YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Data centers have been hot topics in local communities over the past several months, and have been spotlighted in Ohio’s statewide races as well.
Both major-party gubernatorial candidates – Cincinnati billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate, and Amy Acton, a Democrat, former Ohio Department of Health director and Youngstown native – released plans this summer regarding the centers.
Touted by proponents for their economic impact, the centers have become points of controversy as residents of the communities where they are being proposed raise concerns about power consumption, water use and pollution.
Acton called for a conditional moratorium on data centers if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements and development are not met, and called for new ones to be built on brownfield sites in industrial areas rather than on farmland.
The plan unveiled by Ramaswamy – who holds investments in companies related to the data center industry – calls for requiring centers to pay their full property taxes, ensure Ohioans get free electricity by providing power or compensation that lowers residential electric bills, comply with strict air and water quality standards, and minimize and recycle water use. It also prioritizes brownfield and industrial sites.
This summer, Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require states to consider establishing standards for states and public utility commissions when connecting large electricity users such as data centers to the grid to ensure those customers pay for the power generation and other infrastructure needed to serve them.
Democrat Sherrod Brown, a former U.S. senator seeking to unseat Husted, has made Husted’s support for incentives for data centers while he served as Ohio’s lieutenant governor a centerpiece of his campaign.
It’s good to hear that political candidates are taking seriously an issue that is of major concern to Ohioans. Hopefully, whoever wins in November will be able to preserve some of the benefits of the centers but won’t let promises to protect Ohioans from their negative effects fade like campaign signs left at the side of the road after Election Day.
