Colombia reports 33% drop in deforestation in early 2025, with major progress in Amazon parks

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia saw a 33% drop in deforestation in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year , the environment ministry said Thursday, citing stronger community coordination and a crackdown on environmental crime.
Speaking at a press conference, Environment Minister Lena Estrada Añokazi said deforestation fell from 40,219 hectares in early 2024 to 27,000 hectares this year. The government identified 18 active deforestation hot spots , including 13 in the Amazon and others in regions like Catatumbo, Arauca and the Pacific north.
'In the Amazon's national parks, deforestation dropped by 54% ... which is a very good result,' Estrada said, highlighting gains in Amazonian parks Tinigua, Chiribiquete and La Macarena.
The Amazon remains Colombia's most affected region, accounting for 69% of the country's deforestation. The departments — Colombia's main administrative divisions — of Meta, Caquetá and Guaviare saw the biggest declines, while Putumayo had a slight increase.
Estrada attributed the decline to the government's integrated plan to curb deforestation, which includes community agreements, institutional strengthening, and joint operations with the Defense Ministry and Attorney General's Office.
A recent report by Colombia's inspector general noted that while deforestation dropped overall, pressure on protected areas remains intense, with illegal coca cultivation and unregulated mining advancing into national parks. The independent watchdog said that between October 2024 and March 2025, nearly 88,900 hectares of forest were lost nationwide, much of it in areas designated for environmental conservation.
The minister said the efforts have led to key arrests, including of individuals tied to the environmental sector.
Looking ahead, Estrada outlined a territorial action plan to further engage local and Indigenous authorities. A series of regional meetings is set to begin in June, starting in Villavicencio with Amazon and Orinoquia leaders.
Deforestation in Colombia is mostly driven by land grabbing, illegal road building, cattle ranching, illicit mining and coca cultivation, the raw ingredient to produce cocaine.
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The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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The Verge

