FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
September 16, 2026
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Ramaswamy’s Data Center Plan “Faces Legal and Practical Barriers,” and “Far-Fetched Attempt to Pander to Voters”
Former PUCO commissioner: “I don’t know anybody who thinks that it’s a workable idea… It just doesn’t make any sense.”
COLUMBUS, OH– Yesterday, Signal Ohio published an extensive fact-check of billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy’s scam data center plan. They interviewed notable energy experts, including a former PUCO commissioner who said that Ramaswamy’s out-of-touch plan “doesn’t make any sense.” The story noted that Dr. Amy Acton’s conditional data center moratorium plan is a “much more realistic” way to lower energy costs.
READ: Vivek Ramaswamy’s data center policy promises Ohioans free electricity. Is that really possible?
- Ramaswamy’s plan raises some obvious questions. Would he have the authority to force AI companies to give away free electricity to homeowners? Is it even technically possible?
- [Energy and data center experts] described Ramaswamy’s plan to hook up data center power plants to neighbors’ homes as ranging from fanciful to extremely complex because of the thicket of state, multistate and federal entities involved in regulating energy policy.
- “I don’t know anybody who thinks that it’s a workable idea,” said Ashley Brown, executive director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group and a former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio commissioner under former Democratic Gov. Ted Celeste. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
- The Ramaswamy campaign didn’t respond to a request from Signal Statewide to have its expert detail the plan for us.
- Ramaswamy said his plan would cover just one part [of an electric bill] – generating the electricity. Generation makes up on average about half of a customer’s power bill, according to the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, a state utility watchdog agency.
- That means the other two parts of the bill – or about half – for transmission and distribution would remain.
- Kim Bojko, a longtime Columbus energy policy lawyer, told Signal Statewide that Ramaswamy’s plan faces numerous legal and practical barriers.
- And she said there’s a physical problem: Data centers increasingly are trying to build their own power plants for a reason – doing so allows them to avoid lengthy delays involved in getting permission from regulators to connect the broader power grid. How would these data centers transmit their extra electricity if they’re not tied into the grid?
- “So, there’s a legal problem, there’s a policy problem and there’s a physical problem,” Bojko said. “I mean, discriminatory treatment and free electricity have been around forever. But I don’t know how you undo everything. There’s just so much we would have to change.”
- As for Ramaswamy’s plan to connect private data center power plants to homes, Jacobs described it as “word salad” and a far-fetched attempt to pander to voters.
- Experts called Acton’s plan much more realistic… about trying to use data centers to drive down electricity costs.
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