June 4, 2026 · and Senate Select Committees on Data Centers · 15,836 words · 7 speakers · 108 segments
The Joint Data Center Select Committee will come back to order. We'd like to invite our hyperscalers to continue their testimony. Hopefully you've recharged and had some water to get ready to answer another round of questions. So. All right, we're going to start with co-chair Holmes.
Yes, thank you, Chairman. And again, thank you for that, because that was two hours, but as we've all discussed the importance of this, and we certainly appreciate and respect that all four of you would come now and help us. I just had two questions, and then I'll be done for the day. And these are a little more detailed questions. And the first one, we've, as you know, we have a ballot initiative, and Ohio citizens have a ballot initiative now to ban data centers, and they've been collecting signatures this year. We've connected with those people who have been leading that effort, and we brought them in at our last meeting because we really wanted to understand what their concerns were. So they sent questions to our office that they were hoping we could ask, so I promised I would do that on behalf of them and all those folks that are interested in that. And it's a more specific set of questions. And question one is about water. So one of the biggest concern that we've seen is that there are concerns that data centers are putting chemicals and biocides into the water that you use in your evaporation loop systems. And that there might be other regulated and unregulated chemicals that you're putting into the water. and then when you're discharging it back into the municipal water systems, it's contamination that the Ohio EPA doesn't regulate in any way, and so that it's actually degrading our existing water system. What we learned last from the EPA is that all data centers in Ohio are on municipal water, that no one's using into the open air. So that would be, I'm going to try to place this into one question. If you could come up and first a basic, the basic mechanics of evaporation loop systems and how municipal water cools them, please let us know any chemicals you put into that water during that process. and do you regulate, unregulate those chemicals or monitor the chemical makeup of the water that exits your facilities? Please talk about your water systems. Thank you.
Chair Holmes, thank you for the question. And it's understandable why this is an area of concern for citizens. We take our responsibility to be good stewards of water resources incredibly seriously. and citizens should know that there are robust regulatory frameworks in place with Ohio EPA, as you stated, as well as the localities and municipal water utilities to ensure that. In terms of the evaporative cooling at our sites, our three live sites do use evaporative cooling. When we pull water in from the municipality, we do add biocides to that water. I think it important to describe that in layperson terms the word biocide sounds really scary But think of a backyard swimming pool right You add chlorine to it to make sure that nothing funky grows right No algae, no mold. It's the same thing that hospitals do for their water. It's the same thing that all other industrial users do to their water to ensure that their pipes basically don't grow mold or algae, right? I should say we use a much less concentration than the average backyard swimming pool. And then in the evaporative cooling process, all of those chemicals stay in the tank. The water that evaporates up into the atmosphere qualifies as pure, because it's like 99.99% or whatever the figure is pure. All of those chemicals stay within the tank. And then there's the discharge process, right, with wastewater utility infrastructure at the local level with our utility partners. The process, as I understand it, is that we file for a discharge permit with Ohio EPA. It's called an industrial pretreatment permit. And then when we discharge that, of course, they regulate certain chemicals, right, which we abide by those regulations. When we return water to the municipal system, it is cleaner than when we received it. So we test for an extra layer of sort of chemicals and water quality that goes beyond what's regulated, and when we return that water, it's cleaner than when we received it. I think that answered most of your questions, so I'll pause there.
Mr. Chairman, good to see you again. Thanks for the question. So a few things that I mentioned earlier today that I think are important for this question is, one, we are only using direct evaporative cooling at our data centers in Ohio. I believe your question mentioned evaporative loop. I think we're talking about the same thing.
That would be great if you reviewed that for everybody. Okay.
So when we talk about direct evaporative cooling, We're talking about essentially a system that we have replaceable open pads near the data hall. The hot air or those pads are wet with the water that we have on site. Hot air is drawn in. That moisture essentially cools that air that we can force into the data hall to cool our servers and racks. And I think what's important about that is only 3% of the entire year are we actually using water in that operation. The rest, the 97% of the year, we are just drawing in air from outside that's cool enough with fans that's blowing into the data hall, and that's what we need in order to provide the right temperature for our racks and servers. I think another attribute of direct evaporative cooling that is important to note is that unlike a closed-loop system or other similar systems, or I should say not similar, other systems like liquid immersion technologies where you have to actively add certain chemicals in order to prevent scaling or biofilms or other things, we actually typically don't need to add a whole much of anything at all. and anything that we do add is under applicable Ohio EPA limits as it relates to our discharge
to local water municipalities I think I leave it there but happy to answer any other questions on that front Thank you Mr Chair And just to add on a few things I think it been hit well on direct evaporative cooling what's required with that. Again, these conversations happen early and often with the publicly owned treatment facilities. So in our case, that's with New Albany and the city of Comblis, who handles all kind of industrial discharge. Same thing in Bowling Green and Middleton Township. That's with Northwestern Water Sewer and District. We talk to them about the water discharge, the amounts, their capacity, and obviously walk through anything that would be involved with that process. I think it's been hit well on direct evaporative in some of these. I thought it hit on closed loop, since I think that's another one that I heard spoken about on Monday. So closed loop is obviously unique in that you do some initial commissioning, you fill it up, and then it just runs and recirculates. So there are some chemical additives to that process. One of those is propylene glycol. I think we heard people talk about glycols just in general. Obviously, there's different. I'm not a chemist by any stretch of the imagination, but obviously there are more toxic glycols like ethylene glycol. Propylene glycol is a pretty well-known substance at a lower level used in food-grade products. It's used in de-icing of airplanes, et cetera. It's usually about a 75%, 25% mixture, and that's really for the anti-freeze properties. There will be some anticarosives and biocides used in that just because that water is circulating. but those are all industrial standard treatment processes. And whenever it gets to the point of needing to do a recharge, which I said before was about eight to 12 years, depending on different factors, that will all be carefully managed and in coordination with that publicly owned water treatment facility for testing, monitoring, any pretreatment required, and then ultimate discharge in the appropriate location. And then the final thing I know, just because I did hear this brought up as well, and I think it's important to get on record, there's a lot of conversation about PFAS. And I think PFAS is something that we're all dealing with and considering. We fully appreciate and recognize that PFAS is a source water challenge and has some level of ubiquitiveness in water in general because it has been in so many of our products. And there's varying levels of policies related to figuring out how to get PFAS out of the general products that we use every day. We don't add any chemicals that have PFAS uniquely in them. So there's no PFAS and propylene glycol or some of the other chemical treatments. So I just want to make sure that that's on the record. Again, if we pull in water, just like any manufacturer or anyone else, and it already has PFAS in it because that is in the current existing environment, yes, it will be in our system, but it would be in any system. And we're open to having conversations about how we tackle that kind of more broadly as well, too. So I appreciate the opportunity to clarify some of that. All right. Thank you.
Do you have any to add to that?
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the question. We have nothing further to add. We align with exactly what our colleagues have said. In terms of any of the chemicals, it's the same answer.
All right, thank you. I'd like to follow up on that, Mr. Chairman. So when you were talking about PFAS, That was a big topic of conversation on Monday, and I could see you, but maybe not everyone at home could see you, and the record can't see you. Do any of you have any known sources of PFAS in your water supplies, additive?
No, Mr. Chair.
No.
They're all shaking their heads no. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Okay, now this is my last question. This will be my last question for this event for you all Well we have there deep concern across Ohio and again in Ohio history of heavy industry that has come here used Ohio resources, and left. And there's a lot of concern with these same groups that came in, especially in my area of Ohio rural, Ohio and Appalachian Ohio, that big companies will come in once again, and exploit them for resources and leave them, and some of the aching poverty that we're still challenging with. So I would hope you would address that. And with that, a lot of the folks from that area, another reason why they're looking to ban these data centers is they believe it's speculative, that you're just rolling the dice now to see what you can get, and if you get a good deal, you might stay. But it's that a lot of this construction might need to be remediated later and so they're looking for guarantees on that. Could you all discuss how much of your construction is speculative and if you're planning on that? Thank you.
