The state of Oregon has emerged as a top location for housing data centers for tech giants Amazon, Meta, and Google. With tax breaks worth more than $450M each year providing an incentive for these industries to locate in Oregon, their unprecedented rise has also resulted in a massive increase in demand for water, energy, and land, causing resource strains across the state.
The Green Energy Institute (GEI), a grant-funded climate policy and energy law organization housed within Lewis & Clark Law School’s Environmental, Natural Resources, and Energy Law Program, recently took this issue head on.
GEI Staff Attorney and alum, Cole Souder ’24, and Lewis & Clark Law Student, Jessica Hall ’26, have been working on cases involving the implementation of Oregon House Bill 3546, known as the POWER Act. This Act requires electric utility companies to establish a separate rate class for data centers that are over 20 megawatts in size (equivalent to powering 16,000 homes), to implement policies that mitigate against the risk that data centers of this size shift higher rates onto other customers. Passed in June of 2025, the implementation of the POWER Act has opened up a new set of contested case dockets in Oregon’s Public Utility Commission under this umbrella of issues, cases that Cole and Jessica have been working on.
In fact, Cole’s efforts (on behalf of Climate Solutions, Community Energy Project, Oregon Environmental Solutions, and Columbia Riverkeeper) resulted in one of the most innovative and protective outcomes from a public utility commission in the nation. Oregon’s Public Utility Commission recently recognized that data center additions to Portland General Electric’s territory should not undermine the utility’s obligation to meet Oregon’s greenhouse gas emission reduction law. As a result, data centers must enter a queue until the new load can be accommodated in a way that remains compliant with Oregon’s mandated carbon emissions obligations. The Commission also agreed with GEI that data center customers should aid in funding energy efficiency for low-income customers, and that Portland General Electric must make annual reports on various aspects of data center electricity usage.
Finally, the Commission addressed the risk of unfairly imposing the costs of data center growth on other customers. “There are a few different types of policies that work together to achieve the goals of the POWER Act,” Cole explained, “Some involve terms that go into the contract that the data centers sign, including minimum contract lengths, terms governing what the data center owes, minimum amounts the data center must pay, penalties for using too much energy, and upfront deposits.” These types of terms are highly important in ensuring that the costs of serving a data center are not shifted to residential customers in the same area.
Law student Jessica Hall assisted GEI with POWER Act implementation in Pacific Power’s territory. Jessica, who is headed to an associate position in an energy law practice in Iowa after graduation, found her GEI experience invaluable. “I learned a lot from my time at GEI and working with Cole. I’m excited to take what I’ve learned into my practice as an attorney and to continue to address important issues such as data center regulation. I’m grateful that I got such practical and timely experience as a student.”
Jessica is one of eight students who work with GEI, as an externship, over the course of the year. The mission of GEI is “to develop comprehensive, effective strategies to further the transition to a 100% renewable energy grid.” Participants in the program work with staff attorneys to develop equitable, comprehensive, and effective strategies to prevent climate change, providing analyses and recommendations that focus on strengthening existing climate policies, eliminating barriers, and promoting innovation and ambition in the renewable energy sphere.
According to Cole, exposing students to this work is incredibly beneficial for their future careers. “I definitely think some of the policies we are advocating for can be a template for others around the country. In general, Public Utility Commissions have looked at what other states have done in setting their policies as they relate to data centers, and at least some of these proposals are explicitly tethered to the outcomes in other states.”
