Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is working with 15 other Republican attorneys general to investigate the renewable energy claims and power usage of four of the world’s largest tech companies.

In a press release the Montana Department of Justice issued Thursday, Knudsen accused Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft of misrepresenting their power procurement practices. Knudsen also accused the companies of threatening grid reliability by driving up electricity demand as they incentivize private-sector companies to add more renewable energy sources — e.g., wind and solar power — to the nation’s grid.

Knudsen and his colleagues’ greenwashing allegations are based on assertions that the aforementioned Big Tech companies have issued “misleading and deceptive claims” that they are “solely” powered by renewable energy. Knudsen argues this could violate Montana’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act.

Montana Free Press reached out to Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft for a response to the attorneys’ general allegations that they are engaged in greenwashing. The companies did not immediately respond to MTFP’s request for comment on the investigation.

In a heavily footnoted 15-page letter dated Sept. 24, the attorneys general accuse the companies of engaging in a  “shell game” involving renewable energy certificates, or RECs.

A REC that’s “unbundled” from the purchaser’s use “merely shows that renewable energy was generated somewhere on the planet” — not that “the person purchasing the REC used that renewable energy,” according to the letter. The attorneys general argue that buying RECs might help those companies look good on paper, but the purchases don’t ensure that fossil-fuel-generated power has been swapped out for carbon-free electricity.

The letter also nods to power supply dynamics as the energy industry grapples with a marked increase in electricity demand, which it hasn’t faced for nearly 20 years. That’s driven largely by a spike in investment in power-hungry AI and data center facilities.

“Tech companies have not only created skyrocketing demand for electricity but also locked up relatively rare baseload sources like nuclear power for themselves, while pushing utilities toward harmful net-zero goals that require greater reliance on intermittent renewable power sources for everyone else,” the letter reads.

While Amazon did not respond to MTFP’s emailed questions by publication time, a company spokesperson did pass along a blog post where the company describes itself as “the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world for five years running.” The company reported that it has invested billions of dollars in more than 600 renewable energy projects across the globe to meet its established goal to “match all of the electricity consumed across Amazon’s global operations” with “100% renewable energy by 2030.”

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Knudsen argues that “big tech’s misleading energy use claims” have resulted in the retirement of coal and natural gas plants, “putting communities across the country at an increased risk of blackouts over the next few years.” 

“As attorney general, I am committed to getting answers,” Knudsen said in the DOJ press release.

The letter asks Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft to detail their renewable energy claims, produce purchase agreements for unbundled RECs, and turn over any analyses the companies have prepared on those purchases’ impact on energy generation and emissions. They’re also requesting an “actual breakdown of electricity by source that your company has operated on” going back five years. 

Montana’s Office of Consumer Protection, which is nested under the Montana DOJ, will collect the companies’ responses, which are requested by Oct. 27.

The letter comes amid a surge in data center development and a push by President Donald Trump and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte to “unleash” American-made energy.

NorthWestern Energy, Montana’s largest utility, has signed agreements with data center companies such as Quantica that would more than double NorthWestern’s electricity demand in the near future. 

BothNorthWestern and Quantica, a recently formed company with leadership ties to Talen, the company that operates the coal-fired power plant in Colstrip,are serving on Gianforte’s “Unleashing American-made Energy Task Force.” The group is led by Montana Environmental Quality Director Sonja Nowakowski and held its first meeting on Sept. 22. The task force is predicated on “an energy crisis” Gianforte said the country is facing. He has charged the group with producing a report within the next year that will help increase the state’s supply of “affordable, reliable energy.”

Gianforte did not respond to MTFP’s questions by publication time Thursday evening about the DOJ’s investigation and how it squares with his administration’s stated commitment to an “all of the above” energy policy.

“A data center using electricity from an electric grid with 40% fossil-fuel-generated baseload power is not ‘using,’ ‘consuming’ or ‘powered by’ 100% renewable energy even if it purchases RECs from renewable energy providers,” the letter reads.