Chairman, thank you for the question. I think to start with sort of the potential, like the AI concerns maybe, that you alluded to in your question, At Google, we feel very confident that AI is going to change jobs and create more jobs than it ever replaces. That said, we can't predict what that transition will look like, right? And so we are very committed to both providing AI training for individuals and for businesses and working very closely with economists and policymakers across the spectrum to ensure that that transition doesn't leave anyone behind. It's not something we can fully control on our own as Google, but we think it's really critical, and we're committed to playing our part in that transition. I think it's important to look to history, very near-term history, on how some of this is starting to play out in the market. Ten years ago, everyone was predicting that radiologists were going to be a thing of the past, that AI was going to do all of the scans and radiologists would be out of a job. In fact, the reverse is true. AI tools have helped radiologists do their job better and more efficiently and enables them to spend more time with patients, to do more of the troubleshooting across a really complex scan and work on patient care resolutions. Now, we can't guarantee that that's how it will play out in every sector, and so I think it's important that we have this public conversation in forums like this to ensure that it happens the right way, in a meaningful and thoughtful way. On the comment on sort of speculative demand, at least for Google, in our quarterly financial reports, we have hundreds of billions of dollars of real customer demand backlog that we want to build for. So our cloud business alone, I forget the exact number, but it was over $400 billion in cloud backlog. So those are real customers, real enterprise, government, you know, small business all the way to the largest ones, customers that want Google products, services, cloud services that we can't build for yet. Right? So these are real customers, real economic demand. That said, trust but verify, right? So I think it's absolutely fair that communities consider in these conversations, what does a remediation plan look like, right? If a data center was to come to town and set up shop and leave that site after however many years, what's the responsibility of that developer to return that site to a useful position, useful state? We've actually started to see that play out at localities and in other states at the state level. as a conversation and a point of interest. We're absolutely open to that. It's a reasonable concern. Again, we're committed to these investments for the long term. We've been operating them for decades, so I don't foresee that changing anytime soon, but we're happy to sort of bake that into either our local agreements or as a condition of anything at the state level to ensure that localities feel really comfortable with that.
Mr. Chairman, on your question, I think a few things are true for Amazon. One, we always start with the customer, right? So as we are thinking about growing and expanding here in Ohio on the 10 years worth of data center operations we have already, and you've seen the growth yourself that we're doing more and want to do more, and we're seeing this in regions across the United States and, in fact, the world, that is built on a signal from our customers that the compute capacity that AWS has today is not enough to satisfy what they want to do in the cloud in the future. And so that translates very, you know, for us very clearly to increased demands for energy and water in particular. And so I think in terms of addressing, you know, what I would, the way I'd characterize your question, and that is essentially the stranded asset risk. Are you going to build and then suddenly walk away from this? In our 20-year history, that has not been true, and we continue to see customer demand growing. On the energy side, we think that this is inherently the value of what this committee has discussed and what the PUCO has put in place with, for example, AAP Ohio's large load tariff, where we are now essentially entering into long-term contracts, ensuring that we're putting financial guarantees up front, looking at things like exit fees and minimum demand charges so that for every megawatt of capacity that we are asking to consume, we're ensuring that we're covering the full cost in a number of financial ways and not passing that cost to other rate payers. So to bring that back to, I think, to your question, if the utility needs to build infrastructure to serve our load, we're either paying for the infrastructure directly or paying for it through our rates and ensuring that no one else is sharing that burden at the same time. In terms of water, we're doing lots, as I've mentioned, with direct evaporative cooling to really lower our water use. We are increasing our deployment of water recycling with municipal utilities across our footprint across the world, which essentially is enabling those utilities to treat wastewater and use it for new industrial use. We're not asking utilities where we're deploying this technology to take on the cost of installing quite a bit of new pipe, particularly in places where maybe they weren't able to make that investment themselves. But that's where we will fill the gap and ensure that we're enabling that infrastructure. So even if we weren't there tomorrow, that utility can still treat wastewater and use more sustainable water sources for its customers as well So I think those are just a few examples to get to your question Mr Chairman thank you for the question I concur with what our colleagues have said Our investments are not speculative. Our investments are in early development stages. We don't have data centers operational yet, but they are based on clear, long-term demand by our customers, and our capital approach remains guided by demand signals. We're going to continue to invest where we see customer demand. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. And I'd agree with what my colleague said. I think, you know, we built our first data center, as I mentioned earlier, in 2011. It's been operating for 15 years. It's only expanded. So it has seen that long-term commitment. Only the future can prove out that that continues, but that's where our commitment stands. I think with any large-scale investment, it's important to have protections in place. So I think that's kind of agnostic to data centers, to your point, what we've seen in other industries where they've come and gone. So I would suggest any locality has really strong protections in place to make sure that should something go awry, that they're protected, their citizens are protected, and they don't just have kind of that walk-away opportunity. They have to remediate or do whatever is needed to make that site workable again or use it for something else, hopefully, if possible. So I think that's just best practice generally. I think a lot of this stuff that's coming to bear with data centers is relative to just good practices in general and could be applied holistically should we have a boom of some other industry that we don't know about yet that's coming in the future.
I'd like to follow up on that. Is there a way to calculate what an average closure remediation cost would be for a building, a data center? you can think about that and get us that information because that's going to be the next level that we need to consider. Representative Claggett. Thank you, Chairman. Over lunch, my engineer brain tried to put together what I didn't understand coming into today. I want to run some stuff by you and get your feedback on whether I'm out to lunch or I'm actually capturing what happened here in the last few years. Because, again, we had all these folks from Monday, and we've been hearing from all over state. We're all very familiar with that. And so my office put together the entire summary, four pages, of Monday's complete testimony. In fact, I think I gave it to a few people in this room. I would submit, on some level, my questions have not been answered. That's okay. I figured it out. I think it's not your fault. You guys are doing a fine job. You really are. You're professionals. You're great. But our structural problem here is you're not the right people to answer these questions. And for two reasons. Number one, you are not technical people in regard to the questions that the citizenry is concerned about. It's not your fault. It's a reality. So your world is very similar to our world in that the level of trust that exists between your job title and our job title in our society is quite low. In my real job, because we are all citizen legislators, in my real job, I am at the top of trust and respect in this world because I'm an engineer. Nurses are right there with us, right? Because it's very simple. It's binary. You either live or you die. And it's almost where we're at with the good decisions we got. Okay, so having said that, I want to illustrate what happened here a few minutes ago before lunch. The question was asked is there an EMF problem in the data centers And one of you said no we run the meters there nothing in there I don think an engineer would have said that And here the reason why If you have a 760 kV line that's coming into that factory, and if you have a citizen that's driving on a road with an EMF meter, which I got, I'm assuming some of you people have, you could be several hundred feet away from that line, and you would get an EMF rating on your meter. because the law of inverse squared says the rate of propagation is falling off, but it's still present. It's not necessarily coming from your warehouse of computer racks, but if you're outside and you can't get inside, oh, by the way, if you're a member of the public, and yet you get a reading, you think you have an EMF problem because the line bringing power into the facility would say that. okay so that's an illustration of where people perceive an issue and what the actual issue is is very different all right so let me lay out for you my perception in very big terms big bullet points not all the sub points but in big points and how we got here and i want your reaction to this and to see if we can get this train headed in a little better direction here number one i think various construction techniques and operational methods over the last 20 years has given us data centers on a scale. It's almost hyperbolic at this point. Next, there's a huge spike in the need for data centers. Not only from computing power, but then all the other stuff that's going on in our world as it converts to that. From that comes a bit of the rise of data centers and all the deals necessary to do that among various government agencies. You've heard that question this morning regarding NDAs. Okay? So we're out there doing our little job, and we've got all these agreements in place, and everything's wonderful because we're all creating economic activity. No problem so far. Introduce the rise of AI, and the public is freaking out over that because the AI concern, it comes through my committee here in the House of the significant issues related to the concerns of artificial intelligence and the other things that are even more powerful than that that's coming. that then causes a certain amount of concern because these new buildings that you're describing primarily today are not of the same specifications that the older buildings in that 20-year period are at and so therefore there is some bad actors let's put it that way maybe not intentional but by perception they're not operating at the new at the new level that yours are and so therefore they become the poster child for the problem all right so now we got now we figured out where the problem is and why people are concerned and therefore the health and related issues that people were posting about all right that then leads to political pressures why we're here today all right so i'm going to suggest that again looking for feedback from you but i think these four pages that I've got, maybe you've got your own list, you don't need mine, maybe. I think we need your head of engineering or head of operations to specifically address these concerns. You can't do it. The folks don't believe you, and frankly, they don't believe us sitting around this desk, and that is okay. It doesn't make any of us bad. It makes us a level of trust that's maybe not there. So I think I'm looking for civic, engineer-type responses to actual concerns that the folks have And if we have that because this committee is going to produce a report according to the chairman then I think that where we at So please respond to that and I think we can get somewhere Representative Claggett can you break that down into bite questions Can you give us an engineer report, specific questions, number one, soon, to quote you, and then two, am I right in my analysis of that progression?
