June 4, 2026 · and Senate Select Committees on Data Centers · 5,168 words · 6 speakers · 77 segments
Reconvening the Joint Data Center Select Committee. Next up we have testimony from Shane Hazel with MARA. Welcome to committee. You may begin when ready.
Good afternoon. Chairman Holmes, Chairman Chavez, members of the Joint Data Center Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I'm Shane Hazel, and I'm the North American Operations Manager at Mara Holdings. We command the committee for focusing on facts about data centers, impacts on Ohio's economy, environment, and the national security. Mara is a digital energy company. At our core, we are a Bitcoin mining company that is diversifying into AI, high-performance compute, and critical IT. We manage a 2-gigawatt global portfolio of energy and compute assets spanning operating sites and development projects. By controlling the power behind our sites, we are able to stabilize the grid as demand requires. Ohio is central to our strategy. We run Bitcoin mines in three counties, have invested over $397 million into Ohio, and have paid over $2.2 million in state and local taxes just of last year. We are also developing the 505-megawatt capacity site of Longridge Energy Campus in Hannibal into a leading digital infrastructure site on an existing industrial property. We want to address the concerns you've heard directly. Our Ohio sites use air and immersion cooling systems that eliminate the use of freshwater cooling systems. We redevelop brownfield industrial sites like Longridge rather than destroying farmlands or forests. This brings productive reuse to areas that have seen the industrial decline rampant throughout the Ohio Valley. Our electrical load is flexible. We power down within minutes when the grid is stressed and ramp back up when energy is abundant. In January's winter storm fern, we voluntarily curtailed over 770 megawatts across PJM, ERCOT, and SPP to help homes, emergency services, and hospitals when they needed it most. Our goal at Longridge is to stabilize the grid for PJM while providing positive impact for consumers. As MAR develops additional compute capacity behind the meter, we will stabilize the grid demand with incremental generation over time. These investments deliver real local benefits, skilled construction, and permanent operations jobs, plus tax revenue that supports our county services. As demand grows, we are positioned to expand that footprint, and we want to be a long-term partner in Ohio's growth. To that end, we support policies that reward flexible load. Structures like basic transmission cost rider and coincidence peak programs produce substantial demand reductions from participating customers, particularly flexible data centers. Speed, responsible interconnection, improved transparent load forecasting approaches that strengthen reliability and lower costs for all Ohio taxpayers. Finally, I'd like to invite you all to the Ohio sites in Hannibal, Hopedale, or Finley. Come see the technology, meet our teams, and judge for yourselves. Thank you for this time, and I will answer any questions you might have.
Thank you for your testimony. And I have toured the Hannibal site, and that's where I was first impressed with the ability to air cool all of that. So now we have six hours of questioning just for you.
Perfect.
I don't think you guys are up for it. Any questions from the committee? Representative Claggett.
Thank you. Appreciate that. I've been to some of those type sites. What is the Achilles heel for a company like yours? Obviously, we heard all this other stuff, but I want to understand what makes or breaks your business model.
So what Bitcoin mining does is it chases cheap energy. We try to chase as cheap of energy as possible. The Ohio Valley River is one of the places, obviously, where we've got a lot of power generation, industrial property, where we can go in and harvest that energy as cheaply as possible, where instead of breaking fields, we can go in and spend much less money getting a site up and running than actually going out and creating something out of nothing. So between that and the power price, that's where we really make our ends.
Follow-up? Yes, thank you, Chair. Is $64,000 for a Bitcoin today a viable business model?
Absolutely.
Where is the breaking point?
Well, it depends on the site, right? So depending on how much you can buy electricity for, and we obviously have PPAs with different places, which are 20 and 25 years for long-term stability, we can mine a Bitcoin on record for about $80,000. On certain sites, we can mine it for just over $30,000.
Chair Holmes. Thank you, Chair. And thank you. I'm going to visit tomorrow. I'll come to Hannibal and looking forward to it. I wanted to ask about data centers your size. I've been reading a lot about intermittency programs. and that in a lot of ways we could look at facilities like yours as giant batteries and storage. What's the right way for us to think about that as that develops?
We are a shock absorber. So if the grid demands that we need to shut down or if we have in place an emergency, like we did with the winter storms, as soon as we get the word from either the power company itself or from any of the government agencies that would like us to throttle down, we can throttle down within just minutes. So we are a shock absorber. We are a companion and a partner for everybody in the state, whether it's residential or industrial. Where we need power the most is with our people, and we are kind of a byproduct of making sure that the grid stabilizes. And I think most of you guys understand when we are looking at grids, what destroys grids is the peaks and valleys, those ups and downs, which will absolutely blow transformers. It causes problems with both residential and industrial appliances. That's what we try to avoid. So if we can come in and power up when the load is low, then we do that. And when you guys need load, then we obviously can back off right away.
