GOED's own posture: "We aren't actively recruiting data centers. We work to match communities to projects." Here's what its incentive tools actually offer, the one deal it's made, and where its 2026 Opportunity Zone map lands.
Tap a term for a plain-language definition. Everything past this point assumes you know these.
Everything on this page runs on those six mechanics. GOED's EDTIF and REDTIF credits, below, are TIF's cousin — a rebate of new tax revenue, not new taxpayer money. The Creekstone deal and GOED's Opportunity Zone map both work the same way. And UIPA matters specifically because it's a separate state agency handing out its own zones and rebates alongside GOED's — which is exactly the comparison later in this page.
This part matters no matter how familiar you are with TIF generally — it's specific to how GOED actually applies it, and everything later on this page assumes you've seen it.
GOED's economic growth team, an incentives manager, and GOED leadership vet the application first.
The board's incentive committee conducts a formal review, then the full board votes at a public meeting.
Final approval runs through GOED's commissioner before anything is finalized.
Both EDTIF and REDTIF are post-performance — the state rebates a share of new tax revenue only after jobs and investment materialize, not upfront cash.
"We aren't actively recruiting data centers. We work to match communities to projects." Slide 3, GOED presentation
GOED lists five industries it actively targets: aerospace and defense, fintech, life sciences and health care, tech (AI, quantum, blockchain), and energy and minerals — plus a broader "ecosystems and manufacturing" category. Data centers aren't named as a targeted industry on their own; they fall under the tech umbrella.
GOED says every incentive is evaluated against five guiding principles:
GOED draws a specific distinction on this slide: a use-based sales tax exemption exists for equipment at qualifying data centers (first passed in 2016 and rewritten by S.B. 114, 2020), but GOED itself "doesn't offer abatements or cash incentives to any project." That's consistent with how EDTIF and REDTIF actually work — both are post-performance rebates of new tax revenue the state wouldn't have collected otherwise, not upfront payments or reductions to an existing tax bill. If you want the full mechanics of how tax increment financing works generally — the same underlying concept behind PIDs, TIF, and UIPA project areas — see our PID Mechanism Map.
Of every data center operating or under construction in Utah, GOED's deck identifies exactly one that has received a state post-performance incentive: Creekstone Energy, near Delta in Millard County.
GOED also notes Creekstone runs on behind-the-meter power (various sources planned) and describes a "deep partnership" with Millard County and Delta built over a long, high-engagement process.
Utah hosts 48 operational data centers with just over 1 GW of combined capacity, with another 2.6 GW under active construction. GOED frames the state as "mid-tier" nationally — for comparison, Texas recently paused to evaluate 474 GW of data center power connection requests. GOED projects 2,000–3,250 permanent data center jobs statewide by 2030, citing the Gardner Policy Institute (March 2026).
GOED's deck includes a map of "recommended" Opportunity Zones for 2026, with this explanation of the process:
This map traces back to H.B. 475 (2026), which renamed GOEO to GOED and created the Economic Opportunity Coordinating Council — explicitly requiring the council to "create a working group to provide oversight for the opportunity zone application process in 2026." The map on this slide is that process's first public output.
The simple version: when you lay GOED's four new 2026 Opportunity Zones next to UIPA's fifteen existing project areas, three of them land in the exact same county as an existing UIPA zone, and a fourth is a plausible match. Out of only four new zones, that's not a coincidence — it means GOED's "new" push is landing almost entirely on ground the state already has incentive tools in, rather than opening up fresh territory.
The technical breakdown of exactly which counties match is below, for anyone who wants to check our work.
Separately from GOED's own map, UIPA publishes its own project-area map. Laid side by side by county, three of GOED's four visible Opportunity Zones sit on top of counties UIPA already operates in, and a fourth is a plausible match.
This is a county-level comparison only, not a GIS overlay — neither source map has published coordinates. It shows the two zones fall in the same county, not that their boundaries are identical.
Ten of UIPA's fifteen project areas — including its two largest, Central Utah Agri-Park (42,820 ac, Juab County) and Mineral Mountains (25,427 ac, Beaver County) — sit in counties GOED's map doesn't touch at all. The overlap isn't broad geographic density; it's concentrated in a specific subset of counties where UIPA already has infrastructure and incentive authority on the ground.
Whether that concentration reflects genuinely shared infrastructure planning, or something more coordinated, isn't something the county-level view can answer on its own. It would take the actual Opportunity Zone legal descriptions, once GOED publishes them, compared against UIPA's recorded project-area boundaries — the same way this docket verified the Iron Springs/Enoch boundary against UIPA's own project area plan.
Worth holding next to the "additionality" principle GOED names on this same deck — would Creekstone's $17B project have happened without the state's 50%/20-year credit? GOED's own framework says that question should be asked before an incentive is granted. Nothing in this presentation shows GOED's answer to it for Creekstone specifically.
This isn't speculative — Utah already has an answer for what happens on the "accountability" side of GOED's framework when a company leaves early. Tyson Foods' Eagle Mountain plant closed in August 2026, five years into a 10-year EDTIF agreement signed in 2019, eliminating 723 jobs. The honest number here is smaller than it looks: EDTIF is post-performance, so Tyson only earned credits against taxes it actually paid and jobs it actually created — leaving early means it simply stops earning future credits, not that the state has to claw anything back. But it also means GOED's "accountability" principle has no teeth beyond that: there's no penalty for walking away once the state's own agreement was signed as post-performance from the start. The real open question is whether the public infrastructure built to serve the plant, and Eagle Mountain's own local incentive arrangements if any exist, represent costs that don't self-correct the same way.