Chairs, Representative, thank you for the question. I think your assessment is very wise. I don't disagree with you that having a bunch of government relations and policy folks in front of you is less interesting than, frankly, some of our operational leads that might be sitting behind us. I think if we were to come up with that list or have a shared list of those questions, our companies have incredible experts across all of these areas that we are happy to make available to you and to the public. So we could use some of our services to host sort of virtual informational sessions. We could come together to share sort of our best practices and our standards, open to whatever might be most useful. And I understand the challenges with the current dynamic. I would also just say I think that trust issue is also why regulatory bodies like this and at the local level, state and federal level, are so important, right? Because if we run afoul of any of those regulations, then we are either sued or fined or our operations are halted. I know that doesn't address the trust issue that you so rightly call out, but businesses are incredibly risk-averse. It's not good for our brand or our business to be shut down or in court, right? And so I do think citizenry should take some comfort in that, that there are robust regulations in place and that their elected representatives are working hard to make sure that we raise this floor for all operators, right? So that you're not just trusting the best practices of the larger companies who have been in this industry for many, many years, but you're holding those new players to that same standard. Thanks.
Thank you for your question and again I would agree with the take on that I think what we've seen in a lot of states and I cover about 25 states is that it can be just one project gone wrong or awry and that kind of sets the standard for everyone we're only as strong as our weakest link we can't control that so that's why it is really important to have good state level and local level policies to really have a firm floor and give the same direction to everyone and decide where that is so we're supportive of that I would say that, you know, broadly speaking, you know, we're committed to continuing the conversation about what that looks like and making sure that we answer that. I think we all probably had the conversation amongst ourselves. Should we bring 10 people each year? Because we have very smart people that do functional things in each of those areas. And we're maybe a little dangerous, but not masters of any of them. Fair point. Fair point. I have a water expert, a noise expert, an environmental expert, every expert under the sun. And I think whatever format is appropriate to get information from those folks, we're open door on that. And we would love to provide that, whether it's in written format, in webinar format, bringing folks here to have that conversation. I think given the nature of this committee, the breadth of those conversations that we knew were going to take place today, that was a little bit of part of the conversation is who should we bring here to make sure that we get all of your answers appropriately answered. answered in the time and manner that you have given in front of you.
Mr. Chairman, Representative Claggett, the answer to your question on both fronts is yes. Yes. Chair, Representative, I don't have anything additional. The answer is yes.
All right. So thank you for that. I know you didn't get your specific answers, but what I heard is this committee will submit a list of questions to the hyperscalers. We expect very detailed answers back from you rapidly. And things like what is your exact water usage? What are the decibel levels? You know, what are the EMF emissions from your facility? You know, any mitigating information, give us all the information. What are the emissions from the diesel generators during the testing? You know, any detectable chemicals coming out of your effluent of your facility, but also what's coming into your facility, right? So give us the whole picture. Give us very specific information. If it's proprietary, then don't give it to us, but we expect a vast, vast, vast majority of the information is not proprietary. Any follow-ups? No? Okay. Representative Workman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would just like to piggyback on that topic for a moment. I am certain that this is not a concern that you're hearing just in Ohio. Again, it's the narrative. It's the educational opportunity. Big tech is moving us into a future that is very scary. We do not understand it. Our constituents don't understand it. Our developers don't know where we're going tomorrow. We are looking to you to guide this ship and to keep us informed along the way. It's critically important that we're essentially not left behind. This industry needs to be responsive to us, to we the people. And we can't let big tech move along without that consideration at the forefront. So I would ask that we don't just get the report here on this committee, that you use that report to educate Americans across the board. Where are we going and how are we getting there? This is a transition from the industrial age to the digital age, and nobody understands it. So you may, your experts may, but a lot of us do not, and we look to you to guide that direction. Otherwise, there are going to be a lot of people who say no. Senator Wilkin. Thank you, Chairman. Again, thanks to everybody to be here. I want to go in a little bit of a different direction, specific, I guess, a lot to my area. There are some that would believe or suggest that these companies who you guys, you've got a couple of bucks, are showing up in these rural communities and, for lack of a better term, or maybe taking advantage of someone that is not quite up to speed of exactly what they're doing or how they should handle this, because they've never had investment like this come in before. And lots of times people say, you know, investment is good, but are there ways to go about it? So I would like to hear your response to that for those of you that are looking at rural or have places in rural communities. And then I'd like you to go one step further and tell me what, if anything, are you doing to help these rural communities with the process? And when we get into it, I can tell you what I'm finding out from some others of what they're doing. So you always get the joy of going first. I'm going to send it down there next.
Chair, Senator, thank you for the question. So yes I mean across four continents that we operate data centers a good portion of our fleet or our portfolio is in very rural locations I think it fair to say without exception that those relationships are incredibly positive, that those communities, those local leaders are very happy with our presence there. We are a local employer. We sit on boards. So the presence is positive. and I'm happy to refer this committee or others to our local partners in Oregon and Oklahoma and Iowa, places where we've operated for many, many years. That said, you are right to call out that some of these localities do not have a team of city attorneys, right? And we can come in with our outside counsel, our inside counsel, our army of experts that has been referenced. And so in many cases, we actually have helped to fund outside council for localities. And I think there are many efforts afoot right now in organizations like the National Association of Counties, some of the municipal leagues or associations across various states to try to assist their localities in a framework. These are the things you should be looking for. These are the questions you should ask. again NACO National Association of Counties has a pretty good playbook that they've published and I would imagine a few others are going to be coming out with similar resources so we're happy to support anything like that that helps a locality to make an informed decision nobody wants data center regret and we certainly don't right we want to go where we're wanted it's a key part of our site selection process and we want to make sure that that locality is happy with the deal, happy with the project, and happy to move forward with us as a long-term local employer and partner.
Chairman, Senator, thanks for the question. I think I would just share from our perspective that, you know, obviously we've been here for 10 years, mostly inside of 270, and in recent years we've been moving outside to more rural communities, like you mentioned. Much of that was at the request of the Department of Development, certainly former Lieutenant Governor, We had a number of conversations about not leaving those communities behind and doing what we could to bring investments. So we do continue to foster and build those local relationships, welcome feedback on ways that we could perhaps do better. But I think at the end of the day, when we see the level of capital expenditure that is flowing into data center development, we do see an opportunity to work with these communities and want to ensure we're doing it the right way.