Representative Workman.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your testimony. I will ask you a similar question that I asked our hyperscalers. Your work is much different than cloud computing or AI training or basically consumer demand adaptation. So with bit mining, Bitcoin mining, I guess I'm wondering what your responsibility is in the security of that process and the security of Bitcoin itself, especially as we're looking toward a quantum computing future. future and the trivial act that it will be for quantum to break those blockchains. Do you have any responsibility in that encryption policy practice?
Yeah, absolutely. Not to get too far in the weeds in Bitcoin, Representative, and thank you for the question. Bitcoin mining is what actually gives Bitcoin the security that it demands. So we run the largest computer network on Earth. Right now we're running about a terahash rate, and that's actually not the right, and I'll have to pull that for you. When we spend energy to mine Bitcoin, what we're doing is providing a force field, so to speak, for the encryption that's encoded into Bitcoin's white paper. When we run this through the nodes, through the hashing of the miners, what we're doing is providing a security that no computer on Earth, even quantum, not all the state actors, not supercomputers together can break. When we look at the economic system that we have today, people are worried about quantum and what it could do to Bitcoin. What I would suggest to everybody is what it should do to the current economic system first. We are woefully underprepared with the current economic system for where we are going with quantum computing. If a 24 256 encryption type of technology can be broken by quantum your four PIN is child play So we are at the cutting edge of stabilizing not only the greatest freest Bitcoin and money network on Earth, we are updating it constantly. And so as we continue to get into BIP 360 and BIP 361, which is now the quantum prospect of changing addresses so that they are quantum resistant, we are going to be further ahead than that than anybody else in the economic sector. Follow-up?
Thank you, Chair. Thank you for that clarification. So you're saying, just so that I'm sure, I'm clear on this, that you do have significant cybersecurity standards in place as you're working and operating these data centers that are doing the mining and cryptocurrency and things of the sort?
Correct, yes.
And so we should probably segregate these. So the Bitcoin mining system operates off of one code and one code only. If it forks, that is a hard fork, and that is not Bitcoin mining anymore. That is some alternative coin.
In terms of cybersecurity for our sites, yes, we have extensive security teams that run not only cyber, but also physical for these entities, and it is beyond my pay grade in terms of how much we are putting into that. but I can tell you these are some of the smartest people I've ever been around. I come from a military background in intelligence and reconnaissance in the Marine Corps, and a lot of what is going on is well above the military encryption status.
Thank you. Follow-up, Chair? Follow-up. Last one. So you feel it's appropriate for the cybersecurity standards to be around operations such as yours to maintain the security of these developments, for quantum especially?
Yes, ma'am. And it's going to be absolutely fundamental going forward that our ability to ward off not only quantum from internal attacks, but quantum from external attacks inside of the United States. That's not just for Bitcoin mining. That's going to be across the board for everything that we do.
Having sat through, I assume you sat through the previous testimony, can you compare and contrast your operation to a hyperscaler operation? What are the meaningful differences and any concerns with a broad brush painting against all data centers?
I will try to keep this as brief as possible. It's a great question. Sure. When we're looking at the difference between hyperscalers, AI, and Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin mining often gets lumped into AI and data centers, and I think it's just an easy thing to do because most people don't understand either one of these. The first and most notable difference is we are a partner in this space where if there needs to be a load curtailment, we curtail. I don't believe that your AI type of data centers will curtail nearly as fast or be nearly as responsive. The other thing that Bitcoin mining data centers versus the public data centers is I would, the one question I didn't see come up that I thought was very pertinent is, who has access to this data? And that's not a problem that we have. We don't have customers in Bitcoin. We have a mission, we have a protocol, and we carry that out, whereas in AI, we have a multitude of attack vectors. And attack vectors, whether it's quantum, whether it's just standard digital, the attack vectors into an AI-type facility are going to be substantial. And those are things that I think need to be considered.
the use of your local environments, your local greenfield versus brownfield industrial sites.
This is going to be one of the major separators. A lot of times AI is going to go in and use greenfield sites because they need it. They're also going to use possibly massive amounts of water. In Bitcoin, there is hydro cooling. We haven't started using any of it. We're still in testing phases. But in terms of, let's just say, a local pod, So we could have at the Longridge Center, we could have somewhere around 200 in terms of taking up the 500 megawatts that are out there. We would roughly have about five swimming pools worth of water involved versus, you know, multitudes more with AI data centers. I think those are probably the biggest distinctions between the two.