11 hours ago

• The Verge

Inside the courthouse reshaping the future of the internet

The future of the internet will be determined in one building in Washington, DC — and for six weeks, I watched it unfold. For much of this spring, the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, was buzzing with lawyers, reporters, and interested onlookers jostling between dimly lit courtrooms that hosted everyone from the richest men in Silicon Valley to fired federal workers and the DOGE-aligned officials who terminated them. The sprawling courthouse, with an airy atrium in the middle and long, dark halls that spring from it, is where cases involving government agencies often land, and that meant it was hosting two of the most consequential tech cases in the country, all while fielding a flurry of unprecedented lawsuits against President Donald Trump's administration. Between mid-April and late May, Judges James Boasberg and Amit Mehta respectively oversaw FTC v. Meta and US v. Google, a pair of long-running antitrust lawsuits that seek to split up two titans of Silicon Valley. Over the same period, several DC judges — including Boasberg — had a full docket of cases related to Trump's first 100 days in office, covering the administration's attempt to mass-deport immigrants, strip security clearance from law firms, and fire thousands of federal workers. On the first day of the Google trial, a sign with a comically contorted arrow directed visitors toward their chosen antitrust case. It was soon joined by directions to the high-profile hearing over Trump's order against law firm Jenner & Block. While the FTC's lawyers were calling witnesses against Meta in one courtroom, a nearby room was hosting arguments about whether Trump could fire two of the agency's own commissioners. My colleagues gathered around the feed waiting for a Google witness, only to see a prison-jumpsuited defendant step into the box For reporters, the weeks were an exercise in constant case-juggling. During the overlap of Google and Meta, I'd arrive to long security lines that would sometimes jut into the small park that adjoins the courthouse, waiting to hunt down a media room that streamed video for reporters and avoid the electronics-free courtrooms. I'd occasionally show up to find out no such room existed, and in a small stampede of reporters, I'd rush up a few flights of spiral stairs to the courtroom, scribbling handwritten notes from the back rows. One day, my colleagues gathered around the feed waiting for a Google witness, only to see a prison-jumpsuited defendant step into the box — in the brief moment before reporters realized Mehta was taking a quick break for a criminal hearing, they wondered which high-profile tech executive it was. The executives, for their part, were plentiful. On one day a witness box saw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg praising Instagram's success; a week later, former colleague and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom sat there describing him as a jealous boss. Google CEO Sundar Pichai would soon testify a couple floors up, followed by executives at some of Google's biggest rivals, including Microsoft and OpenAI. For all of them, the stakes were high. Judge Boasberg is tasked with determining whether Meta built an illegal monopoly by gobbling up Instagram and WhatsApp, while Judge Mehta will decide whether Google must spin off its Chrome browser or syndicate its search data. For the judges, the gauntlet seemed nothing short of exhausting. Boasberg, chief judge of the US District Court in DC, had been assigned to the Meta case long before Trump took office, but after the inauguration, he became one of the busiest judges in America — overseeing a challenge of the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, and a lawsuit over Trump's cabinet's use of encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate about attack plans. As I concluded a day of the Meta trial at 5PM, a fresh crop of reporters arrived to cover Boasberg's consideration of the Alien Enemies Act, which Trump was using to deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. Outside the courtroom, Boasberg fielded attacks from Trump — who labeled him a 'Radical Left Lunatic' and a 'troublemaker and agitator' and called for his impeachment. At the Meta trial, Boasberg appeared even-keeled — sometimes to the point of boredom. He rarely mentioned the rest of his docket beyond subtle references to his overflowing schedule; his interventions were astute, signaling a deep understanding of the case. But he'd often sit with his head in his hand, only occasionally gently encouraging attorneys to move on from a particularly tedious line of questioning. He used a lunch break in the Meta trial to file one of the most scathing legal rulings of the early Trump administration, accusing the administration of 'willful disregard' for his temporary restraining order on deportation flights to El Salvador, with 'probable cause' to find it in criminal contempt. By the Meta trial's end in late May, Boasberg sounded relieved as the final day wrapped. 'I will take a welcome respite from thinking about this between now and when the first brief is due,' he told the attorneys. In 1998, the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse played host to another tech giant fighting for its life: Microsoft. US v. Microsoft was a landmark monopoly case that determined the company had illegally wielded its dominance over Intel-compatible PC operating systems to tamp down threats to its monopoly, including up-and-coming web browsers like Netscape. But in the wake of that case and subsequent settlement, regulators took a hands-off approach to the next generation of tech companies. It would take two decades for the government to return to the battleground — until 2020, when the cases against Meta and Google were filed. The search and social networking landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years, with the rise of TikTok and generative AI. But so too has the zeitgeist around tech. As Silicon Valley remains politically embattled, the goal of more aggressive antitrust enforcement has won bipartisan support. At the same time, there's a growing fear of foreign competition, particularly from TikTok, which appeared in the very same courthouse last year to argue against a (since-delayed) nationwide ban. The company found itself back there as a witness during Meta's trial, where lawyers confronted a TikTok executive with statements made during its failed 2024 fight. Those weeks of courthouse testimony helped illuminate countless decisions that made the tech world as we know it Inside the courthouse, it was easy to forget about everything else going on in Washington — until it wasn't. I was removed from the day-to-day antics of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) hacking away at the federal workforce, but the cases about its handiwork — including gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — kept winding through court. During a break on the fourth day of Meta's trial and days before the start of Google's, I got a New York Times push notification walking back from the bathroom, telling me Virginia Judge Leonie Brinkema had ruled against Google in the DOJ's separate ad-tech antitrust case. I hustled back to the media room and found several of my colleagues from other outlets already in the hallway writing up their stories. Of course, we commiserated, a decision we expected months ago would drop right now. Rulings in this spring's Google and Meta trials will likely take months to arrive, and their fallout probably won't be seen for years. But those weeks of courthouse testimony helped illuminate countless decisions that made the tech world as we know it. During the early 2010s, Facebook executives expressed fears that Google might buy WhatsApp and bundle it with Android, giving itself a stranglehold over mobile messaging. With the context of the Google trial, that fear looks prescient — the company cemented its search dominance by making Android phone makers preinstall its search engine in the same way. It's also possible to see the shape of giants yet to rise. Should Judge Mehta order Google to sell Chrome, several witnesses said they'd be more than happy to buy it, including Yahoo, Perplexity, and OpenAI. The Justice Department's landmark antitrust trial against Microsoft is widely credited with opening up the tech industry for innovative players like Google, and a quarter-century later, there's hope something similar could happen for new companies today. Yet it seems equally possible that in another decade or two, we'll be back in this same courthouse, hearing the government argue they've nailed the doors shut once again.

