In The News 17 January 2026

Governor DeWine joins proposal for PJM to address energy supply, data centers

Governor DeWine this week offered his support to a joint effort by the White House Domestic Energy Council and regional governors to petition PJM, the regional electricity transmission organization that serves Ohio, to better address supply and demand issues caused by the expanding data center sector. 

DeWine signed the “Statement of Principles Regarding PJM” along with a bipartisan group of governors, as well as United States Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and United States Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who are Chairman and Vice-Chairman, respectively, of the Council.

“Both across the nation and here in Ohio, energy demand is going up as economic development projects are increasing. As Governor, I support a proactive approach to increase energy supply and to protect consumers from rising costs,” said Governor DeWine. 

“The principles proposed today will encourage new energy supply to be built in Ohio and the region and ensure data centers pay their own way as they expand.”

Highlights of the “Statement of Principles for PJM” include:

• Providing 15-year price certainty for new energy resources that serve data centers.

• If new data centers do not provide their own energy, the proposal asks PJM to allocate the cost of any new procured energy to the data centers. This will protect costs from being passed on to other customers.

• State public utilities commissions, such as the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), will use all available authority to design rate structures to ensure costs incurred by data centers to the larger market are passed on to those data centers and not other customers.

Governors who joined Governor DeWine in signing the principles include Delware Governor Matt Meyer (D), Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), Indiana Governor Mike Braun (R), Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D), Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D), Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D), North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D), Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D), Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R), Virginia Governor Glenn Younkin (R),  and West Virginia Governor Patrick Morissey (R).

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