Ohio Enacts Widespread Local Data Center Bans Amid AI Backlash

Ohio voters just rejected the AI buildout by passing at least fourteen municipal bans and restrictions on data centers. The state already has one hundred twenty-five local moratoriums in place as residents push back against mass infrastructure expansion. Across eighteen municipalities, voters faced twenty-one ballot measures addressing the tech boom. In Trenton, a ban passed by eighty percent to twenty percent to target an eighteen-building Amazon Web Services project. Meanwhile, capacity prices on the PJM Interconnection grid jumped from under thirty dollars to over three hundred twenty-nine dollars for twenty twenty-six to twenty twenty-seven. Monitoring Analytics estimated data centers caused sixty-three percent of that price hike. That adds roughly sixteen dollars a month to the average residential electric bill in Ohio. The Ohio Manufacturers Association rejected the link to energy costs while the industry spent over two million dollars on local ads. Even so, seventy percent of Americans oppose data centers in their local areas according to polling.