The data center OpenAI is building in southern Ohio will draw its power from what would be the largest fossil-fuel power plant ever constructed in the United States, and the Trump administration is racing its environmental review to the finish.
According to Heatmap News, the federal review of the PORTS-Pike project’s 9.2-gigawatt natural gas plant began July 10 and is slated to wrap by Dec. 23, roughly seven months to clear a facility bigger than five of Ohio’s largest existing power plants combined. Regulators are handling it with an “environmental assessment,” the lighter of the two federal review options, rather than a full environmental impact statement.
The gas plant would anchor a 10-gigawatt AI campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a decommissioned uranium enrichment site on federal land in Pike County. OpenAI signed a 20-year lease for roughly 8 gigawatts last week, backed by a $105 billion guarantee from Nvidia and developed by SoftBank’s SB Energy alongside the Energy Department.
OpenAI has cast the project as a rebirth for the region.
“Pike County helped power America’s industrial growth in the 20th century and now, with this project, it has another opportunity to play a leading role in the next era of American industrialization,” the company said.
The reaction from energy watchers was swift.
Heatmap’s Jael Holzman, who broke the story, warned the scale hadn’t sunk in: “y’all are not getting how big of a bfd this is yet.” Her colleague Emily Pontecorvo laid out the trifecta drawing alarm: “the biggest fossil fueled power plant EVER BUILT IN THE US” getting the lighter review and clearing permitting “in just 7 months.”
Energy analyst John Bistline put the size in perspective, noting that 9.2 gigawatts of new gas at one Ohio site is more generating capacity than any of 10 entire states hold — among them Montana, Idaho, Maine, Alaska and Vermont.
Longtime Ohio journalist Darrel Rowland took aim at the rushed review with a nod to the site’s fraught history: “Where have southern Ohioans heard this before?”
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