Data Centers & AI

Power, water, economics, infrastructure and policy questions surrounding Ohio's rapidly expanding data-center industry.

Data centers are becoming a major part of Ohio's economic and infrastructure landscape. They bring enormous capital investment and growing demand for electricity, water, land and public infrastructure—and raise questions about tax incentives, utility costs, environmental impacts and who ultimately benefits.

This collection uses Ohio Common Ground graphics, charts and explainers to break those questions into understandable pieces. The objective is not to tell Ohioans whether data centers are "good" or "bad." It is to give them enough information to ask better questions.

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Data Centers & AI: Start Here

A curated sequence of visuals that introduces the key power, water, economic and policy questions surrounding Ohio data centers.

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Browse OCG's charts, explainers, and data by subtopic. Select a Visual to see the explanation, sources, and verification behind it.

Explainer

Environment & Communities

Air Emissions: Backup vs. Primary Power

Emergency backup generators and routinely operated power generation create different air-quality questions. Operating purpose and hours matter as much as the number of engines.

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Explainer

Environment & Communities

Data Center Noise: What Should Be Measured?

Evaluating data-center noise requires more than one dBA number. Source, location, timing, operating condition, background sound and tonal or low-frequency characteristics can all matter.

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Explainer

Water & Cooling

Closed Loop Doesn't Mean No Water Events

Closed-loop cooling can use very little water during normal operation while still requiring filling, flushing, testing or drain-down during commissioning and maintenance.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

Natural Gas Is a Major Part of Ohio's Data Center Buildout

Ohio data-center growth is already driving substantial new natural-gas generation, including 736 MW of behind-the-meter gas capacity under construction for Meta and EdgeConneX projects in New Albany.

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Explainer

Electricity & Grid

How Much Data Center Load Before Ohio Feels the Impact?

There is no single gigawatt threshold at which data centers begin affecting Ohio. The useful indicators are contracted load, grid constraints, peak demand, infrastructure requirements, costs and local resource impacts.

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Data

Basics & Scale

How Big Are Ohio's Big Data Center Projects?

Ohio data-center capacity figures can describe operational power, critical IT load, future power envelopes or multiple campuses combined. Define the metric before ranking projects.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

Ohio Data Centers Are Building Dedicated Power

Ohio data-center projects are increasingly being paired with dedicated or behind-the-meter generation, including natural-gas projects in New Albany serving large computing loads.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

Land Use Isn't One Number

Comparing the land needed to generate electricity requires consistent definitions. Plant footprint, total project area, direct disturbance and life-cycle land use are different measurements.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

Natural Gas Generation: The Technology Matters

Natural-gas generators are not interchangeable. EIA's 2024 tested heat rates show materially different fuel requirements for combined-cycle plants, reciprocating engines and simple-cycle gas turbines.

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Explainer

Water & Cooling

Cooling Design Drives Water Use

Data-center cooling water use depends heavily on how a facility ultimately rejects heat. A closed internal liquid loop can be paired with either dry or evaporative external heat rejection.

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Explainer

Basics & Scale

Who's Using All This Computing Power?

Computing demand comes from individuals, businesses, governments, cloud services and artificial intelligence – and it is supplied by a mix of devices, local systems and data centers.

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Explainer

Environment & Communities

Cumulative Impact vs. Project-by-Project Review

A single data-center project can be reviewed on its own while a community or region experiences the combined effects of many projects, infrastructure upgrades and other stressors over time.

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Explainer

Economics & Incentives

Who Pays for the Infrastructure?

Data centers can require new generation, transmission, substations, distribution equipment, roads, water and sewer capacity. Who ultimately pays depends on what is built, who owns it and how costs are allocated.

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Explainer

Policy & Proposals

Who Reviews What? Ohio Data Center Approvals

Ohio does not have one universal data-center permit. Zoning, building, environmental, water, power-infrastructure, utility and tax-incentive decisions can be handled by different entities depending on the project.

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Explainer

Environment & Communities

The Data Center Impact Ledger

A data center's impact is not one number. A complete review should account for power, water, air and climate, land and infrastructure, economics, and community effects.

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Data

Economics & Incentives

Billions in Investment ≠ Thousands of Permanent Jobs

Data-center announcements often combine very large capital-investment figures with employment claims that measure different things. Investment, construction employment, permanent operations jobs, payroll and public incentives should be evaluated separately.

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Data

Economics & Incentives

What Tax Incentive Does Ohio Give Data Centers?

Ohio law allows qualifying data centers to receive a complete or partial sales-and-use tax exemption on a broad range of equipment, including computing, cooling, electrical, and construction infrastructure.

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Question

Policy & Proposals

What Should Ohio Be Asking About Data Centers?

Large data-center projects can affect electricity, water, public incentives, infrastructure and communities. A useful policy discussion starts by making the major questions explicit.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

What Powers Ohio's Grid — and What's Coming

Ohio's in-state electricity generation is dominated by natural gas, coal and nuclear power, while PJM's 2026 forecast documentation shows multi-gigawatt large-load growth requested in AEP Ohio, largely driven by data centers.

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Explainer

Basics & Scale

What Is a Data Center?

Data centers are physical facilities that house the computing equipment behind cloud services, digital applications and artificial intelligence. Understanding what they contain and do is the starting point for understanding their demands on electricity, cooling and infrastructure.

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Explainer

Electricity & Grid

Small Nuclear? Yes — It's a Thing

Small modular reactors are designed to produce nuclear power in smaller, more modular units than traditional large reactors. They are being developed as one potential source of future firm power.

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Explainer

Electricity & Grid

Behind the Meter / From the Grid

Data centers can receive electricity from the regional grid or from dedicated generation located on or near the site. The two arrangements create different infrastructure, reliability and regulatory questions.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

Ohio's Data Center Pipeline

A current project tracker identifies about 4.1 GW of operating Ohio data-center capacity and 22.1 GW of planned projects – but planned capacity is not the same as capacity that will ultimately be built.

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Explainer

Water & Cooling

"Closed Loop" Doesn't Answer the Question

A data center can recirculate coolant in a closed internal loop while using very different methods outside that loop to reject heat—and those methods can have very different water impacts.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

1 GW Sounds Like Just a Number

A continuously operating 1-gigawatt load would consume 8.76 terawatt-hours of electricity in a year—about 5.7% of all electricity sold to Ohio customers in 2024.

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Explainer

Water & Cooling

Average Isn't the Whole Story

Average daily water use can hide the higher demand a cooling system may experience during hot weather or high-load conditions. Capacity and local infrastructure questions should consider both average and peak demand.

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Data

Electricity & Grid

How Much Natural Gas Does a 1-GW Data Center Need?

Generating 1 GW continuously with natural gas requires a very large and continuous fuel supply. The exact amount depends strongly on generator efficiency.

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Infographic

Water & Cooling

Water Words Matter

Data-center water discussions often mix together withdrawal, consumption, and return flow. They are not the same thing.

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Explainer

Basics & Scale

Understanding Power Units: MW, GW & TW

Megawatts, gigawatts and terawatts measure the same thing—power—at very different scales. Understanding those units makes data-center electricity claims much easier to interpret.

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