Data Center Site Selection in Nebraska

Nebraska became the first state served entirely by public power and remains the only one.²¹ Every retail customer, including every data center, is served by a public power district, municipal utility or cooperative. Three names cover most large-load conversations:

• Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) serves more than 846,000 people across 13 counties in eastern Nebraska, including Omaha and Sarpy County, and is among the largest public power utilities in the country by customers.³
• Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) partners with 23 rural public power districts and cooperatives and 38 municipalities to serve more than 530,000 Nebraskans in 84 of the state’s 93 counties.²
• Lincoln Electric System (LES) is the city-owned utility serving Lincoln, where Google has confirmed a $600 million data center.¹⁰

Practically, this changes three things. First, rates and large-customer contracts are set by elected or appointed utility boards, so the negotiation is with the utility directly, and the board answers to local ratepayers rather than shareholders. Second, there is no option to pick a competing retail supplier. Third, a public utility’s financial capacity to build generation and lines on behalf of one customer is a political question as much as a financial one. Our guide on what utilities and co-ops look for explains how such boards weigh large loads, and the glossary covers utility ownership types.

Sarpy County, south of Omaha, is Nebraska’s main hyperscale cluster. Meta’s Papillion-area campus has grown in phases, including an expansion of two buildings totaling 751,000 square feet.¹¹ Google broke ground on a $600 million data center on a 275-acre site on the west side of Papillion, planned for up to 2.4 million square feet at full buildout, and it sits in the same Highway 50 corridor as Meta.¹²

Both campuses are in OPPD territory, and their growth shows up directly in OPPD’s resource planning. OPPD has said that larger industrial customers, including data centers, food processors and manufacturers, are driving much of its growth.¹³ Google has also built in Lincoln, in LES territory, which gives Nebraska two distinct urban utility options.¹⁰

For a new site in the corridor, the key screening questions are which public power entity holds the service territory, the distance to a 345 kV or 161 kV substation with capacity, and how far into OPPD’s generation plan the project would land. Local zoning is handled by the cities and the county; our guide to zoning for data centers covers what to confirm.

OPPD has moved from planning to building. Its Turtle Creek Station in Sarpy County, a 450 MW natural gas plant, and its Standing Bear Lake Station, 150 MW of dual-fuel units that can switch to fuel oil, are now operating, together adding 600 MW.⁷ OPPD has said it will add nearly 2.5 GW of generation over the next decade, including 900 MW of simple-cycle gas generation with fuel-oil backup through plant expansions.⁶

Peaking plants like these are built to cover high-demand hours, not to run around the clock, so they help OPPD meet resource adequacy obligations as load grows but do not by themselves supply a new 24/7 campus. A hyperscale request on top of this plan usually means more resources, and with public power, the board has to decide who pays for them. That question sits behind the 2026 legislation. Our guide to data center power requirements explains why a campus’s load factor matters to a utility.

In an all-public-power state, a developer that wants to build its own power plant raises a structural question: can the public utility take that plant through eminent domain? LB 1261, signed in 2026, answers it. The law prohibits consumer-owned utilities from using eminent domain to acquire privately owned generation built to serve a single industrial customer, and it was filed partly in response to data center growth.⁴

The law does not create retail competition. The private supplier and the consumer-owned utility must sign a long-term contract that preserves the utility’s exclusive right to serve retail customers, and the industrial customer must cover all associated costs, including congestion charges and system upgrades.⁴ Governor Pillen described it as a way to serve new industries, including artificial intelligence, without raising costs for existing ratepayers.⁴

The model is already being tested. In March 2026, Google proposed a Nebraska data center that could need more than three times Lincoln’s summer peak demand, powered by a privately built natural gas plant with carbon capture, with Tenaska responsible for power and Tallgrass Energy involved for gas and carbon dioxide pipelines.¹⁴ For gigawatt-scale projects, this behind-the-meter or dedicated-generation path may matter more than any tariff.

Nebraska’s main incentive for data centers has been the ImagiNE Nebraska Act, enacted in 2020 through LB 1107 to replace the Nebraska Advantage Act.¹⁵ Its tiers offered refunds of sales and use taxes paid and personal property tax exemptions for qualifying equipment, with data center equipment listed as eligible. The Quality Jobs Investment tier, for example, required a $5 million investment and 30 new jobs and provided a 100% sales and use tax refund and a personal property tax exemption for data center equipment.¹⁵

On July 20, 2026, Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order barring approval of any new data center applications for ImagiNE Act incentives. He first described it as applying to large-scale data centers, then clarified it applies to all new data center projects. The state estimated it lost $317 million in direct credit revenue to data centers from January 1, 2021 through June 30, 2026.⁵ The order also directs the Department of Water, Energy and Environment to form a task force to recommend to the Legislature how to protect water and electricity resources.⁵

For site economics, assume no state sales tax refund for a new Nebraska data center unless counsel confirms otherwise. That shifts the comparison toward power cost and timing, which is often where the decision is made anyway; see tax incentives versus power costs and our sales tax exemptions by state comparison.

Nebraska’s utilities operate in the Southwest Power Pool, so regional transmission and market rules come from SPP. On January 14, 2026, FERC accepted SPP’s rules for High Impact Large Loads (HILL) and for assessing generation built to serve them (HILLGA).⁸ SPP defines a HILL as a new commercial or industrial load at a single site of 10 MW or more at lower voltages, or 50 MW or more at transmission voltages.⁸

The HILL path sets up a 90-day study-and-approval process for projects that provide their own energy or connect to new or existing generation.⁹ That pairs naturally with LB 1261: a campus that brings its own generation can, in principle, move through both the state framework and the regional study faster than one that relies on the utility to find supply. A regional study does not replace the serving utility’s own review: the public power district still has to agree to serve the load and to build or be paid for the local facilities. Our guide to SPP data center site selection covers the regional picture in more depth.

1. 01Identify the public power entity that holds the territory: OPPD, NPPD’s wholesale partners, LES or another district or municipal utility.³²
2. 02Ask the utility how a new campus fits its generation plan and who pays for added resources.⁶
3. 03Decide whether the project will rely on utility supply or a dedicated private plant under LB 1261.⁴
4. 04Test whether the load qualifies for SPP’s HILL process and what generation it can bring.⁸⁹
5. 05Model the project without ImagiNE incentives unless an existing agreement applies.⁵
6. 06Watch the state water and electricity task force, which may lead to new legislation.⁵

Most of these questions can be answered from a desk before an option is signed; our methodology describes how we approach them. To pressure-test a specific parcel, you can get a site reviewed.