The Hill

a day ago

• The Hill

Pope Leo's AI warning

The Big Story Pope Leo XIV sounded the alarm this week over artificial intelligence (AI)'s potential impact on young people's intellectual and neurological development, building upon one of the main focuses of his papacy. © Vatican Media via Associated Press The first American pope delivered the message to an annual conference on AI and ethics, part of which took place in the Vatican this week. 'All of us, I am sure, are concerned for children and young people, and the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development,' the pope said. 'Our youth must be helped, and not hindered, in their journey towards maturity and true responsibility.' The pontiff described how new generations have unprecedented, quick access to data and information, while noting they must not confuse this access to data with intelligence. 'In the end, authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data,' Leo said. Leo acknowledged AI has been used in positive ways, pointing to research in health care and science. But he warned of the possibility the emerging technology can be used for 'selfish gain at the expense of others' or 'to foment conflict and aggression.' The pope said AI, especially generative AI, 'also raises troubling questions of its possible repercussions on humanity's openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality.' Since being elected pope in early May, Leo has made the risks of AI on humanity a key priority of his papacy. In his first official address to cardinals in May, the pope warned of the challenges AI poses to the 'defense of human dignity, justice and labor.' The mission resembles that of Pope Leo XIII, who pushed for workers' rights amid the industrial revolution, and a Vatican spokesperson told media outlets the name choice was 'not a casual reference.' Read more in a full report at Welcome to The Hill's Technology newsletter, we're Miranda Nazzaro and Julia Shapero — tracking the latest moves from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here. Essential Reads How policy will be impacting the tech sector now and in the future: Meta, Oakley partner for AI-powered glasses Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is partnering with Oakley to launch new artificial intelligence (AI) powered glasses, the tech giant announced Friday. The new smart glasses, like Meta's earlier Ray-Ban glasses, are equipped with a built-in camera, open-ear speakers and AI capabilities. The Oakley glasses also feature a longer-lasting battery and a higher resolution camera that can shoot 3K video. … Telegram founder planning to leave fortune to his 100+ children The founder of the instant messaging app Telegram said he plans to leave his multibillion-dollar fortune to the more than 100 children he has fathered either naturally or through sperm donations. Pavel Durov, in an interview published Thursday with French political magazine Le Point, said he does not differentiate between the six children he fathered naturally in three relationships and the dozens of others he fathered by sperm … Aflac discloses cybersecurity incident Aflac said Friday that it experienced a cybersecurity incident last week that may have impacted files containing social security numbers, health information and other personal information. The insurance company first detected suspicious activity on its network last Thursday and 'promptly initiated our cyber incident response protocols and stopped the intrusion within hours,' according to a press release. 'Importantly, … The Refresh News we've flagged from the intersection of tech and other topics: Crypto Corner Coinbase secures EU crypto license © Richard Drew, Associated Press Welcome to Crypto Corner, a daily feature focused on digital currency and its outlook in Washington. Crypto exchange Coinbase has obtained a license to operate in the European Union (EU) under the bloc's relatively new regulatory framework for digital assets. The company announced Friday that it has secured a Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) license, allowing it to operate in all 27 European member countries. Coinbase also plans to establish its European crypto hub in Luxembourg, after receiving its license from the country's Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF). 'This is a pivotal moment for Coinbase, Luxembourg, and Europe's growing crypto ecosystem,' the exchange said in a press release. 'We look forward to continuing to contribute to Europe's vibrant economy, unlocking growth, and increasing economic freedom across the region.' As crypto firms seek MiCA licenses in Europe, the U.S. continues its slow forward march toward establishing its own regulatory framework. The Senate voted 68-30 Tuesday to pass the GENIUS Act, a bill creating regulatory rules of the road for one form of cryptocurrency, known as stablecoins. President Trump threw his weight behind the legislation Wednesday, urging the House to quickly pass the bill without any major additions. However, his call stands at odds with the hopes of some in Congress and the industry, who had been hoping to tie stablecoin legislation to another bill laying out a regulatory framework for the rest of the crypto market. In Other News Branch out with other reads on The Hill: ChatGPT use linked to cognitive decline: MIT research ChatGPT can harm an individual's critical thinking over time, a study released this month suggests. Researchers at MIT's Media Lab asked subjects to write several SAT essays and separated subjects into three groups — using OpenAI's ChatGPT, using Google's search engine and using nothing, which they called the 'brain‑only' group. Each subject's brain was monitored through electroencephalography (EEG), … What Others are Reading Two key stories on The Hill right now: Senate parliamentarian knocks pieces out of Trump's megabill Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has ruled that several key pieces of the massive bill to implement President Trump's agenda run afoul of … Read more Former Clinton campaign chief on Democrats: 'We're leaderless, we're messageless, we're agendaless' Democratic strategist Patti Solis Doyle said the party lacks a leader, message and agenda when asked about the state of the Democratic Party in an … Read more You're all caught up. See you next week!

