Ohio man questions why normal people are footing the bill for data center growth
The short version: An Ohio resident's blunt line about 'selling our children's birthright' captures what More Perfect Union found: everyday ratepayers, not tech giants, are covering the grid costs of the data center boom.
Our Take
More Perfect Union's Ohio segment puts a plain, human face on a pattern we track nationwide: massive new electricity demand shows up next door, and the bill somehow lands on the folks who didn't ask for a hyperscale neighbor. The line about 'selling our children's birthright and giving away the baby with the bathwater' isn't hyperbole from where we sit — it's a fair description of rate cases where utilities socialize transmission and generation costs across residential customers while the data center gets a negotiated rate and a tax abatement.
Ohio has become one of the clearest test cases for this fight, with utility commissions wrestling over who actually pays for the substations, gas plants, and transmission upgrades built to serve a handful of massive campuses. When those costs get spread across every ratepayer instead of billed to the facility that caused them, that's not a market outcome — it's a policy choice made by regulators and utility lawyers in rooms most residents never enter.
Credit to More Perfect Union for putting a regular person's frustration on camera instead of another executive's talking points. If you want to see whether this is happening in your own utility territory, check our facility map, and if you're ready to push back on a rate case or siting decision, our take-action page has the on-ramps.
This is GridWatch the USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of More Perfect Union, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.