As Ohio's surge in data center development shows no indication of decreasing., experts suggested Ohio must rethink its connection with major technology companies to safeguard every resident of Ohio.
It was all part of the "Reimagining the Silicon Heartland Summit," a full-day event held on May 22 at the Ohio Statehouse, organized by the progressive organization Policy Matters Ohio.
Rather than creating division among working tradespeople who have maintained steady employment due to the industry and environmental activists, the two groups should identify common ground to strengthen their influence and challenge corporate power, said Hannah Halbert, Executive Director of Policy Matters Ohio. She added that there are obvious methods to achieve this.
"Openness, responsibility, and genuine community oversight so that this investment, this profit is widely distributed, ensuring we have policies in place to develop our economy from the middle out and turn Ohio into a place that genuinely works for all. We are capable of achieving this," Halbert stated.
Ohio ranks sixth in the number of data centers in the country.– 232 across the state – with 137 of these in central Ohio, according to a list of all current and under-construction listings provided byData Center Map, a global data center directory. Some are compact enough to be housed within office buildings. Meta's New Albany data center,which the corporation is growing, is located on 766 acres — over one square mile.
Data centers contain servers that form the foundation of the artificial intelligence revolution. However, they have come under scrutiny for their high consumption of local resources, such as electricity and water.
A typical complaint about data centers is that they don't generate lasting employment, yet two union representatives stated that they provide tens of thousands of ongoing job opportunities for skilled workers.
Dorsey Hager, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbus/Central Ohio Building Trades Council, mentioned that a decade ago, construction workers in Columbus were putting in roughly 4 million labor hours annually. By 2023, this number had increased to 9.8 million hours—the highest recorded in a single year. By 2026, he predicted they would surpass 20 million work hours—doubling the total within just three years.
He mentioned that approximately 40% of the hours are dedicated to data center work, with 93% of those hours being performed by union employees.
Pat Hook, the business manager for the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union, mentioned that his union has also experienced significant growth. Prior to 2015, the electrical workers union averaged approximately 1.8 million hours annually. Last year, they logged 6.6 million hours, with most of those hours dedicated to data centers.
Hook mentioned that union workers are also involved in upgrading and maintaining current data centers, as servers and equipment require replacement every few years.
The members of the building trade will keep working in these data centers as long as they remain open," he stated. "We might require more hours from the building trades members compared to what the data center's actual operator might need to work.
Spencer Dirrig, the vice president of government affairs for the Ohio Environmental Council, stated that the state requires additional regulations to safeguard all residents of Ohio. The state cannot adopt a fragmented approach to regulating data centers, allowing each small town or city to handle matters on its own. It is impractical to expect officials in smaller communities to manage large technology companies, like Google, which have skilled legal teams.
We require a state-level regulatory baseline that establishes a fundamental standard for what is permissible within the state, regardless of location," he stated, "and we must permit communities to retain the right to determine what is most suitable for their specific community, what they expect from their community, what aligns with their community, and what is logical for their residents.
Ohio does not have any public reporting obligations for data centers regarding water intake, water discharge, water additives, emissions, or energy expenses, according to Dirrig.
Virginia, the leading data center market in the nation, has implemented several regulations this year for the data center sector, such as reporting water usage, estimating water consumption prior to approving a data center, and sharing energy costs to ensure that infrastructure improvements are not burdening customers, he mentioned.
Those data centers are still in place," Dirrig stated. "We can accomplish both. We can implement regulations while also maintaining jobs and that sort of investment.
Reporter Maria DeVito from Delaware County and eastern Columbus suburbs can be contacted atmdevito@dispatch.comand @mariadevito13.dispatch.com on Bluesky and @MariaDeVito13 on X.
This piece first was published in The Columbus Dispatch:Ohio is being encouraged to reconsider its approach to major technology companies as the data center expansion quickens.
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