Chairman. Do you have any concerns with regulation that lumps all data centers together?
I do. Absolutely, Chairman. That's a great question. When we look at data centers, they are not all created equal, obviously. When, if it was me and I was looking at, you know, this is, you know, legislation for my state, I'd be very careful in terms of lumping these all together. One is going to come in and help stabilize your grid, work with your community, where I believe, you know, the other side of the data center movement is moving so fast that we haven't considered where it might be in 20 to 25 years. Maybe even five years. with technology, we can grow infinitely more powerful in a space that is completely confined. Whereas in the real world, that doesn't make sense. And that may kind of be a vague statement. But when we're looking at a, let's just say an iPhone, the iPhone's form factor really hasn't changed in the last 10, 20 years, really. You know, it's gotten more powerful, but it's form factor. It's got a camera, it's got a speaker, it's got a phone, and it can connect to the Internet. What it can do in terms of processing now, especially with artificial intelligence, is far greater. So what we're talking about is artificial intelligence being downscaled into smaller form factors. And I believe just the other day the head of NVIDIA revealed a small handheld box that could be decentralized at a location, whether it's a business, whether it's your home. And when we start to see the proliferation of data centers, it may be one of those things where we think we need to do this to drive an economy and possibly even prop up a dollar. Whereas the Bitcoin mining facilities are going to do this with computers that are always more and more robust and seeking more joules per terahash.
So what's a good delineation point, right? So I don't think it matters to the common rate payers whether the electrons go into Bitcoin or going to data centers. They just know that the electrons are going somewhere and rates are going up. Is it a megawatt consumption level? Where's a good defining line between your operations and the hyperscalers?
I believe it's your curtailment factor, Chair. It's a great question. Your curtailment factor, how fast are you able to respond and help out your local community? If you're the steward of power, whether you're behind the meter or in front of the meter, whether you're running the power plant or you're just consuming, your ability to adapt to the needs of the grid, the industry that's in that area, and the residential area, that's going to be the differentiator. How fast can you respond? How fast can you move to take care of the electrical needs of those communities? That should be one of the greatest differentiators between data centers, whether they're Bitcoin miners or hyperscalers.
And did you say how much power your facility uses?
Our Hannibal site is a 100-megawatt site now. Once the total build-out goes through, it'll be 500 megawatts. The Hopedale site is about 100 megawatts, and the Finley site is 30 megawatts, sir.
Okay, thank you.
I think all my colleagues got worn out in the previous session. Oh, Representative Glassburn.
No, I'm churning on several questions. So let me start with the basics here. We've been talking about, in terms of policy considerations, the sales tax exemption. Is that something, do you have an agreement with the state of Ohio? Is that something that your facilities are making use of?
That's something I'll have to get you an answer on. I run operations I not too far into the weeds in terms of all of our agreements and specifically per state but I will happily get you an answer on that Representative Okay Send your answer to Chairman Holmes office and he disseminate it to you
Follow-up? Yeah, I'll ask my follow-up. It might mean that that also be a follow-up. I'm interested in how you came to using your Brownfield site in terms of, you know, do you have some commentary on the questions we've asked about, is there a way for us to mitigate the speed of market so that that is more attractive than these greenfield sites, not just because we want to reutilize them, but because those are areas that have an industrial history that the community has already supported?
Absolutely, 100% representative. And I think it's a great question, Chair. When we're looking at making an area suitable and preferential for a company like Mara to move into or even an AI data center. What we're looking for is an experienced market where we can come in. So in terms of the job sector, putting in all sorts of S&T types of systems or schools locally to start growing those communities, this is going to be a generational movement. So as we're moving forward, the more electricians we have, the more network engineers that we have, the people that are pipe welders, the guys that are metal fitters. We need more and more and more of these jobs because these are the jobs that are not going to go away with AI. These are the jobs that AI depends on. These are the jobs that Bitcoin mining depends on. So making these markets more favorable is having the right people in those areas to begin with. And I believe both Bitcoin mining and AI are going to help make sure that those areas are supplemented with that because what we're going to do is start seeing people stop leaving those areas. My family is from Youngstown area, Cleveland area, and to understand what they were in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and what they went through during the 1950s. We've had some absolutely atrocious foreign policy agreements that have made jobs run away from what used to be a steel belt. We start talking about generational wealth and legacy and leaving these areas where they're fantastic areas for people to come into and work. The problem is that there's just not enough jobs. So making them more attractive is, I think, more or less about the people that we can pull in from the local populace to work on those facilities.
