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The vice president wants tech companies building massive AI campuses to generate their own power rather than stick local residents with higher electric bills.
JD Vance is drawing a line in the sand on data center energy policy: if Big Tech wants to build massive AI facilities, those facilities need to add power to the grid, not siphon it. The goal is straightforward. Prevent the AI boom from translating into higher electricity bills for regular Americans.
The Ohio blueprint #
The most concrete example of this policy taking shape is a proposed 10-gigawatt data center campus in Pike County, Ohio. To put that number in perspective, 10 GW is roughly enough electricity to power around 7.5 million homes.
SB Energy is set to lead the project, and the plan calls for constructing 10 GW of new power generation capacity alongside the data center campus itself. Of that, 9.2 GW would come from natural gas generation. Private companies would fund an estimated $4.2 billion in grid upgrades necessary to support the project.
Vance has been blunt about the logic. He’s stated that data centers should lower electricity costs for citizens, arguing that “the data centers can afford it.”
Why this matters beyond Ohio #
The Pike County project isn’t happening in a vacuum. AI-related electricity consumption could surpass 10% of total US electricity use by 2030. The strain is particularly acute in the PJM Interconnection region, the grid operator covering 13 states and Washington, D.C., which has become ground zero for data center development due to its proximity to major population centers and fiber optic infrastructure.
This aligns with broader initiatives established during the Trump administration that require major tech firms to contribute to the energy infrastructure costs associated with their AI facilities.
The energy investment angle #
The $4.2 billion in grid upgrades for the Ohio project alone signals the scale of investment that could flow into transmission infrastructure. Tech companies will need to price these energy costs into their AI business models. Local governments facing community backlash over rising energy costs now have a concrete trade-off available: approve the data center, but only if it comes with its own power plant.
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