Mr. Chairman, Senator Wilkin, I would echo what my colleagues have said. Microsoft takes the same approach in any community in which we engage. I've laid out our community engagement strategy based on our community-first infrastructure commitments, and to the point just made by my colleague, we're happy to take additional feedback on things that we can do better. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. and Senator, I think Liz kind of hit the nail on the head that we just need better information sharing. We need playbooks. We need model ordinances. We need information shared. Because Ohio does have a really good history and experience of how to manage this and what growth from nothing to something looks like. I'm very excited, if you all, to have the city of New Albany in. They've kind of written that playbook a bit, and they're always really excited to share it. It's just how do you get it from there to there? And I think that something that we could really be better at if every state made sure that all of the localities had a general guideline local control decide your setbacks decide your other requirements but this is what a model ordinance could look like, here's all the questions that should be asked, here's how we set up our development agreements so that it was net benefit. If everyone had that tool in their toolkit, they might still need more, they might need assistance from outside council, other things, But that would give them a really strong standing to have that conversation in a well-educated way versus what you described, which is this is the first multibillion, first hundred million dollar project I've ever dealt with. I just don't even know what questions to ask. That's legitimate because we're obviously working sometimes with township trustees and very kind of intimately local forms of government. So I think that could be a huge benefit to the state of Ohio, and we're happy to help in any way to make sure that that happens. Thank you.
So I really appreciate your answer where you specifically said you've at times helped fund outside council. Answers like that is what I was hoping to hear. You guys being the hyperscalers, do any of you do co-located where you have different people coming in, or are they just all your facility?
Mr. Chair and Senator, we do both owned and operated and lease from other providers, some behind us. So I think in those relationships, it really is that provider that's developing the site, and they manage that relationship and that engagement with the community and the development process, and we're really the lessee that's inside the building as an off-taker.
If you want to stay, if you don't mind, Chairman, you might be able to answer for everybody else. I'm just curious, and maybe it's different, but if it's a co-located site, who owns the equipment inside?
So that can vary, and I know we have some co-location providers here who I shouldn't speak for them. I think there's a variety of outcomes. There could be one tenant that owns the entirety of the servers. There could be multiple tenants, hundreds of tenants sometimes that just access the servers. Again, not our kind of business model, so I think it would be really important to hear from the co-location and multi-tenant providers so they can speak to that business model.
Final follow-up or final question? Would you like to hear from any others? Oh, sure. Yeah, sorry. Okay. Is it possible, because in the public perception, right or wrong, is that specifically you four that everybody knows, you guys don't pay any taxes. So is there a way you can get us a number that says, here's what we pay in Ohio, whether it's employment. Can we get a specific number of, this is what we contribute, because everybody sees the sales and use tax exemption, but what could we get from you guys that tells us exactly what you're putting back into the community for your facilities that you have here?
Chairs, Senator, thank you for the question. I do think at a sort of national level, that is a misconception. in some federal testimony earlier this year, one of my colleagues shared that Google's tax burden in the U.S. is about $22 billion. In Ohio, I shared previously that our property tax and payments to schools last year was million That a matter of public record I happy to follow up with you on the other figures right CAT and income and all the other categories that amount to you know tens of millions I don't have those figures available to share with you right now, but happy to follow up.
Chairman, Senator, in 2025 we paid $10.9 million in property taxes and fees. Happy to follow up on other numbers like full-time employment, indirect jobs, and the like. At AWS, it's 9,500 full-time jobs in Ohio right now. Across Amazon, 35,000, and then a number more indirect jobs from there as we count construction and other vendors as well. But happy to provide whatever information you'd like and follow up.
Mr. Chairman, Senator Wilkin will provide that. We'll submit it to the committee.
Mr. Chairman and Senator, again, we're happy to break that out and provide that for you. I think the rough numbers is about $24 million in total net of taxes in 2025, about $13 million of that related to our data centers, but not including any indirect or other economic contributions, but happy to provide that in writing as well.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman, one last one. Yes, follow up. So this is a little bit redundant, but I just want to make sure that we're very clear, especially in areas like mine that are ruled. But of the four of you that are here, when we're speaking about, when we say water discharge, we're talking about water that is discharged to a wastewater treatment plant and not discharged into a public body of water.
So that's correct.
Chairman, Senator, so just one clarification. That is true as of today.
At Amazon, we do have a national pollution discharge elimination permit that's been granted for discharge. We're not currently using it today.
Okay. And a follow-up to that question. Follow-up? Oh, wait, I think. Oh. Please. Yeah.
Mr. Chair, Senator, just on the record, all of our facilities work through the municipally-owned, public-owned water treatment facilities. Mr. Chair, Senator, for the record, same for Google. We do not do any surface discharge. We work all through wastewater municipal systems.
Mr. Chair, Senator, same answer. All right.
And then the last part of my follow-up. Thank you, Chairman, and I'll pass the mic on. We had a testimony that said, ah, but there's a discharge that goes into the wastewater that's not tested. and I know we talked about this a little bit, but I just want to make sure that we're very clear. Is there any chemicals or things that are not tested by the EPA that are going into a wastewater system that then when the wastewater, after it goes through the treatment process, could come out of there? Is that, do you think there's any, or can you tell us if you have any chemicals that would not be found by the EPA or they're not regulated by the EPA? Mr. Chair, Senator Wilkin, I'm not aware of any. if you include it in the list of questions you want us to respond to, we'll do that. And everybody can go with that answer if you'd like, so you don't have to all stand up. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Workman.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask just one more question, and then I'll yield to the next phase of the discussion. I'm particularly interested from each of you what you are doing to facilitate the education and essentially the training and workforce development in our communities of our youth and also our current workforce, if We are truly in the middle of the transition from the technological age to the digital age. How are you helping facilitate that in our communities? So we're prepared to be an active and productive part of that future.
Chair, Representative, thank you for the question. I think I included this stat in my opening statement and in my written testimony, so you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but we've trained over 370,000, I think, Ohio residents on digital skills and AI skills. It's part of a, we call it our Grow with Google program. We partner with community colleges, with CTE, tech vocational high schools. We partner with libraries and chambers of commerce, basically lean on local providers, service providers, trusted partners to help deliver our expertise on digital skills or AI skills through them. and that's why we've been able to achieve that scale is because we leverage those strong local partners. We have a similar program for helping small businesses adapt to AI and utilize AI to grow because we know that's a critical, well, first it's a critical part of our economy, right, small businesses generally, and we want to make sure that small businesses don't get left behind in terms of the efficiencies that AI can help drive for them. And then finally, sort of closer to the conversation on data centers, We similarly look to partner with providers like Ohio State or Columbus State Community College to provide basically two types of training. So skilled trades, more on the construction side from welders, pipe fitters, electricians, et cetera. Or we have a STAR skilled trades and readiness program that's more specific to our own pipeline for our data center operations. and again that program I think currently we have like 50 students who go through it annually and we have a 90% placement rate at our sites so that's sort of a summary of what our sort of workforce and training looks like. I would say then at the local level we have more of the like philanthropic goodwill building stuff so just supporting whatever the local priorities are that could be through a boys and girls club or the school district directly just to help support whatever they're focused on. Thanks.
Chairs and representative, thanks for the question. I think this is a super important topic and I think it does run the gamut from both traditional, how do you learn AI better and then how do you benefit from AI and the infrastructure as well too. So starting at that point, the skilled trades and all of the jobs related to data centers are really, I think just a generational opportunity that I think people should be excited about. We do a couple of things in that lane. One, we partner with an entity called Be Pro, Be Proud. OhioX is a great organization in here, and they bring actually a big semi-trailer that's filled with all of these test use cases of what would it be like to be a welder or an electrician or work in some other trade. So high school kids and hundreds have gone through this, both in Bowling Green here in Columbus and in New Albany can go through and feel what it's like to do that and get excited about that profession and kind of reinvigorate people being excited about certifications, two-year degrees, which we really need to kind of reemphasize. The other thing that we recently announced was a Level Up program, which is a free four-week program to train fiber technicians to work in our data centers. So that's going to be started right here in Ohio. They won necessarily always be in Ohio data centers but it be funded by Meta and it in partnership with CBRE where we have applications and then folks will be selected and they get tuition four training to become fiber technicians, which is a really high-demand job right now, well-paid job, good benefits, and has a long career trajectory. So we're really excited about that. And then locally at our data centers, and I think this is a little fun fact, that what you get when you get a data center. So in a meta data center, we bring local businesses and employers in to teach them how to use our platform and how to get really good at it. And it's even more exciting in this AI age, because the opportunities for small businesses, we just announced meta AI business agents to unlock and reach audiences you've never had before, and just kind of be that crazy, you know, really great entrepreneurial moment, is unique onto those data center communities, and that we bring them in from the local community, host them free, bring in our experts from our headquarters and have them teach them how to use these skills and how to become AI native and efficient to amplify their business reach and economy. So we're really excited about that. And then on the pipeline side, I'd mentioned before, our community grant program really focuses on STEM education and working with local schools. How do we get the resources in the right place to make sure that students are being trained and ready? I think that's what folks are worried about as much as anything. What does this mean? I have young kids for our kids. I think the best thing that we can do is really build AI into their lives in a human-centric way so that they're using it to amplify their capabilities. But we need to kind of get that in front of them in a safe and reasonable way and then help them advantage that to the future.
