My keynote address for the Ohio Manufacturers' Association
I had a lovely time in Columbus, Ohio yesterday (August 27, 2026), doing a keynote for the Ohio Manufacturers' Association annual energy conference. The talk was titled "Electricity Demand Growth and Data Centers: A Guide for the Perplexed", and it drew on my work in the past few years about electricity used by data centers and how to incorporate them into load forecasts.
Here's one of the key slides, showing demand for four major utility areas in Ohio, showing that only AEP Ohio is seeing significant growth in recent years:
This mirrors what's happening in the US nationally, where some states (VA, TX, GA, CA, OH) are seeing demand growth in some places, but in many states there isn't any demand growth at all. The idea that explosive demand growth is happening everywhere is just not true, it's a local phenomenon, one fanned by media attention:
Here's the bottom line:
To download a PDF of the talk, click here.
Video of the talk and the Q&A session is posted here.