I'd like to follow up unless you're...
You go first.
Thank you. How many jobs do you have at your sites?
We carry about 35 out at Hannibal, about five in Finley, and then Hope Deal is about 10.
And that's permanent employees?
Those are permanent employees. We always have people on site who are from the pipe fitters, from steel workers. We've got HVAC and local services are coming out all the time, whether it's maintenance or the occasional mishap that we need done on site. So we have about, I don't know, let's just say about 50 here in Ohio.
Okay, thank you.
I yield back to Representative Glassburn.
Thank you. So since you mentioned that you have a little bit of Northeast Ohio Pass and familiarity, let me ask you, and it's a conversation I've had with some of my colleagues, of we have a lot of former large steel plants and whatnot in the Mahoning Valley, Appalachia, you know, even in urban environments like my district in Cleveland, we had been using the IX Center, which is a 2 million square foot former tank factory as our convention center, and now will soon be more or less vacant. You know, we read things like 1,600 acres, 2,000 acres for some of these sites. I don't even know how to quantify that as to is there for these former brownfield and industrial sites or more urban environments, someone told us that the Sears Tower is now a data center. How do we put these, again, types of facilities in more traditional environments versus giant field? Are there policy considerations that would drive making that steel plant that's abandoned now in the Youngstown area or the IAC Center in Cleveland to make that more attractive than going out to farmland?
I don't want to pick a county. Sure.
Yes.
The ability, first and foremost, to move in and out of areas. Cleveland's obviously a great area for moving in and out. We've got Pittsburgh not terribly far away. First and foremost, transportation. The second thing I'd say is getting the power at the right price for consumption. If we've got really expensive power, that's going to be an issue. What we've got to do is drop power prices in those areas. And sometimes that's going to mean in terms of policy is loosening up policy. I think a lot of things have changed, especially in the last decade in terms of the understanding of green energy. And as much as green energy came about, it was largely subsidized. Whereas if we loosen up policies on coal, natural gas, and start pushing those, we're going to lower the entry to barrier. And that's really what's going to draw your industry into those places.
Follow-up? I'm good for now.
Any other questions from the committee? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.
Thank you guys for the opportunity.
And our final witness for today, thank you for hanging in there. We have testimony from Kevin Chandler with the Vantage Data Centers. Welcome to the committee. You may begin when ready.
Good afternoon, Chair Chavez, Chair Holmes, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. My name is Kevin Chandler, and I am Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs for North America for Vantage Data Centers. Vantage is a leading developer and operator of data center campuses supporting many of the world's largest technology companies. We are headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with more than 2,000 employees and 40 data center campuses operational worldwide. It's been a long day, so I won't read all of my committee testimony here, but instead we'll just summarize a few of the highlights. Vantage entered the Ohio market in October of 2024 with the groundbreaking of our Ohio One campus in New Albany, Ohio. Still under construction, that campus is currently supporting over 1,700 construction jobs, and upon completion will support approximately 100 permanent high-paying operations positions, establishing our first operational data center campus in the Midwest. Beyond that initial investment, we are advancing plans for our second Ohio campus in Millersport. These investments taken together underscore our commitment to Ohio's future. Advantage, we view development through the lens of our principles of responsible growth. For us, those are three primary pillars. First, protecting ratepayers and supporting grid reliability must remain a priority. We recognize that Ohioans expect affordable and reliable electricity, and we believe large load customers have a responsibility to be part of that solution. Second, strengthening communities means creating long-term economic opportunity. Data centers are more than just buildings and wires, and Vantage in particular, We operate our campuses, so long after construction ends, we are in the community and part of the community. In both New Albany and Millersport, we are advancing workforce development partnerships with local schools and other organizations, and we are participating in the community through sponsorships of events like the Sweet Corn Festival and supporting groups like the United Way of Fairfield County. And the third pillar is that advancing sustainability requires advancing growth with responsible environmental stewardship We do believe that modern data centers must be designed and operated responsibly At both of our Ohio campuses, Vantage is deploying closed-loop chilled water systems that minimize water use while supporting responsible operations. And as part of our investment in Millersport, we are partnering with local stakeholders to support the planning and development of critical water and wastewater infrastructure improvements. These improvements are intended to strengthen community infrastructure, support future growth, and create long-term benefits for residents and the community. Together, these priorities reflect our commitment to responsible growth and reflect our commitment to Ohio. and again, we appreciate the time here today and look forward to questions from the committee.
Thank you for your testimony. Questions from the committee?