Mr. Chairman, Representative Workman, thanks for the question. Excuse me. On workforce development, I mentioned it earlier, in our communities we make sure that we are providing training to local trades to make sure that they have the ability and the skills that they need to get the high-paying technical jobs that they will have over the long term. From a skilling perspective, we provide AI skilling more broadly, both partnering with community colleges and universities, but we also work with local libraries to make sure that we're providing AI skilling for adults and local businesses. And so we try to think about a broad base of skills that we need to provide so that everybody can contribute in the AI economy. And that takes different forms, but we also participate and contribute to scholarships and development funds as well. So happy to share a more robust investment scaling profile for you. Thanks.
Chairman, Representative, I would just add one example from our experience, the way that we do this in Ohio. So with our expansion in Marysville, for example, that comes with investments not just in workforce and training in higher education, which is important and that's something that we do, but also direct tax payments to the local elementary schools. And that's really part of building a pipeline of the economic development that we believe is important for these communities. So as part of that commitment also we are investing in local community colleges in the places where we are developing data centers as well as apprenticeship programs for particularly skilled trades which I think is a testament to the type of construction and then long operations jobs that we offer as an industry when we do quite often have skilled trades and chambers of commerce both at the state and local levels excited about the investment And it's because I think to the pipeline of both education and employment opportunities that we're providing.
I'd like to follow up a little bit on that line of questioning. I lost my notes. There we go. So when we're talking about the number of skilled trades and jobs, that's been a question of what do data centers really bring? And I'm trying to remember your testimony, your opening testimony four hours ago. But can you just reiterate what the average, give me an average, a realistic average of how many folks work on the site? And I'm thinking to when we toured one of your sites, I don't remember which one, but they said that the cafe serves 800 meals a day. I know the servers aren't eating, so who's eating all those meals? Yeah. I'm going to jump up on this one. I'm passionate about this one. So, Mr. Chair, thanks for the question.
I think we're really proud of the construction workforce. It's one of the reasons that we choose where we choose because we see a really strong construction workforce and bench that can fill those roles. I come from, I live in Minnesota, and the friends that I work with, when they hear the word temporary jobs connected to construction jobs, you should duck because nothing gets them irate faster. All construction jobs are certainly temporary and without a steady stream of jobs, there is no construction job. And so we really take pride in the workforces that we bring onto our sites. At our site in Bowling Green, it'll be about 1,000 workers at peak. we've seen upwards of 5,000 workers at peak in New Albany. And certainly the city of New Albany, and they can speak to this next week, have seen multiples of that on site. That's pretty astounding to me. I come from a town of about 3,000 people. So again, it feels like a small town. What that means for your town is certainly a lot more people, so disruption, right? And I think we're all really aware of that and try to work through that. But it's an economic boon as well too. And we've seen major increases in sales tax receipts and other things because of all of those folks that show up, stay in hotels, spend money at restaurants, et cetera. And what's really exciting about data centers in particular is they're very long-term construction jobs. So for much of the construction industry, I think you're excited if you can get a job that's two and a half years long. And then you're even more excited when they announce an expansion and roll trucks next door because now you've just got another two and a half years. and if you're local, which is what we always try to hire, that means you're coming home more often. That means you're dropping your kids off more often at night. I mentioned I have a data center close to me and I have a friend who's in the laborers' union and we were having that very discussion when we were giving a data center construction tour of that site and he said, it's been the first time in a very long time I've been able to drop my kids off and pick them up regularly because usually I was driving up to the Twin Cities or somewhere else to do this type of work. So that's really exciting. It's really important. I think sometimes it's easily dismissed, which I think is unfortunate, and I think it's something we need to continue to reiterate the importance of.
Mr. Chairman, for Microsoft, we typically have about 300 to 400 construction jobs per year. But as Thor said, it's long-term construction jobs because of the scale of development. And on top of that once we operational each building that we have we tend to have 50 full employees in those sites And we have multiple sites at each campus Thank you Mr. Chairman, I mentioned earlier 9,500 full-time equivalent jobs for AWS here in Ohio.
I thought it may be helpful just to give you a sense of exactly what types of jobs those are, from construction all the way through operations.
And so certainly in the build phase, electricians, we can't find enough of them. as an industry. It's an incredible vocation right now. Pipe fitters, HVAC technicians, when we are connecting the network, fiber splicing is in high demand. And in fact, that's something that we invest in a number of the local communities where we are teaching, particularly early higher education students, how to splice fiber, because that is really the ballgame for operating a data center. Directional drill operations are important on the power side, journeyman line workers, project engineers. And then finally, when we're up in operational, data center technicians and maintenance are key. And in fact, when we are up in operational, those are the folks that you see there at the data center that are maintaining a water infrastructure, pressure and the like, electrical services, the data hall itself in terms of the networks, fiber, and the rest. So I'll leave it at that.
Thanks.
Chair, thank you for the question. So on the construction side in our sort of annual public economic impact report on our data center website, our U.S. average is about 4,200 annual construction jobs. Now what that actually means on site day-to-day can range, right, And it depends on how you are scaling that campus, right? So at some hyperscale campuses, you might just build one building to start and then scale in subsequent years. At some campuses, the owner might be able to build four buildings at once, right? So depending on that ramp period, you would obviously expect a larger construction workforce on site. So it can range, as some of my colleagues have said, from the hundreds through multiple thousands at peak, depending. I believe the cafeteria you referenced was ours in New Albany with the 800 meals served a day. Our three campuses in Ohio have a workforce of over 3,000 full-time operational staff in order to run them. And so the misconception of a large campus subsisting off of 10 humans is just not true. And we're really proud of the workforce we have here in Ohio. Thank you.
Senator Blackshear. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Going along the line of jobs, are these jobs that you all are talking about, are they sourced from the local community? So those communities that you go into, is the local community the first option, the first choice when you are trying to fill some of these roles? Chairs, Senator, thank you. Yes, local is preferable.
It's also cheaper, right? So it's self-interested. If you don't have to pay people to travel, it's a much more durable workforce, right? So those local suppliers and providers that might be coming from a small electrician firm or HVAC, or security, catering, etc. We certainly prefer them to be local. There are absolutely a small subset of highly skilled technical roles that we might not be able to source locally, but that's really the exception. And the same is true on the construction side. I was with some colleagues in Michigan last week where we have a new site going through approvals, and our general contractor was talking about how he's thrilled to not have to send his teams down to Ohio now, and he can have his folks stay home and work in Michigan as well. So it's true on sort of both sides of the house.
Mr. Chairman, Senator, appreciate the question. So yes, local jobs whenever and wherever possible.
We also, as I mentioned earlier, work with trades, community colleges, as well as four-year schools to prepare Ohio for the jobs that are here and the jobs that are coming. We actually have a team in Amazon that are solely focused on developing and strengthening the provider network nearby to our facilities. So it's part and parcel of the way that we grow with the local communities where we're operating.
Mr. Chairman, Senator Blackshear.
Yes. Chairman and Senator agree it's a key principle to hire locally wherever possible. I think that's how we start and end our day. I think to the broader thread of this conversation we should be better at telling that story about all of the local literal company names that everyone in the community would know that they got employment opportunity. So I think that's something we could get better at. So I'm trying to put this all together. So thanks for the conversation.
