The Ohio General Assembly ended its session last week by scuttling a bipartisan energy efficiency bill, despite tightening power supplies in the region and concern over demand tied to new data centers.
Hours before the end of the biennial session, Senate leadership abruptly canceled a key vote on a bill that would give utilities the ability to implement energy-saving programs. Energy forecasts since legislators introduced H.B. 79 in early 2023 have only pointed to rising electricity demand.
Wholesale electricity prices for future capacity on the regional transmission grid serving Ohio, PJM Interconnection, shot up eightfold earlier this year. At the same time, there seems to be no letup to announcements from the largest companies in the world that they intend to build more power-hungry data centers for artificial intelligence.
GOP Gov. Mike DeWine last week announced plans by Amazon Web Services to invest an additional $10 billion to expand data center infrastructure across the state. Total investment by Amazon in Ohio comes to about $23 billion by 2030.
