This story is produced by Montana Free Press/Mountain Journal in collaboration with Grist as part of the Report for America Local News Initiative. NorthWestern Energy has been ordered by state regulators to take its 20-year power plan back to the drawing board.  The move comes after analysts for the Montana Public Service Commission found deficiencies with the utility’s Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP. It’s essentially a roadmap that estimates power needs and how the utility will cost-effectively supply that power to its customers over the next two decades.  Commissioners voted 3-1 last week to require NorthWestern to address flaws found in the plan, according to an independent review from the consulting firm GDS. There are five commissioners on the PSC, but Billings-based Commissioner Brad Molnar is currently suspended from his role. In a press release August 19 about the decision, PSC Vice President Jennifer Fielder wrote, “Requesting critical information to fill the gaps in this plan is a critical quality control step so that future energy resource decisions rest on a plan that is complete, transparent, and verifiable.” The GDS report found that NorthWestern’s IRP does not explain why the utility needs to invest in new, expensive power resources to meet demands. The report also questions the reproducibility of NorthWestern’s modeling to forecast demand and justify the cost of building new power generation, such as natural gas plants. Fielder said NorthWestern’s analysis “increases the chance of over-building facilities which results in higher rates or under-preparing which creates reliability risks.” Fielder and the commission majority are not alone in those sentiments. Rates have steadily increased for NorthWestern customers across Montana in recent years. Public commenters at separate sessions hosted by NorthWestern and the PSC criticized this iteration of the IRP for failing to address affordability or climate change. “Like the last two IRPs, this one claims that increased fossil fuel use will lead to cheaper power,” said Missoula resident Michael Hudson at a NorthWestern Energy comment session last winter. “Yet our prices have risen by 40% since 2022, and those increases have followed the expansion of fossil fuel and coal.”  In an interview with Montana Free Press, Nick Fitzmaurice with the Montana Environmental Information Center said the proposed IRP completely ignores climate change: “The document is over 380 pages long, and it mentions climate change once directly in its summary of stakeholders’ concerns.”  Fitzmaurice said NorthWestern’s modeling relies on maintaining existing coal infrastructure and adding more natural gas resources. That will drive up bills, he said, and “lead to a lot more greenhouse gas emissions and climate harm.” In a separate issue, NorthWestern has entered into several agreements to power data centers that have not been made publicly available. The GDS report highlighted the IRP’s uncertainty about data centers’ future power needs. Fitzmaurice said without regulations in place, the utility could pass on the cost of energy generation for power-hungry data centers to its existing customers across the state.  In a statement emailed to MTFP, NorthWestern Energy spokesperson Jo Dee Black wrote, “Integrated resource planning can involve an almost unlimited number of scenarios, sensitivities and analytical approaches. Our focus is therefore not simply on producing more analysis, but on ensuring that additional work meaningfully improves the planning discussion and helps evaluate the costs, reliability risks and tradeoffs associated with serving our customers over the long term.”  NorthWestern Energy has until Sept. 18 to address the plan’s deficiencies or request an extension. The post NorthWestern Energy’s power plan found ‘deficient’ by independent review appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less