Buckeye State now Silicon Valley’s dump for energy-sapping data centers | Opinion

Thomas Suddes, a former legislative reporter, highlights an inspiring but challenging effort by Ohioans to halt the construction of more power- and water-intensive data centers across the state. This initiative aims to get a "Prohibition of Construction of a Data Center" on the November 3 statewide ballot, facing an uphill climb to collect the required 418,487 valid signatures from at least 44 counties by the July 1 deadline. Suddes notes that leading data center companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft are major players in Ohio, particularly in the booming Columbus metro region. The article emphasizes environmental concerns, citing the Ohio Environmental Council's report that U.S. data centers used an estimated 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, projected to rise significantly by 2028. Hyperscale data centers can consume 1 to 5 million gallons of water daily. Furthermore, state and local governments in Ohio have provided roughly $2.5 billion in tax incentives to data centers between 2017 and 2024, despite the relatively few jobs they create. Suddes also raises concerns about the potential for electricity rate increases for residential customers due to the costs of supplying power to these facilities, with the Public Utilities Commission Ohio overseeing these matters. Despite the formidable obstacles posed by Ohio's constitutional amendment process and the immense influence of the data center industry, Suddes suggests that unified voter coalitions have previously overcome powerful Statehouse forces.