HELENA — Montana’s largest utility company is updating its long-range plan for how to meet the state’s energy needs – and now, they’re giving the public a chance to weigh in.
NorthWestern Energy has released its draft Integrated Resource Plan for 2026. The document includes several hundred pages of modeling and analysis, laying out scenarios for how the company could deliver electricity to Montana customers over the next 20 years.
(Watch the video for more on NorthWestern's proposed plan.)
NorthWestern has been holding community meetings to take public comment on the draft plan. After events in Great Falls and Missoula last week, they held one at the Lewis and Clark Library in Helena on Tuesday evening. About 60 people were in attendance.
“Everybody’s coming at this maybe from a little different perspective,” said Jon Shafer, NorthWestern’s manager for energy supply planning, who gave a 20-minute presentation on the plan to open the meeting.
NorthWestern’s main point has been that, for now, leaders believe for the first time that they have enough generating resources to serve demand in Montana – due to the construction of the Yellowstone County Generating Station natural gas plant near Laurel and the acquisition of a greater share of the Colstrip coal-fired plant.
“From a resource adequacy standpoint, we’re sitting pretty good,” Shafer said.
But the company says they could start to see a shortfall in available capacity during the winter, as soon as 2027 or 2028, due to the end of some long-term contracts to purchase power. They say that shortfall could grow as existing production resources – most notably Colstrip – go offline.
State regulators require utility companies to update their resource plans every three years. NorthWestern released their last plan in May 2023.
NorthWestern says the plan isn’t selecting particular production resources the company will focus on building, but rather providing a full analysis to help them make those decisions in the future. This draft puts a particular focus on “reliable” power sources – and it says the lowest-cost and lowest-risk option is for Colstrip to continue as a major part of NorthWestern’s portfolio for as long as possible – possibly as late as 2042.
Supporters of Northwestern’s draft plan, like the Montana Chamber of Commerce, praised it for emphasizing reliability. Charles Robison, the Chamber’s general counsel, said during Tuesday’s meeting that wind and solar remained too intermittent, even with increased battery storage capacity.
“Manufacturers, hospitals, agricultural processors, data centers, small businesses and employers across Montana all depend on electricity that's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, not just when the weather cooperates,” he said.
But most of those in attendance Tuesday were unsatisfied with the proposal. Opponents criticized it for identifying data centers as “opportunities” for the state, for its interest in nuclear energy through small modular reactors, and for what they saw as underestimating the monetary and environmental costs of fossil fuels.
“The public – your customers – have repeatedly asked for you to increase our reliance on renewables,” said Rob Freistadt. “You've answered these requests with increased ownership of the antiquated Colstrip coal plant and building the gas plant in Laurel.”
NorthWestern will hold one more public meeting on the draft plan, Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Bozeman Library. They’re also taking public comment by email or through an online form. You can find more on how to give your input on the company’s website.
