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KEY POINTS:
Ohio is the Great Lakes region’s leader in new data center developments.
These sites are projected to account for one-fourth of the state’s total electricity use by 2040.
To address these needs, a new bill proposes to reshape the state’s energy policy in favor of natural gas, coal, and nuclear sources.
COLUMBUS, Oh. — Lawmakers in Ohio are considering a proposed bill that would redefine the state’s consideration of “clean” and “reliable” energy to include sources that burn hydrocarbons — namely natural gas and coal — while effectively banning the development of solar and wind projects.
The departure from the scientific consensus that fossil fuel power sources contribute significantly to pollution and climate change comes from concerns over the future of energy reliability in the Great Lakes region’s fastest-growing data center hub.
With 77 such projects in development, these data centers are estimated to account for nearly one-quarter of Ohio’s total energy needs by 2040, according to an estimate by the University of Virginia’s Cooper Center for Public Service. Ohio’s three largest data centers alone will consume all the electricity produced at its three largest power plants: nearly 7,000 megawatts, enough to power roughly 6 million American homes, half the state’s population.
To meet the power needs of large data centers, which operate 24/7, Senate Bill 294 would establish a high bar for any energy development in Ohio. A power plant would be required, at any time of day or night, to be producing more than half of its maximum electrical output.
In the bill, this is written as “a minimum capacity factor of 50 percent.” In practice, it is a lofty standard that only Ohio’s nuclear, natural gas, and coal plants feasibly achieve — while truly clean, water-conserving energy sources such as solar and wind fall short.
“It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is no long-term consideration of the economic and environmental future for Ohio when fossil fuels are incentivized over clean, renewable energy,” said Lea Harper, managing director of the Fresh Water Accountability Project, an Ohio advocacy organization, in testimony against the bill.
Favoring Polluting Power Sources
S.B. 294, which has been subject so far to five hearings by the Ohio Senate’s Energy Committee, would define the state’s new public policy as “ensuring affordable, reliable, and clean energy security.”
The bill’s critics say that dramatic shifts in priorities lurk beneath this seemingly innocuous language. The policy mirrors the executive order President Trump issued last January, declaring an “energy emergency” that set the stage for a renewed reliance on fossil fuels nationwide.
“The Trump Administration is invoking emergency authorities for non-emergency projects to keep the nation reliant on dirty energy sources like coal, oil, and gas,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel at a Great Lakes Business Network webinar earlier this month. “The order excludes specifically wind, solar, and battery energy, which are among the cheapest and cleanest energy sources that exist today.”
The bill would apply this concept to Ohio. Solar and wind farms, where energy production is subject to the variable presence of the sun and wind, would not meet the state’s new definition of “reliable” as established by capacity factor thresholds. This is despite solar and wind accounting for a large share of electricity production in other states and countries, as the bill’s critics have exhibited.
“Dismissing solar and wind as ‘unreliable’ ignores the existence of batteries, efficiency, and of economies of scale achieved as renewable energy becomes widespread,” Cathy Becker, president of the non-profit Save Ohio Parks, said in written testimony this winter. “Denmark gets 59 percent of its power from wind and 11 percent from solar; Lithuania gets 45 percent of its power from wind and 18 percent from solar; the Netherlands gets 27 percent of its power from wind and 18 percent from solar…none of these countries deal with frequent power outages.”
Ohio’s two nuclear plants, the Perry and David Besse sites — both located on the shores of Lake Erie — have operated over the past 12 months with respective capacity factors of 81 percent and 96 percent. Though not considered fossil fuel-burning, nuclear plants use vast quantities of water and are apt to discharge thermal and toxic waste. According to permit data from 2023, the Perry facility draws an average of 140 million gallons of water each day from Lake Erie, returning nearly all of it to the lake at a higher temperature. Last year, the facility reported a 78-gallon spill of radioactive chemicals, though this was contained on-site.
