by Nick Fitzmaurice
NorthWestern Energy is at it again. On April 27, the utility filed its “final” Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) at the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC), an iterative 20-year plan for providing electricity to its customers. Implementation of NorthWestern’s current IRP would commit Montanans to the most expensive and polluting energy sources available today. While expensive electricity resources are good for utility executives and shareholders, they are terrible for our air, water, climate, and… budgets.
MEIC has participated in NorthWestern’s IRP Stakeholder Work Group for the past year and has weighed in on the IRP’s development in every available forum. We submitted extensive comments to NorthWestern covering countless issues in its Draft IRP, but the utility has barrelled ahead with its ill-advised planning planning without any meaningful adjustments to its flawed modeling. (MEIC’s full comments to NorthWestern can be found on our website.)
The PSC must now determine whether the IRP meets minimum filing requirements as outlined in Montana statute. If the PSC identifies filing deficiencies, then NorthWestern will have to update the IRP to address those deficiencies. Unfortunately, filing requirements represent only the bare bones of the IRP, and the PSC can only make recommendations for future IRP iterations beyond those minimum requirements.
On two occasions prior to submitting the final IRP, NorthWestern requested waivers regarding certain demand-side management reporting requirements. MEIC and NW Energy Coalition, represented by Earthjustice, made compelling arguments against the requests, and the PSC unanimously ruled against NorthWestern’s waiver requests.
Once the PSC has received a complete plan, it has 120 days to conduct its review. At the time of this writing, it was unclear whether NorthWestern had fulfilled all filing requirements. The PSC’s final review of the plan will be crucial in determining whether NorthWestern can charge its customers for additional expensive and unnecessary gas and coal generation in the coming years.
The PSC will have a 60-day public comment period and a number of public meetings. While the PSC is required to host a minimum of two meetings, MEIC, along with 18 partner organizations, requested that it hold meetings in each of the five commissioners’ districts as it has in the past. Keep an eye out for MEIC’s email action alerts to make sure you don’t miss the PSC’s comment period and public meetings! Sign up for email action alerts: www.MEIC.org/take-action
Ongoing Updates to IRP Process
MEIC has been actively participating in updates to statutory and administrative rule requirements for NorthWestern’s IRP. We lobbied extensively to secure beneficial amendments on HB 55 from the 2025 Session that preserve transparency and public participation in the IRP process, and we’ve since been participating in the PSC’s rulemaking to implement that bill.
MEIC has participated in several rounds of public comment for this rule-making, ensuring that the PSC’s final rules will require broader participation in NorthWestern’s technical advisory committee and that NorthWestern cannot bias its resource selection against low-cost clean energy. The PSC held a public hearing on this rulemaking on June 2.
This article was published in the June 2026 issue of Down To Earth.
