Can Ohio keep the lights on? Power demand is outpacing supply
March 13, 2025
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Can Ohio keep the lights on? Power demand is outpacing supply
By: Kendall Crawford I Statehouse News Bureau, Renee Fox | WOSU
Posted on:
Thursday, March 13, 2025
COLUMBUS, Ohio (The Ohio Newsroom) — A host of data centers – from Amazon to Microsoft – have announced plans to set up shop in Ohio. These industries will bring jobs and revenue to the region but they also will high power demand.
Ohio belongs to a regional power grid, known as PJM. They bring energy generators online and connect them to the grid that runs through Ohio, 12 other states and Washington, D.C.
In just three years from now, the state is expected to need nearly as much power as New York City and its suburbs. Some experts on the power grid are worried about how this increase in energy demand is being met with a decrease in supply.
“Supply is leaving the system at a rapid pace. A lot of it is due to the decarbonization policy efforts that have occurred at the state and federal levels,” said Asim Haque, senior vice president of PJM.
Supply and power demand are at an imbalance
With the growth of data centers and recent turn toward more manufacturing in the U.S., Haque said Ohio could be entering a new era that threatens the relationship most modern Americans have with electricity.
‘We are coming up against completely changing the expectations of how consumers interact with electricity, which is they flip the switch and the light goes on. And when they get their bill, it’s not insanely cost prohibitive,” Haque said.
The impacts are expected to be felt across the entire grid. Power outages, like the one Columbus faced nearly three years ago, are a looming threat. Haque says that as soon as June of next year, PJM might have to make decisions about where to send power and where to withhold it during times of high demand.
“[It’s] seemingly incomprehensible in the United States of America,” Haque said. “But every power grid operator in the country is facing this very issue.”
Potential for renewable
At the same time as these increasing energy demands, Ohio is seeing barriers to bringing new renewable energy projects, like solar and wind, online.
Madison County commissioners appealed the approval of the state’s largest solar project. The Ohio Supreme Court is also hearing arguments against renewable projects in Licking, Hancock and Greene counties.
Haque said he supports renewable projects in theory, but even if they were to be immediately implemented, they wouldn’t bring enough megawatts online fast enough to meet PJM’s projections of increased annual demand. PJM believes yearly demand will grow more than 3% each year for the next 10 years.
“We welcome those projects to find their way onto the grid, but we’re going to need a lot of them or more thermal generation, which is, generally speaking, nuclear gas or coal, to find their way onto the system,” Haque explained.
But, environmental advocates across the state say Ohioans deserve the opportunity for clean energy. Some progressive groups, like Policy Matters Ohio, say the state legislature’s allowance of local bans on renewable energy make it difficult for solar and wind projects to come online.
Only 4% of Ohio’s power comes from renewable sources, compared to the national average of around 20%.
Pushes to overhaul the system
The Ohio Business Roundtable, a nonprofit organization composed of many of Ohio’s large business leaders, has also been sounding the alarm on this issue and pushing for an overhaul to Ohio’s energy permitting process.
They want the state to offer a 90-day timeline to get approval for a generation project. They say it currently takes around a year. Plus, they want to see a state Office for Energy Resilience that can advocate for Ohio at the regional and national level.
“In addition to having some government leadership in energy, [the office] would also be to help us with the economic development aspect of attracting energy production to the state,” said organization spokesperson Alexandra Denney.
They want the state to improve grid efficiency and expedite projects in former industrial sites and in communities that formerly hosted coal burning plants. They also recommend the state work to make it quicker for utility companies to recover costs from consumers than they can now.
The state legislature has identified overhauling energy code as a GOP priority this year.
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