The Perry plant was also one of several nuclear plants to receive a lease extension from the Trump administration, allowing it to continue operating 20 years beyond its originally planned closure date in 2025. This January, both plants’ parent company, Vistra, signalled intentions to apply for subsequent license renewals — a disclosure that coincided with news that Meta had signed a 20-year agreement to purchase more than 2.1 gigawatts of Vistra’s nuclear energy to power the tech giant’s regional data centers.
The state’s three largest coal plants would also meet the bill’s high standards. The Kyger Creek and Cardinal plants have operated over the past year with capacity factors of 57 percent and 66 percent, respectively. In another DOE push to strengthen grid stability using fossil fuels, both locations received shares of a $175 million federal grant this winter to update infrastructure.
The James M. Gavin plant (56 percent capacity factor), located on the Ohio River, is the state’s largest coal facility. As of September 2025, the site has more than 67 million cubic yards of coal ash — the toxic byproduct of coal burning and a known pollutant in groundwater — and 40 out of its 42 groundwater monitoring wells were found to contain concentrations of toxic heavy metals in excess of federal advisory levels over the last decade.
The plant has continued to operate despite facing orders from the EPA to stop dumping coal ash. These harsh ultimatums are now in limbo, after the agency in April proposed sweeping changes that ease standards for coal plants’ groundwater monitoring and roll back rules requiring coal ash cleanup.
“The Trump administration and coal ash polluters want to take us back to the bad old days of arsenic, lead, and mercury from coal ash contaminating our water,” said Nick Torrey, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement.
Meanwhile, Ohio’s 53 large natural gas plants also operate well above the bill’s capacity factor threshold. Despite fracking’s long legacy of polluting water sources, the power source is the backbone of the data center boom: according to a report from the International Energy Agency, natural gas-fired plants are the number one source of electricity for data centers in the United States — accounting for more than 40 percent of these facilities’ total share — while proposals for new plants continue to grow.
“In the U.S., more than one-third of [oil and gas] capacity is slated to directly power data centers on site, and many more on-grid projects are planned to meet an anticipated increase in energy demand from AI,” reads a 2025 report from Global Energy Monitor, a non-governmental organization that tracks energy use and infrastructure.
In Ohio specifically, the DOE and Department of Commerce announced in March a public-private partnership to build a large-scale data center and 10 gigawatts of new power generation — including at least 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas generation — on federal land at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. This is enough electricity to power between 7.5 million and 10 million American homes.
“Once a cornerstone of America’s national security during the Cold War — enriching uranium for our nation’s defense — the Portsmouth site is now being transformed to help the United States win the AI race,” a DOE fact sheet states.
Reliability In Demand
Ohio’s demand for power has never been under more scrutiny. Buckeye state residents have joined a chorus of concerned communities nationwide in expressing their fears over rising costs and shaky electricity service. Recently, utility watchdogs have amplified this message.
Earlier this month, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued a “Level 3 Alert” in the wake of sudden grid oscillations, and outlined steps that utilities must take to protect consumers from emerging large-scale electricity users, namely data centers.
“The goal is to ensure that as more industrial-scale consumers connect to the grid, they actively participate in practices that protect grid stability,” its alert reads.
This past week, PJM, the largest utility in Ohio, found itself in an emergency of its own. The utility received overnight approval from the DOE to keep data centers and other large users to operate using backup generators amid regional heatwaves and planned generator outages for maintenance.
“The projected level of generation outages coupled with the forecasted demand raises a significant risk of emergency conditions that could jeopardize electric reliability and public safety,” the utility wrote in its request.
Monitoring Analytics, an independent monitor of the regional grid, also reported this week that PJM’s cost of wholesale electricity in the region rose 76 percent in Q1 from 2025 to 2026. Congestion costs — expenses that arise when transmission lines reach capacity, and are pushed onto consumers — rose 300 percent alone.
“The price impacts on customers have been very large and are not reversible,” the monitor wrote in their report. “The price impacts will be even larger in the near term unless the issues associated with data center load are addressed in a timely manner.”