Yahoo

a day ago

• Yahoo

Big Tech promised jobs. Cities gave millions. Where are the workers?

Columbus, Ohio, escaped the Rust Belt rut years ago. Regional economic development officials offered incentives that attracted warehouses, manufacturing plants, and healthcare startups, reviving the economy and generating jobs. By 2018, hundreds of these deals over the previous eight years had created some 150,000 jobs. Central Ohio now hopes to repeat that success. It's betting big on "Silicon Heartland," a high-tech innovation hub that proponents hope will be flush with high-paying jobs. Economic officials have dangled multimillion-dollar tax subsidy packages before some of the world's biggest technology companies. The resulting investment, Gov. Mike DeWine promised, "further cements Ohio as the heart of our nation's technology and innovation." Mostly, they're getting data centers. Central Ohio has become one of America's hottest hubs for these computing warehouses, with companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, and QTS flocking there, lured largely by generous incentives. The problem: Data centers, which operate largely autonomously, don't produce many lasting full-time jobs. A Business Insider analysis of construction permits, economic development deals, and company disclosures found that even the largest data centers generally employ fewer than 150 permanent workers, and some have as few as 25. Building those data centers also creates significant numbers of construction jobs, but those are short term, sometimes lasting less than a year — far shorter than the duration of the tax breaks the companies get, which often last a decade or longer. That means the tax breaks given to developers can amount over time to more than $2 million for every permanent, full-time job at an operational data center, Business Insider's analysis found. That's roughly eight times higher than the $262,000 average per job that watchdog group Good Jobs First found in 18 economic development deals worth at least $50 million awarded in 2023. The number of jobs doesn't balance the cost, multiple economists and researchers who study tax subsidies told Business Insider — even factoring in the construction and other supporting roles that the tech industry uses to calculate its economic impact. Records show that the workforce on data center projects quickly tapers off, meaning industry estimates often significantly overstate long-term employment benefits. The costs to the public don't end with tax subsidies. Data centers drive up electricity costs for other ratepayers as utility operators invest billions of dollars in new grid infrastructure to support escalating power demands. That has drawn opposition from other companies including retail giant Walmart, which has said that surging electricity bills are imperiling its expansion in states such as Ohio and Virginia. Industry advocates argue the deals are worth it. "Each new data center built in Ohio spurs a significant boost in investment, revenue, and wages that flow to Ohio businesses and workers, stimulating the state's economy," Josh Levi, the president of the Data Center Coalition, an industry advocacy group, wrote in an August 2024 op-ed article published by In recent US congressional testimony, he cited an estimate that data centers in Central Ohio supported more than "10,000 construction jobs, 2,000 data center jobs, and hundreds of maintenance and retrofitting jobs last year." Drilling into the terms of specific economic development deals suggests a more complicated picture. In 2021, for example, Google entered into a much-celebrated deal with Columbus to construct a data center campus. The city offered a 100% property tax abatement worth an estimated $54 million in tax savings over 15 years. In exchange, the Google facility promised 20 full-time jobs at the data center, rising to about 40 jobs by 2047. Artificial intelligence is accelerating data center construction that already was growing quickly to power digital services from social media to medical care. In 2025 alone, Meta plans to spend at least $64 billion on facilities and equipment. Google's parent company, Alphabet, plans to spend $75 billion, and Microsoft said it would invest $80 billion. Tech companies say their investments will supercharge local tax revenues and high-paying jobs will drive economic growth. Even with tax breaks, data centers contributed $162.7 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenue in 2023, according to a February 2025 PwC report prepared for the