Representative Claggett. Thank you, Chair. I was at your site when you guys broke ground, talked to your president a little bit, and I guess you were here this morning and I had a, in this afternoon, and I had what I believe is my analysis of how the industry got to where they are in regard to their relationship with the public, the citizens of Ohio. Do you have any particular input on why data centers, your business line, is in trouble, so to speak, with the citizenry of Ohio and, frankly, around the world?
That's a great question and something I think we spend a lot of time thinking about. I think historically, the data centers that you've seen over the past 20, 25 years have tended to be smaller facilities and more nondescript. As demand has grown, the size of those facilities has grown, and the number have. And so I think as data centers become more visible, citizens rightly have questions about what they are and how they operate. And as was acknowledged by others here previously, I think clearly the industry has been slow to catch up. Advantage, our approach has been to embrace increasingly active community engagement. For us, that means being on the ground, being part of the community, having conversations with anyone who will listen, and being accessible throughout the development process and through the construction process. One example I'll give is for the Miller Support Campus, we are advancing a program that we actually started in Wisconsin recently called CORE, which is, I think it stands for Community Operations and Responsive Engagement. And essentially, that's an opportunity for us to have, we've created a single email point of contact for the project that's monitored by a group of community engagement experts and subject matter experts. And that gives us the chance to solicit community feedback and triage and respond to it more quickly so that we are able to engage with citizens faster than we previously had and to connect them to better information. We are also deploying microsites, websites with fact-based information about the projects so that they have a resource that they can go to. But really the most important thing is just to be there and to be present in the community and be willing to talk to people one-on-one.
Follow-up? Nope. Representative Workman.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chandler, for being here and for your unique perspective on the developments that you've been involved in. It seems as though, and I hear you talking about the investments that you're making into your communities where you are. Can you talk a little bit more about the general community consensus in those areas? Are they appreciative? Are you making an impact in a positive way? And also, a second question, as you're entering those communities and doing the educational work and the public information hearings and forums, are you getting a lot of pushback? Are you hearing people say, we just don't believe you?
Chair and Representative Workman, that's another great question. I will say that in general, yes, we are obviously receiving increased attention and questions and concerns. But we still have found, overall, many communities, including in Ohio, to be welcoming to these projects. And I think even as the attention to data center development has grown and the rhetoric, particularly online, has gotten more intense, there are still a lot of residents who are either supportive or, frankly, neutral and not as engaged. and our job really is to try to reach as many citizens, whether they're supportive or not, and provide them with the opportunity to meet us and to learn about us and to engage directly with the project. I hope that somewhat answers your question. The summary is that it is not all bad. I do think online amplifies some of those concerns. But again, these are newer technologies, there are newer developments, and people are right to have questions, and they are right to expect information from developers like ourselves.
So would it be fair, you have a distinction from the hyperscalers, would you be in the co-locator category?
So typically our campuses are developed by Vantage, and then the computing equipment that's inside, that space is leased, and that computer equipment belongs to our tenants who can be enterprise, cloud, or AI customers. And long term, our responsibility is to maintain the data center, the box itself, and the facility around that.
So do you take advantage of the sales and use tax abatement, or does that go to the people that own the equipment on the inside?
It's both, but we do.
So you use it on the building?
Yes, sir.
And they use it on the equipment?
Yes, Chair, I am not a tax policy expert, and I am not sure if the entire campus takes advantage of that, and I do not know for whether that is always we directly take advantage and then it's passed through as part of the financing or whether it's taken advantage by the tenants themselves.
Thank you. What other distinctions would you draw from your business model and the hyperscalers? Should you get painted with the same brush as they do?
Chair, that's a good question. I would say that in terms of the operational aspects of our facilities, They are functionally similar to what the campuses that are developed and owned by the hyperscaler customers as well.
So given that, would you be willing to submit to the same technical questions that the hyperscalers agreed to?
Yes.
Thank you. We'll add you to the list. Thank you for the clarity. I appreciate that. Yeah, so that's going to answer a lot of questions that we have. So, you know, getting down in the weeds on the technical aspects. So I appreciate that.
Any other questions from the committee? Thank you for your time. Thank you for your testimony.
Thank you.
Members, we also received written-only testimony from several other folks. They are on your iPads and on the website. I will note that we are meeting again on Monday, and we have invited some folks from the Thursday meeting to come into the Monday meeting, some allied industries interested parties. We believe we've contacted the folks that we want to come in, but if you feel like you're in that category, please reach out to Chair Holmes' office and we'll see you again for another marathon session on Monday. With no further business before this committee, we are hereby adjourned. .