Big business has bamboozled Ohio before, but banning data centers wrong answer

Tim Ryan•Shawn Cutter•May 13, 2026

Illustration of an integrated power, data center, and greenhouse campus in Ohio.

EA Take

Ohio can demand more than a new load on the grid. This Op-Ed makes the case for data-center development that delivers durable value to the communities that make it possible.

Read the original on The Columbus Dispatch

In this Columbus Dispatch guest column, Tim Ryan and Shawn Cutter argue that Ohio should not treat a blanket ban as its answer to data-center growth. The more important question, they contend, is what the state and its communities should require from the companies building this infrastructure.

The piece calls for a model in which development produces visible local value rather than simply adding demand. That means setting clear expectations for the public benefits that accompany a project and ensuring communities have the leverage to secure them.

For EnergiAcres, that opportunity is practical: pair reliable on-site power with data centers and productive food systems so infrastructure can support jobs, resilient local supply, and the places that host it.

Power, Produce, Compute

The EnergiAcres model in one piece: co-locate on-site power, AI compute, and greenhouses so America's electricity, compute, and food shortfalls are solved together, not separately.

Behind the Meter

Why building your own generation next to your own load is the fastest way to build now — and how it can relieve the local grid instead of straining it.

The 30-Year Asset in a 3-Year Industry

The financing case: AI models and chips churn, but the land, power, and community consent beneath them last decades. Underwrite the node, not the tenant.

Nothing Leaves the Fence Line

A design discipline, not a slogan: the loops that turn a data center's waste streams into a campus's yields — each stated with the honesty it requires.

Why Ohio

Why Ohio is a first-principles development state for AI infrastructure — and why the old land-first playbook has to be inverted to powered land and community posture first.

The Jobs the Other Two Can't Make

A data center employs few; a power plant fewer. The greenhouse is what turns an industrial load into a local economy — and what makes the community bargain real.

What the Dutch Figured Out

The circular model isn't theoretical — the Netherlands already proved it at national scale. What they figured out, and why America is the place to build it next.

Build It in Circles

A manifesto: the AI age is making a shape decision right now — boxes or circles. Why the circle isn't the virtuous choice that costs you, but the intelligent one that pays.

The Acre and the Algorithm

A founder's essay on why AI's hardest problem is physical, not digital — and how a farmer's systems thinking points to infrastructure that gives back.

The Cloud Is Physical. Its Next Operating System Will Be Too.

EnergiAcres' category thesis: the cloud is physical, the data center is the wrong unit of design, and industrial AI will organize reality — not files.

AI Must Earn Its Place on the American Acre

A sixth-generation Ohio farmer's case for AI infrastructure that pays its own way, reuses its heat, and leaves the town it lands in stronger.

Powering AI and Growing Food: How EnergiAcres is Rewriting the Energy Playbook

Shawn Cutter joins Carrie Charles on Broadstaff’s Let’s Get Digital to discuss circular-economy AI infrastructure.

Inside EnergiAcres' plan to pair data centers with on-site power and food production

Energy Daily examines EnergiAcres' circular model for pairing on-site power, data centers, and food production.

Like the discovery of fire: Can Florida handle AI’s massive energy demand?

Tampa Bay 28 explores whether Florida’s grid can keep up with the explosive energy demands of AI infrastructure.

A hidden solution to Ohio’s data center dilemma

Tim Ryan and Shawn Cutter make the case for pairing data centers with agriculture to solve Ohio’s infrastructure challenge.

Rainwater could help satisfy AI’s water demands

Justin Talbot Zorn and Bettina Warburg explore how rainwater harvesting can address data centers’ growing water needs.

Data centers use massive energy and water. Here’s how to build them better

The race to build AI infrastructure is draining power grids and water supplies. But with the right innovation, tomorrow’s data centers could clean the air, grow food, and power entire communities.

Ohio can solve the electric grid’s biggest problem, and grow food while doing it

In April, researchers at the International Energy Agency projected that electricity consumption from data centers that power AI and cloud computing will more than double by 2030.

Data centers can stack sustainability, energy innovations

Data center developers should seize opportunities to benefit communities and the environment, write a former Ohio member of Congress and a sixth-generation farmer.

America Should Harvest a Trillion Gallons of Rainwater

Justin Talbot Zorn argues that America is leaving a trillion gallons of free water on the table every year.