This issue of CHIPS Ahoy! was written by Paige Cornelius, Policy Matters summer 2026 research intern.
As this issue of CHIPS was going to press, Intel announced a minor milestone in its a long-delayed Ohio One semiconductor fabrication project. There are open questions about whether Intel will follow through on other commitments it made in exchange for public funding. Ohio legislators should hold the corporation accountable for those commitments.
This issue of CHIPS Ahoy! is focused on another way legislators must step up: by preventing energy corporations from charging everyday Ohioans for the costs of projects like Intel’s.
Semiconductor fabrication plants use enormous amounts of energy, not unlike their counterparts in Ohio’s “Silicon Heartland” boom, hyperscale data centers. Also like data centers, megaprojects such as Intel’s Ohio One campus come with promises of an economic windfall for the state.
If these projects in fact create broadly shared prosperity, the extraordinary public investments supporting them may prove worthwhile. But that’s a big “if” — and in the meantime Ohioans are facing important questions about the costs of powering Ohio’s tech boom.
Intel expects its Ohio One fabs to add up to 500MW of electricity demand to AEP’s grid — roughly the equivalent of the amount used by 450,000 homes. On its own that could strain parts of Ohio’s energy grid. Add the huge and growing energy demand from data centers and we’re going to need major infrastructure improvements just to keep the lights on.
Ohio’s grid has only been able to keep up with demand so far because of our advantageous position at the geographic crossroads of the PJM Interconnection — the largest Regional Transmission Organization in the United States.
However, PJM’s 2026 report on investment in durable reliability raises questions about whether the grid can sustain this rapid growth, even after massive investments in recent years. Utilities operating in PJM’s transmission zone spent approximately $1.3 billion on transmission upgrades in Ohio in 2024 alone. In 2025, PJM identified $11.8 billion in new projects, required “primarily to maintain system reliability.”
Utility companies like AEP (now “Ohio Power Company”) do not pay for new powerlines and substations out of their own profits. Regulators instead allow them to recover these costs by raising the rates charged to everyday ratepayers, meaning households end up helping foot the bill for infrastructure built primarily to serve large industrial customers. Ohio ratepayers are already feeling the impact, chiefly because of the growing imbalance between electricity supply and demand in PJM’s service area. Electricity supply prices increased between 10% and 36% in June of 2025, and in 2026 PJM projected a $6.3 billion increase throughout its service area.
Regulators have taken steps to reduce the amount of these costs that can be passed on to ratepayers. In 2025, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved AEP Ohio’s Data Center Tariff, which mandates new large-scale data centers to pay for 85% or more of their contracted electricity capacity for up to 12 years.
Legislators should do more, including in the upcoming lame duck session by passing strong ratepayer protections like those in Substitute HB 646 — or even stronger ones like those in HB 706. (Both bills target data centers, not chip manufacturers, but preventing utilities from raising rates will help mitigate the harm done by both.)
Intel’s Ohio One project — and the ongoing effort to make Ohio into the “Silicon Heartland” — will affect our state economy for years. It’s past time legislators took action to protect everyday Ohioans from bearing the cost of these projects. They should do so right away.
Intel took our money, but hasn’t delivered on childcare promises