OH Legislators, New Bill, Encourage More Gas-Fired Power Plants
Ohio lawmakers are grappling with how to prepare the state for a surge in new power demand from AI data centers. In January, MDN told you that five Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) commissioners will decide some important guidelines about who should pay to build out new electricity sources for data centers—how much current ratepayers should be on the hook for with expanded power generation (see 5 PUCO Commissioners to Decide the Future of Data Centers in Ohio). We said the five commissioners would decide the future of Ohio’s data centers. However, that’s not quite accurate. It would be more accurate to say they will decide how the risk is distributed between data centers and power generators in cases where data centers want to connect to the local grid. There’s a whole other world of power plants on-site. Read More “OH Legislators, New Bill, Encourage More Gas-Fired Power Plants”
In a separate post today, MDN deals with the issue of dispatchable and on-site power plants in Ohio (see OH Legislators, New Bill, Encourage More Gas-Fired Power Plants). We spotted an article about the rise of on-site power generation (mostly natural gas) to power AI. It does a great job of discussing the various models for on-site powergen. For example, the local utility company could build a special power plant that services only a particular data center. An independent power provider could build such a plant for a data center. Some O&G companies are getting into the game of building power plants, like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Or the data center could build and operate its own power plant, but then, that’s not the business they are in. Each option has advantages and disadvantages. 
Do the editors of the Wall Street Journal read Marcellus Drilling News? No, we don’t expect they actually do. Although the editorial published by the editors of the WSJ on Feb. 4 looks like it could have been written by your humble MDN editor—because it says all the things we’ve said for months about Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his attempt to blame the PJM Interconnection grid for causing high electricity prices that have, in reality, been caused by Shapiro and his “green” policies. 
Two weeks ago, MDN brought you the news about a mind-blowing announcement from the White House that OpenAI (ChatGPT), SoftBank, and Oracle have pledged to spend $500 billion (with a “b”) to build new data centers to support artificial intelligence (see 
The environmental left is panicked that it may be losing one of its bluest strongholds—the State of Maryland—with the introduction of a new bill by state Democrats (!) that would make it easier to build new natural gas-fired power plants. Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson and House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, along with other Maryland Democrats, held a presser on Monday in the state capitol of Annapolis. Without revealing the actual language, the pair unveiled a new plan (bill) to reduce energy costs “while furthering the state’s clean energy ambitions” by building more “dispatchable” power. The enviro-left rightly assumes dispatchable means building gas-fired power plants. 
Pennsylvania’s do-nothing Governor, Josh Shapiro, traveled to Pittsburgh yesterday to put on another shuck-and-jive all-sizzle-no-steak show. He was there to unveil what he calls his “Lightning Plan” for energy in the state. His big plan? Reintroduce and try to bully Republicans into accepting a Marcellus-killing carbon tax and onerous regulations on emissions (called PACER, see 
The PJM Interconnection electrical grid operator that covers Pennsylvania (along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia) has caved to the political demands of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro to artificially cap the prices of the next capacity auction scheduled for July 2025. It means electric ratepayers won’t see as high of an increase in their electric rates (yah!), but it also means the risk of a blackout has just gone way up (boo!). As we’ve outlined in previous posts, electric prices are soaring in PJM because of the policies of Josh Shapiro. 
Did you happen to catch the news lighting up all the cable news stations yesterday about Chinese startup DeepSeek? The company launched a free AI assistant that it claims uses less data at a fraction of the cost of other AI models. By Monday, the DeepSeek assistant had overtaken U.S. rival ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s app store. The news sent traders into a tailspin of selling off tech company stocks like Nvidia (which makes the chips used in AI). The news also affected natural gas drillers negatively. Why?