Scope
Minnesota Laws 2025, First Special Session, chapter 12 (H.F. 16) is an act relating to data centers. It states a state policy that data-center permitting inquiries are also referred to the Minnesota Business First Stop program; adds a preapplication evaluation for a data center whose proposed consumptive use exceeds 100,000,000 gallons per year (section 103G.265, subdivision 5) and water-use permit conditions for large data-center appropriations (section 103G.271, subdivision 5b); defines "data center" in section 216B.02, subdivision 11, as a facility designed to have a load of 100 megawatts or more whose primary purpose is the storage, management, and processing of digital data; adds section 216B.1622 (service to very large customers) and section 216B.1623 (a clean energy and capacity tariff for commercial and industrial customers); amends sections 216B.1691, 216B.2402 and 216B.241, including an exemption from energy conservation optimization contributions for a qualified large-scale data center that pays the section 216B.72 fee; adds the qualified large-scale data center fee in section 216B.72; and amends the sales-tax exemption in section 297A.68, subdivision 42, and the refund list in section 297A.75, subdivision 1, for sales and purchases made after 30 June 2025. The act does not impose a construction pause.
- Geographic scope
- Minnesota
- Jurisdiction
- State
- Authority type
- Legislature
- Issuing authority
- Minnesota Legislature
Dates
- Adopted
- 14 June 2025
- Effective
- Several dates apply; see the source
- Scheduled expiration
- None scheduled
- Ended
- Not recorded as ended
- Completion condition
- None stated
- Source document
- 14 June 2025
- Last checked
- 23 September 2026 (earlier than tracker date 5 October 2026; not an automatic status change)
Summary
Minnesota's 2025 First Special Session chapter 12, signed on 14 June 2025, is an act relating to data centers. It added water-appropriation preapplication and permit provisions for large data-center water use, a statutory definition of a data center as a facility designed for a load of 100 megawatts or more, very-large-customer and clean-energy tariff sections for utilities, an annual fee on qualified large-scale data centers, and changes to the data-center sales-tax exemption for sales and purchases made after 30 June 2025. Most sections took effect the day after final enactment; the tax sections apply to sales and purchases made after 30 June 2025.
What this does not establish
- This is one record for the whole act. The water-permit conditions (section 103G.271, subdivision 5b) and the annual fee (section 216B.72) are also tracked as separate records because each is a codified section with its own operative text.
- Section 17 amended Minnesota Statutes section 297A.68, subdivision 42 (the data-center sales-tax exemption), which is tracked as a separate record; this record does not restate that exemption.
- Section 216B.1622 on very large customers, added by this act, does not itself name data centers, so it is not tracked as a separate data-center record.
- Sections 1, 2, 5 and 6 carry no effective-date clause in the opened text; this record does not compute their effective day, so the act has no single effective date.
- The record does not establish which facilities, if any, have paid the fee, sought a water-use permit under these provisions, or been certified for the tax exemption.
Unresolved questions
- Later amendments to each codified section are tracked on that section's own record, not here; the opened session-law page does not list later amendments to the act itself.
Relationships
Supersession means a later instrument replaces the earlier legal effect. Repeal links identify the repeal instrument and the measure it ends. A later implementation or related letter is not treated as a replacement unless the record says so.
- Related, not a replacement Water-use permit conditions for large data centers (In effect)
- Related, not a replacement Annual fee on qualified large-scale data centers (In effect)
- Related, not a replacement Qualified data center sales-tax exemption (In effect)
Sources
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/2025/1/Session+Law/Chapter/12/