An ag economist at Ohio State University says continued data center development across the Midwest could create long-term challenges for rural energy infrastructure.
Ani Katchova says a recent study shows data centers owned by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle are expected to account for one percent of the world’s electricity by 2030.
“Concentrated hubs that have smaller grid footprint areas would face very sharp electricity increases,” she says. “This additional utility overhead would directly erode on-farm profitability.”
She tells Brownfield this could make it more difficult for rural areas to keep up with demand.
“We may see some transmission bottlenecks, especially for transmission constrained areas that are managed by these regional grid operators,” she says. “Ohio could face some of the steepest pressure in terms of rising energy demand.”
Katchova says researchers continue to study how rising energy demand and the loss of farmland could impact the overall food supply.
