For the first time since the explosive rise of artificial intelligence and spread of political tensions around the data centers, researchers in Portland have quantified the size and scope of the industry in Oregon.

A new report released Thursday from ECONorthwest and the University of Virginia, funded by the Portland-based nonprofit Lemelson Foundation, quantifies basic yet hard-to-find data. That includes how many data centers the state currently has (111), what’s in the pipeline (32), their employment impact (2,630 direct workers), and their energy use (about 23% of retail electricity sales statewide in 2025).

“Oregon already has a substantial data center market, with 111 operational facilities representing approximately 22.1 million square feet of gross building space,” report authors wrote in key findings exclusively shared with OPB ahead of the release. “An additional 32 facilities are identified as planned or under construction, representing approximately 6.9 million square feet of potential future development.”

But perhaps more importantly, the report highlights the gaps in available information on how data centers affect the state’s economy and the communities they operate in. Report authors found inconsistent, incomplete, or unavailable data sources for water-use and other information necessary to analyze the effect of the facilities on landscapes and communities around them.

Terry Wirkkala, project director and applied economist at ECOnorthwest, told OPB the research is meant to inform the public at a time when data centers are becoming a hot topic. In recent years, tax breaks helped fuel data center development in places like Oregon. But over the last few months, local communities have considered or implemented moratoriums on the facilities, with data centers becoming a key issue ahead of the November election.

Wirkkala said one of the key findings of ECOnorthwest’s report is that Oregon essentially has two separate data center markets.

“The east side of the state is currently built out more than the west side of the state,” Wirkkala said, “With future development going to be occurring at a higher amount on the west side of the state versus the east side of the state.”

Eastern Oregon is where major hyperscale data centers – often larger than multiple football fields – are concentrated. The planned data centers, mostly on the western side of the state, are much smaller, often used by multiple companies that rent out space, and may be co-housed with offices.

Data center employees mostly live in Eastern Oregon

Data centers tend to have few direct employees. Instead, data centers often look to third-party contractors to build facilities and service equipment. That makes it hard to figure out who exactly works at data centers, and researchers had to scour multiple sources to put together their numbers.

“While it was tricky, we were able to get good estimates of employment across our state,” Wirkkala said. “We did find that employment at Oregon’s data centers, and this is direct employment, is really concentrated on the east side of the state.”

In total, data center employees represent about 0.2% of the state’s roughly 1.97 million person workforce. However, of the 2,630 direct data center employees, 2,205 of them are in Eastern Oregon and, in Morrow County, the hyperscale data centers directly employ more than 10% of the local workforce.

Big - and growing - energy appetite

Although Oregon houses a mix of different types of data centers, they’re combining to use more and more power, similar to facilities around the globe.

Among the key findings from ECONorthwest is that data centers accounted for about 23% of Oregon’s electricity sales in 2025. While report authors stop short of making recommendations, they do note that Oregon’s current electricity grid infrastructure is likely unprepared to meet rising demand.

“Data center electricity demand is increasing substantially, and regional as well as state-level planning efforts, such as the Northwest Power Plan, indicate that accommodating large-load growth will require new electricity resources, transmission capacity, and coordinated infrastructure planning,” they wrote.

There are limitations to modeling future data center energy use, according to João Ferreira, acting director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Services at the University of Virginia. Ferreira worked with ECOnorthwest on the study. Virginia is one of the leading states in terms of data center concentration.

Ferreira says the new, smaller data centers coming online on the western side of Oregon are less predictable through the day. That’s because they serve multiple companies and are used on an as-needed basis. Hyperscale facilities used in part for new artificial intelligence methods tend to run all the time.

Still, Ferreira and the team behind the report expect data center energy consumption in Oregon to rise by 2030 to nearly 25 terawatt hours - the equivalent of powering about 2.5 million homes.

“By the end of 2025, in particular, data centers were already a big user of electricity and a big consumer of electricity in Oregon, accounting for almost 23% of all the electricity demand in Oregon,” Ferreira told OPB, “And we expect this number to grow up to 31, 32% by 2030.”

Limitations in tax data

Researchers sought to quantify how data centers impact the property tax landscape in Oregon. Unlike most other states, companies do not pay a sales tax on materials purchased for construction of facilities. Instead, the state collects property taxes – but also offers tax abatements as incentives to develop in the state.

Companies paid $60.2 million in property taxes for operating data centers in Oregon in 2025. Researchers found discrepancies when it came to analyzing properties that take advantage of tax exemptions, which likely range from $230 million to $450 million.

“Exempted taxes should not automatically be interpreted as revenue that local governments would otherwise have received,” report authors wrote, “because doing so assumes that the same investment would have occurred in the same location and at the same scale without the incentive.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/17/oregon-data-centers-consume-quarter-state-power-report/