Growth of Ohio Data Centers Prompts Concerns

Watchdog group Policy Matters Ohio is raising some key concerns about the proliferation of data centers in the state, including “whether the state is giving up too much in tax revenue for the number of jobs they’ll create, who will pay to add electricity generation to meet the centers’ surging demand, and whether the new demand will force fossil-fuel burning generators to stay online, making the world’s climate crisis worse.”

As Marty Schladen explains in the Ohio Capital Journal, the group says the state’s tax exemptions subsidize some of the world’s largest corporations at the expense of its residents. “The investments the companies are making might sound huge, but exemptions already granted to Google and Facebook owner Meta cost Ohio an estimated $1 million per job created, the analysis said.” Even so, research shows that tax incentives are only the deciding factor in a small number of decisions about data center locations. 

Data centers require massive amounts of electricity, raising questions about the state’s capacity to support them while maintaining a reliable supply for other needs.