Follow up? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Shifting gears, each of you talked about transparency. And I guess my question is, is there a reason not to publicly disclose electric and water usage, since we're talking about transparency? Mr. Chair and Senator, I shared this in our testimony earlier.
We report all of our operational electricity and water use in our annual sustainability report. Mr. Chair, Senator Blackshear, no reason. There historically has been proprietary information, especially on electricity usage, but Microsoft will report those in our sustainability reports yearly.
Thanks.
Mr. Chairman, Senator, I think just one thing that I would add to that conversation is just, you know, ensuring the way that data is shared is important for anything that is potentially proprietary or confidential. So aggregation, for example, I think is a good method. As you think about, you know, total water use in a year, doing that at a sort of system level as opposed to building by building, which frankly, you know, I think could also be found in local permits might be the way to go.
Chair, Senator, thank you for the question.
We report our water usage annually in our environmental report on a site-by-site basis. On the energy side, I will draw back to comments made about this historically being fairly sensitive market share information in terms of the cloud providers. And so that a historical reason why many companies have not been transparent in the energy usage because you can directly tie it back to cloud market share which of course is something many of us compete on vigorously That said, we do have many jurisdictions around the world where we report energy usage at some form or fashion, whether that's sort of held confidentially at the regulator space or reported to a state agency or some other sort of local jurisdiction within that country. And so we're open to what might be useful for the state of Ohio.
Follow up. All right. You answered that. So I guess I got one more question. Four hours went by pretty quick. I guess my last question is, I mean, I see you all are testifying and answering questions together. but in reality, you all are competitors. So in a sense, it's a race to the top. You answered earlier about what brought you to Ohio. I guess my question is, what will cause you to leave Ohio?
Chair, Senator, thank you for the question. I think I would start with broad comments that, like any corporation, we seek certainty both in the economic and regulatory space where we operate. And as some have said before today, we project these facilities out in terms of our total cost of operations and investment over 20 years. At least at Google, we forecast that over 20 years. So that regulatory certainty is really important to us. It's why we are very thankful for this committee's work on this issue. I think we as sort of the technology industry and data center industry in particular have a lot to gain from sort of lifting up this floor and ensuring that we have the social license to operate and continue to grow this infrastructure in a mutually beneficial and responsible way. and so if things were to shift dramatically in Ohio and become problematic for continued growth, I think generally you would see the industry look to start to diversify just from a risk aversion point of view. I don't think, at least for Google, we're committed to our sites here. We're committed to operating and growing them and staying for the long term, but in terms of additional growth or investment, Of course, factors like economic certainty, policy certainty are part of the long list of factors that we look at.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Senator, at Amazon, now that we've been operating data centers in Ohio for 10 years,
we're certainly committed to the communities that we call home. I think as we are thinking and as you are thinking about the big challenges before you and the questions that you're seeking to answer, I do think it's important to understand that on topics like sales and use tax exemption, 36 states have one for data centers. They are absolutely competing for the business that Ohio has been such a leader in attracting to date. That doesn't mean that there's not important questions that need to be answered around water resources, electricity use, the way that we're paying for that infrastructure, and ensuring that communities see the real benefits of the investments we're making. And I think what you're hearing today is that we are willing partners in that conversation. I would just suggest that Ohio has a real opportunity to continue that leadership with sound and stable policy moving forward and we invite that discussion with you all
Mr. Chairman, Senator, thanks for the question.
It's a good question. My immediate reaction was, well, we want to be here for the long haul, and we plan on being here for the long haul. We do need predictability. I think when there is a lack of predictability,
our shareholders start to wonder about our longevity. And what I would say is that from our sites that we've already invested in, we're here for the long haul. Where we have challenges is if, for example, on the sales and use tax, if that's removed, it just impacts our ability to continue to invest in the state of Ohio vis-a-vis other states that offer the state, sorry, the sales and use tax exemption. I think sound regulatory and policy landscape is another key factor for us. But what this committee has demonstrated is that the state of Ohio is thinking through these things very carefully. We appreciate that and we're continuing, look forward to continue to partner with you on all of this. Thanks.
Co-chairs and Senator, I think I would echo that I don't think we want to leave Ohio and I'm hard-pressed to find a situation where we leave because, again, we're committed for the long term. We've made these investments. We're in the communities. Looking forward, I think every company looks at what's the best place to put their next incremental investment. And so we like Ohio. We want to continue to invest in Ohio. It's why we're here today, and we're here looking for constructive ways to have a really healthy ecosystem for this industry to continue to grow and move forward. So other than a big jerk of the wheel, I think that we're good partners right now, and there's an opportunity to move forward in that partnership. So I'm really hopeful that we can find a way to move forward that represents the concerns that you all are hearing, but allows the industry to continue to invest in the state.
Representative Glassberg.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for the up-down, up-down, up-down. We appreciate it. we've had a lot of discussion about whether it's appropriate for sales tax to be used how much should be used and so I'm actually going to ask you the reverse of that that I don't think anyone's really asked assuming that there's any level of incentive still given how much does us giving you whether it's 100% abatement or 50% abatement or whatever your package is on sales tax how important is that incentive towards motivating you not only to be here but to do your procurement here? The things that you are buying. If you had the same incentive package but it wasn't sales tax, if it was just through property or some other way, would you still be doing the same level of procurement here? Are you making buying decisions here to utilize that sales tax exemption?
Mr. Chairman, Representative Glassburn, it's a good question. I don't have all the information on our procurement, but suffice to say that it all contributes to the overall cost of investing in the state of Ohio. And so my answer is going to be critically important.
Co-chairs, Representative, really interesting question. I think this is sort of an underexplored area for the industry given how dependent we are on our supply chain and how valuable that supply chain is not just for what goes into the data center but also what goes into the energy required to power them right You know, the industries that our companies are helping to accelerate, like new nuclear, like fusion, like geothermal, like long-duration storage, all of that needs to be manufactured and produced somewhere too, right? And I think, you know, Ohio is well positioned to secure a piece of that pie. So I'd be very interested in exploring that conversation further. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, Representative, like my colleagues, I don't think I've got a specific answer for you. I can't do that math in my head, especially after four hours up here. but I do think that what we would offer today is sort of a very standard answer on economic development and investment and that it is a sliding scale and it will be relative to the way that other states and other locations are seeking to either attract or not the type of investments that we're looking to make so happy to follow up on the specifics with you Thank you Mr. Chair and Representative
I'm sorry, I probably didn't belabor the point, but I just want to say that it is a really important input. It's among several things in site selection. I said this in my earlier testimony. I think if Ohio did not prevail itself of a general manufacturing exemption and everyone else did, it would be harder for a manufacturer to invest here. If they didn't avail themselves of a sales and use tax exemption, similarly for digital manufacturing, it's going to be harder because the total cost of ownership for that facility is going to look different. So those are all choices and decisions that are made along the way, but obviously one of the inputs that go into looking at this site versus a site in Indiana or Pennsylvania or Kentucky or anywhere locally. Thank you.
Yeah, I suspect that the specific mechanism of being the sales tax is an important way to keep the activity here in Ohio because you don't get the sales tax exemption if it's somewhere else. I want to shift gears, though, to your influence on what happens with us at PJM. PJM, in the last few days, has said that they're going to be doing an emergency capacity auction in the fall, and they've instructed states that we need to develop some kind of tariff or rate for data centers. Otherwise, all rate payers are going to be, in our states, impacted by that emergency capacity auction, which seems to be driven for data centers. Do you have any commentary on that situation or how we would go about doing that so that our rate payers that are not part of that new capacity aren't having that cost put upon them? It might be too technical, but we're moving fast.
Co-Chair's representative, I don't want to put my colleague on the spot, but our energy regulatory expert is sitting behind me, and I'm sure she would be happy to have a conversation with you. We also have a PJM and FERC expert, so along the theme of having an army of experts. We do participate in the PJM stakeholder process very deeply. We know this is a critical part of our ability to grow throughout the PJM states, but happy to follow up with you on more technical details on that.
