much energy is already being generated. It found the gap could be smaller than the 9 gigawatt energy gap E3 predicts, however.

The independent study predicted a 6 gigawatt gap – but said the gap could be as low as 1 gigawatt.

That huge range in forecasts, driven by uncertainty around how many data centers may be built and how much energy they will use, makes it hard for grid planners to determine how many more renewable energy developments the region may need to build out.

And if the region overbuilds these developments, those costs could show up on utility bills – hurting ratepayers, Hart said.

As power companies and policymakers look to generate more electricity and build powerlines to meet the energy demand of the future, the Sylvan Energy Analytics report maps out another way to shrink the gap between how much power is available and how much the region needs.

It sees energy efficiency, driven by developing technology that uses less electricity to perform the same task, as a key tool.

Another high-tech solution is known as “demand response,” which means using less power during peak moments. Some technology already uses demand response, like smart thermostats that adjust the amount of energy used.

Hart said the same concept should be taken up by data centers during the cold winter or hot summer days, when energy use is highest.

Tech companies with data centers around the globe could shift computing tasks to other locations when the grid is strained. That could significantly help the region save energy.

“If you have the ability to call the data centers first, in that sort of emergency circumstance, and curtail their output before affecting residential and small commercial customers, under some of the scenarios we might be OK,” she said. “We might only need to build a little bit more than what’s already sort of coming down the pike.”

This type of power flexibility is already widely being used in Texas, she said. But that required state legislation. Google says it has tried a demand response pilot in The Dalles, Oregon.

Hart said she doesn’t expect enough data centers to power down voluntarily to address Oregon’s needs.

“I don’t think they’ll do it on their own,” she said. “It might require legislation, and other states are taking up this question as well.”

But during Oregon’s short 2026 legislative session, bills focused on helping the grid, with solutions like balcony solar and virtual power plants, did not make it to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for signature.

The virtual power plant bill would have helped relieve some strain on the grid by harnessing and distributing energy generated in homes during high peak moments.

It’s unclear if Oregon lawmakers plan on bringing up the bills again next year.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/28/data-center-uncertainty-making-power-grid-planning-difficult/