Vivek Ramaswamy Pledges to Accelerate Ohio Data Center Buildout

Key Takeaways

• Vivek Ramaswamy is campaigning to speed energy permitting and expand power production for data centers and other high-load facilities.
• Ohio’s next governor will influence the regulators, development agencies, incentives, and energy policies shaping more than 200 existing data centers.
• Rising grid costs, tax exemptions, local moratoriums, and Amy Acton’s competing policy agenda could constrain further expansion.

Ohio’s race for governor is becoming a referendum on how aggressively the state should pursue artificial intelligence infrastructure. Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy wants Ohio to accelerate data center construction by expanding electricity production and reducing permitting barriers. Democratic nominee Amy Acton favors additional cost, labor, and environmental guardrails.

Ohio already hosts more than 200 data centers, placing it roughly fifth nationally by facility count. A University of Virginia analysis projects another 77 could arrive by 2030. Google, Amazon Web Services, and Meta already operate data centers in Central Ohio, while SB Energy, a SoftBank Group company, plans a potentially enormous AI campus near Piketon at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site.

Ramaswamy supports this expansion trajectory. At a Republican dinner in March 2025, he stated AI data centers and Bitcoin mining operations were among the facilities he wanted in Ohio. His campaign also proposes streamlining energy permits and expanding electricity generation from fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Building computing capacity and supplying it with dependable electricity operate on vastly different timelines. Data centers can be completed relatively quickly, while major gas plants, nuclear facilities, substations, and transmission upgrades take years to construct.

That mismatch is already affecting PJM Interconnection, the regional power market serving Ohio and 12 other states. According to Berkeley Lab, U.S. data centers consumed about 176 terawatt-hours in 2023, equating to roughly 4.4% of national electricity use. Consumption is projected to reach 325 to 580 terawatt-hours by 2028, representing 6.7% to 12% of the national total.

PJM capacity prices climbed from $28.92 per megawatt-day in 2024-2025 to $329.17 two years later, with data centers responsible for about 63% of the increase. This price increase directly impacts residents because capacity costs eventually appear in customer bills, even when a data center is located far from a particular household or business.

AEP Ohio data highlights the scale of this demand. Data center power requirements in Central Ohio increased sixfold, from 100 megawatts to 600 megawatts, between 2020 and 2024. Signed agreements could push the load to 5,000 megawatts by 2030, more than three times the utility’s 2023 peak load.

To address this, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved an AEP Ohio tariff requiring large new data centers to pay for at least 85% of their reserved electricity capacity for 12 years. That arrangement aims to reduce the risk of households and smaller businesses financing infrastructure built for projects that are later delayed or abandoned. However, regulators and utilities are still debating whether this tariff fully covers the transmission, generation, and reliability costs created by the fast-moving development pipeline.

Grid planning extends beyond state policy. Utilities and operators serving these facilities work within North American Electric Reliability Corporation reliability standards, alongside technical practices developed through IEEE. Faster state approval does not remove the engineering work required to connect exceptionally large, concentrated electrical loads.

The state fiscal debate is similarly contentious. Ohio’s data center industry received an estimated $2.5 billion in state and local tax breaks between 2017 and 2024, with the state sales tax exemption alone costing about $1.6 billion in 2025. Supporters point to an Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation estimate that the industry supported 95,217 jobs and contributed $11.8 billion to state GDP in 2024. Critics counter that individual facilities employ relatively few permanent workers once construction finishes.

Global data center investment is surging, with Gartner forecasting data center systems spending to rise from about $236 billion in 2023 to $293 billion in 2024, a 24.1% increase driven largely by generative AI infrastructure. Ohio aims to capture a larger share of this market, though political disagreement persists regarding the associated local costs.

As governor, Ramaswamy would shape appointments to JobsOhio, the Ohio Power Siting Board, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and the Ohio Tax Credit Authority. Those bodies influence incentives, utility tariffs, generation siting, and tax exemptions. Acton, meanwhile, proposes making data centers cover added utility and environmental costs, utilize union labor, and operate alongside restored energy-efficiency programs.

Local resistance adds another variable. Around 18 Ohio municipalities have considered or adopted data center moratoriums, with Tiffin approving a 12-month pause. Furthermore, Ohio Residents for Responsible Development is targeting 2027 with a proposed constitutional amendment to ban facilities drawing more than 25 megawatts. The November 3 election will therefore determine more than the pace of construction; it will help decide who bears the financial and physical burden of powering Ohio’s AI ambitions.