Would you like to hear from the technical expert now? If it's the pleasure of the committee, sure. Yes. Yes. All right, we'll ask you to come up, identify yourself, and then be sure to fill out a witness slip after you testify.
Hey, y'all. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Christina Schaefer, I'm on the Energy Market Development Team at Google. Co-chairs, representative, thank you for the question. So we have been actively engaged in the PJM stakeholder process. We also, through the PUCO, have intervened in a proceeding. We take service from AEP Ohio, and we filed in support of a separate standard service offer, basically, tariff that would be separate from other rate payers. So that's in process now before the PUCO, but we've been supportive of insulating those costs.
Yes, and I don't know if you're going to be still on the spot or not. So, again, similar to the sales tax, I want to ask the reverse of a question we've been asking over and over again that's been implied of that you're big energy users. Part of how we manage in this state and other states peak demand is through our large industrial partners bring themselves off the grid. They get credits, et cetera. Are your facilities part of that large industrial plan now that comes and does load shedding during absolute peak situations? And if you're not, are you capable of being partners so that you can keep our peaks down?
Yes, so there are no retail demand response programs available to us through the utilities in Ohio today. We do provide emergency services when called upon. Basically, when PJM says grid conditions require it, we do respond to that accordingly. We do, across our footprint, have, I believe it's one gigawatt of total demand response that's been made available where utilities have those programs in place. So we do provide it. I think, again, getting more into sort of the technical nature of it, it depends on the type of data that's going through the data center. That's a little beyond my expertise, but we have experts that sort of manage that so we can make it available where it makes sense. But yes, across our footprint, we offer one gigawatt of demand response, basically load, that's available.
Yes, please. I'm going to shift gears a little bit here, but I think you're still the right person. Yeah, happy to answer your questions. Not your company. Meta made a deal with Vistra and are, again, long-term functionally saving our two nuclear plants, Davis-Bessey and Perry. and there's a third one in Pennsylvania. That was a good win for everyone involved. PJM told us we have eight gigawatts of solar and wind that are sitting on the sidelines. Are there other wins out there like what happened with the two nuclear plants that haven't happened that can possibly be future wins like those that any of your four companies are doing in the works or can you give us a sense or are we limited in what our – have we already done the easy good wins?
So, I mean, I don't want to answer for other companies, but I would say when it comes to the PJM process, again, we're actively engaged there. There is a process that's yet to be finalized by FERC, which is the reliability backstop auction. There will be both bilateral contracting and then the reliability backstop auction that is procuring net new resources. And again, before the PUCO, we have supported a separate, the standard service offer right now is a competitive bidding process so it is competitive in nature but we have supported a process that would fully insulate large load customers from residential customers standard businesses A lot of this is balls in the air that are sort of being figured out currently, but we've been supportive of that process. And so we are working, you know, we have commercial teams and advanced energy teams both looking at through the federal process and PJM process, what new energy resources can we bring online, but also on-site projects. You know, HP 15, I think this has been discussed previously, four and a half gigawatts that have been presented to the OPSB2, I think have been approved already, and that's just since last August, I think, when HP 15 was effective. And so we're looking also at on-site solutions that don't necessarily have to go through that PJM process. You may have heard there's been challenges with the interconnection queue historically, But again, we have both through those federal interconnection queues and on-site, we have teams that are actively looking at projects day in and day out. We prefer to be grid-tied because it's reliability that is critical to our services, but we're looking and exploring at all options.
Follow-up? Let me just ask, does anyone else, any other company want to comment on that question? It's okay if not.
Mr. Chairman and Representative Glassburn, we actually are aligned with what was just shared. We continue to look for capacity. Are there other wins out there? Yes, we're actively looking, including on natural gas. And I think it's all about reliability. We also prefer to be connected to the grid. But if it's speed to market and there's opportunities to be for on-site, we're exploring that.
Chairman, Representative, I mean, I think in many ways we saw some of this ship coming. So, you know, when we started investing in Ohio close to 20 years ago, we started also bringing a number of energy generation projects with us, now over 23 as part of our portfolio. It's also why a couple years ago we made significant equity investments in advanced nuclear and a particular small modular reactor technology in itself, and I think with a goal to land those SMRs in and around our operations as that technology continues to mature. I think to your original question, and it was related to PJM and, like, what can the state do, I think a few things need to be fundamentally true in order for us to get out of this supply and demand crunch, some of which I would suggest was self-inflicted by PJM, some inflicted by large load growth, including from data centers and other economic development. But one is almost all of us have been out transacting on the market for capacity resources in order to support our growth. we believe that any contracts existing today should be not subject to additional capacity charges for additional auctions going forward. I think that that's fundamental to the way we priced in a contract for a reason, and the market should reflect that. The other thing that I wanted to address as it related to, I think, your question on backup generation, I think I mentioned this earlier today but our backup generators are truly emergency backup generators that's what they're permitted for and so it is not to say that there would not be interest across the industry for participating in more demand response style programs should they be available But we simply do not have the federal and state environmental permitting to back that up at least in our view. And for us, I think what's really important is not to view the data center industry as a monolith. For AWS in particular, we are almost exclusively hosting third-party workloads in our data centers who have an expectation to be up 99.9999% of the time. And from an energy perspective, we intend to honor what our customer wants. I mentioned earlier that we build to customer demand, and so from an operational perspective, that's the way we think about that issue on a daily basis.
Can I follow up on your question? So maybe I'm asking the same thing, but I'm just trying to get an intensity level. So you've all committed to paying for what you use. There's no doubt about that, right? But that still lowers the number of electrons in the available pool, right, which you limit supply, rates go up. You say you're looking at possibilities to increase the electrons going back into the pool. How aggressively are you looking at that? I would like to see a day when the data center usage is offset by generation to keep the number of electrons in the pool stable or increasing so that the rates come down for everyday Ohioans.
Mr. Chair, really good question. I think we're not power generation companies, and we're aspiring to be, but we're off-takers, and we're private actors that can incentivize those projects to move forward, just like our partnership with Vistra that allows that financial security for the long-term investment in that plant and the uprate to the new capacity, just like the signal we've sent to Oklo, saying that if you're able to go through the processes, develop the fuel and supply chain with your partners at Centris, then we can offtake 1.2 gigawatts, and that's new supply onto the system. Or the over 800 megawatts that we've added in solar since we've broke ground in 2017. We've also taken the direction on HB15 and done on-site infrastructure development. So that's significant new megawatts in terms of on-site natural gas with our partners at Williams. So we are genuinely trying to do exactly what you described. All of that takes some time, right? building out energy generation just like any infrastructure takes time. In the meantime, though, getting the allocations right is really important. I think that's something that we're wholly focused on. Again, was very proud to hear the way that the Utility Commission was handling it last week when they testified on leading the nation kind of in a tariff that they worked on, and now considering how do these other costs flow through and minding the ship there. When they come through, what do they need to do to make sure that those flow to the end-use customers? So I think we are probably on the phone every day with independent power producers, talking to them, both renewable, storage, nuclear, advanced geothermal, even outside-of-the-fence opportunities as well, trying to figure out how can we bring more supply or more demand response to the system in a way that's going to keep that as equilibrium as possible.
And let me augment my question a little bit. Does the rate payer, I know you're looking to invest in projects, does the President's rate payer protection plan the 15 long commitments is that sufficient to incentivize generation to follow you I think that more about cost allocation. Really the signal that they're going to get is in the bilateral contracts, in PJM specifically, lots of different wholesale markets. But in PJM, it's really about the capacity auction signals
and the energy markets. So that's why there is so much attention on capacity auctions and that the signals that are going to those providers on, you know, what is the financial outlook for them over a course of years. So kind of pushing that a little bit ahead and making sure that those independent power producers are matched up with the data centers and that they're bringing enough capacity so that those reserve margins are there and it's not so tight so supply and demand get out of whack is really what everyone's trying to accomplish right now. And again, part of that ratepayer protection pledge is saying that we understand that this is a unique moment and that we're going to have that independent conversation with PJM about what that looks like for large loads. And it might look different than it did historically. It might mean that we have to do separate processes. It might mean that cost allocation looks different, and that's okay, and we're okay with that. And so that's part of that whole process of the ratepayer protection pledge coming out. Signing it is one thing, getting the contractual terms in place, making sure that the actual supply signals go out via the market mechanisms that drive those, doing our part as a private actor, and then kind of squaring the circle at the end and looking at the math of it all and making sure that all of that is borne out.
Mr. Chairman, I think I just want to maybe tie together the two lines of questioning questioning because you asked, is there any more low-hanging fruit here? And I do think one thing we all have in common is that our capital is a bit less risk-averse than the utilities, right? We have a little bit more or a lot more flexibility with our capital to deploy things like pilots on virtual power plants or to invest in those sort of new technologies that might be more of a bet right now, right, like fusion. And I think, you know, HB15 and advanced transmission technologies, grid enhancing technologies, I do think that is one of those underutilized pathways. And so my colleague will correct me if I stray, but I think being able to unblock commercial pathways for private capital investment in things like GETS, in things like advanced transmission technologies, in things like virtual power plants and distributed energy resources, are ways that states, regulators, utilities can help, frankly, leverage the interest that hyperscalers and the data center industry has to make the most out of our existing infrastructure, right, which brings costs down or puts downward pressure on costs and helps to avoid new greenfield transmission that's incredibly expensive, right? So I do think those are a few areas that we as an industry are all very excited and want to work with our utility partners and regulators to find commercial pathways to. Thank you.
Thank you for that. And I think we agree with everything, and we hear about the exciting efficiencies that are out there. It's easy to say it's hard to do. So we've also toured some of the EDUs, their command centers, and talked to them about this. And, you know, when we start talking about very specific allocations of deploying the advanced technology, it gets very complicated, very quick, very expensive. So I will yield back to Representative Glassburn.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So. Some of the last question I had has been answered, but I want to put a fine point on it because I think it's important. I represent a district that has a lot of Ford plants, Chevy plants that have been there for a long time. And part of their commitment to the community is, as we can credibly say, things like when a tornado came through and just ravaged us, they turned off so the rest of us had power. Is that something you can even do or with your massive generators because you have to have that capacity? Is it a credible thing to say that you're part of the network? If you're connected to the network, that your generators in an emergency, I'm not talking about for financial, an emergency that you can help the rest of the grid now.
Yeah, Chairman, Representative, I mean, I think you just, so the short answer is yes. but I think what you hit on the important part is that the way that, at least for us, the way our emergency generators are permitted are for true grid emergencies as declared by the grid operator or utility. So in those instances, even if we were not to curtail customer load, we would essentially be running on full backup power and doing what we could to help the lights come back on in an extreme weather event like the one that you mentioned.
Do you have the, are your generators allowed to be part of that? Is there anything in law we need to do to let you be part of that? Because with the behind the meter, we're kind of in a new world of things. We're entering parts of law we didn't really go into previously.
Mr. Chair and Representative, I think to my colleague's point, same position for us. If we're able to shed and go off during an emergency, we will shed when we're called on to. through PJM and our EDU. On backup generation versus behind the meter, those are kind of two different things as well, too. So a behind-the-meter project likely is truly many times islanded, so it's not grid-connected anyway. So shedding that load doesn't fit that point, nor are you able to obviously inject anything onto the system. So those are unique in that way. Shedding load in an emergency vent and going on backup generators that I think we all committed to that as part of our general emergency operations
Co-chairs, Representative, the short answer again is yes. I think it's important, and my colleague brought this up, some of our compute workloads are for sort of critical customers, emergency services, state governments, et cetera. So we do have to have some nuance when we talk about shedding load that we actually don't make an emergency worse by bringing down really important services or institutions, organizations. That said, we do have significant portions of compute workloads that can be shed, right, or are not time sensitive, can be shifted to another day, another region, et cetera. And so we do work, as my colleague said, closely with utility and grid operators to ensure that we can be a grid asset in those cases. Similar comments on the backup generators. We can run them in a case of emergency. I don't know if we can run them actually as a grid asset in Ohio, so I would look to my colleague here. But in general, we do not, in most of our locations, have that ability to run our backup generators as a grid asset.
Mr. Chairman, Representative, same for Microsoft. We use our backup generators in emergencies only. We're happy to do it, but we have the same 5.9 commitments, 99.99% that we need to be up for our customers. And so we need to be in close collaboration with how we structure a demand response program. Thanks.
So on that, just a couple of notes. we hope if you have behind the meter that you consider connecting to the grid so that we have the options and also you have the option to have backup power from the grid. But to the representative's questions, put some thought into it, ask your experts. If there's anything that we need to do to clear the decks in Ohio, temporary air permits or whatever, we want to be able to have the option to help communities in times of need. Senator Wilkin.
Thank you, Chairman. Ms Schwab I promise you not even going to have to get up on this one as opposed to going first all the time Actually only one of you are going to need to get up I thought my colleague Representative Glassberg was going to get to this but the Meta and the Vistra partnership up north that was brought up in testimony on Monday Can you just come up and kind of walk us through and what the benefits, or are there benefits? Just walk us through that so we can hear your side of that story as well, if you would, please.
Yeah, Mr. Chair and Senator, thanks for bringing that up. We're really proud of that partnership with Vistra. Obviously, in a deregulated market with independent power producers, they're looking for contractual certainty as a private entity able to step in inside that long-term power purchase agreement with them. That gives them that long-term certainty that says that they're going to have that financial support over the course of the 20-year term that we put together. Furthermore, we went farther than that. It wasn't just a long-term power purchase agreement. It was a conversation about how can we add new capacity to these facilities. So not an everyday term, but uprate. Maybe some have heard about, but essentially investing in new equipment. I won't speak, my Vistra partners can speak to this, but investing in new equipment that might be turbines or other new equipment to gain further efficiencies and get new megawatts out of the same plant. And just like with grid-enhancing technologies, the best thing we can do is get new megawatts out of an existing facility. So META is independently supporting that investment. That might not have happened otherwise. And so because of that, there'll be roughly 300 megawatts of new up-rate scaled investments at those facilities at Davis-Bessey and Perry. And it was mentioned that we're also supporting a Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania, which will do another 130 megawatts of up-rates. I would also mention that we have some former coal sites, coal power plant sites, that are looking for a new life. So please keep those in mind. Senator Reinecke.
Thank you, Chairs. Listening to this conversation for a while, I guess Representative Claggett made it very clear there definitely a disconnect between all of us and our constituents and I keep trying to find out what that common denominator is that we can make it different How do we evaluate our existing programs And I assume you don't want us to write the rules for you in the future, but we've got to figure out some of this stuff. So I was at the indulgence of the chairs. I was hoping that maybe with also asking questions, that maybe you could evaluate those according to the standards, whether they're state standards or federal standards. Again, I thought we dispelled some of the, I'll go back to the EMFs and the EMRs that were a huge issue in my district, but people still believe they exist. So your example of asking for that detailed information, maybe you could also compare that to what the state standard is and what the federal standard is, and maybe there's some other regulation that's creating an advantage for Ohio, or there's some other thing that we could do that would make it even more advantageous in the future. So I was only asking if we could evaluate against some standards just so we can try to give direction for the future. Thank you.
Let the record show they're all nodding in agreement. Okay, seeing no further questions from the committee, believe it or not, I've been very reserved, and I haven't asked my questions. Good news for you is the vast majority of them are technical, so they'll be included in the technical piece. I don't see any here that I think are going to plow any new ground. So the most important question I have for you in this is two hours of standing versus two hours of sitting and standing up and sitting down. Which one was better? Cheers. All right. We'll note that for future testimonies. That being said, we really, really appreciate your testimony. Thank you for your candor. We are going to be asking you more questions. We will be talking in detail with you all, and we appreciate the collaboration and the comments. With that being said, we're going to take a 15-minute break so we can recharge our batteries here. We'll be back at 2.30. you