Data Center Coalition. The industry, the report said, supported 4.7 million jobs directly at data centers or indirectly through their supply chain. Amazon, the biggest data center operator, calculates that its data centers each year have supported thousands of jobs, including 4,760 in Ohio and 19,110 in Virginia. Matt Hurst, a spokesperson for Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud-computing arm, told Business Insider the company was "proud of the good jobs we create, for the trust local communities invest in us, and for the opportunity we have to invest in those communities." Meta says that its data center operations support 16,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in labor income annually, and that it has backed 440,000 construction jobs over the past decade. Google says its data centers supported 119,000 jobs and contributed $12.6 billion to US gross domestic product in 2023 across its supply chain, including construction. Microsoft's website says its data centers generate "public infrastructure improvements and tax revenue that serve as a catalyst for enhancing the quality of life." "Our developments generate millions of dollars in tax revenue to support local priorities related to schools, roads, housing, and other critical needs, while also reducing the tax burden on residents," a spokesperson for QTS, which is owned by the investment firm Blackstone, said in a statement. A Blackstone spokesperson also highlighted the benefits of data center development and said the company was "proud that our investment in QTS provides the digital infrastructure critical to the future of our country and economy." Competition to score these promised benefits can be a race to the bottom, as developers pit state against state and city against city. New projects cluster in areas that offer the most competitive deals. To investigate how these incentive deals play out, Business Insider identified areas of data center development and filed requests with all 50 states and Washington, DC, for the air permits that regulate backup generators at every data center. Business Insider compiled records for 1,240 data centers nationwide, the most definitive accounting to date, and requested records of data-center-related economic incentives from municipalities and states. The largest data centers in Business Insider's analysis — the 322 massive facilities that we estimate consume 40 megawatts of electricity or more each — are heavily concentrated in a few places. Northern Virginia has 214, followed by Arizona's Maricopa County with 16, and Ohio's Columbus region with 9. Thirty-seven states have tax incentive programs for data center investments. Most exempt developers from sales and use taxes on building materials, machinery, or equipment — resulting in big hits to state coffers. In Virginia, 56 data center projects cost $928 million in abated state sales tax in the 2023 fiscal year alone. Disclosures in Ohio estimate it forfeited nearly $360 million in data-center-related state tax revenue from the 2022 through 2024 fiscal years. Mason Waldvogel, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Development, called the tax incentive program "a strategic tool used to create long-term economic growth by attracting high-value, capital-intensive projects." A spokesperson for the Data Center Coalition said state tax exemptions for data centers were consistent with programs for other capital-intensive industries. Cities also offer incentives, including breaks on property taxes and reimbursements for building fees. Arizona cities largely don't give property tax abatements but allow the use of precious water resources. Virginia grants access to enormous amounts of electricity and critical infrastructure but requires data centers to pay local property taxes. Indeed, Northern Virginia cities generate up to 31% of their total tax revenue from data centers, funding fire departments, affordable housing, and other services. In the Columbus region, Business Insider located 19 data center-related deals that, together with state-level abatements, amounted to at least $750 million in forfeited tax revenue for 770 full-time jobs employed at data centers as of December 2023. The jobs generally pay well, averaging $100,000 a year in Central Ohio, according to company disclosures. At the Google data center in Columbus, salaries range from $74,000 for a data center technician to $162,000 for an operations manager. Amazon tops the list with seven deals. In one, the northwest Columbus suburb of Dublin agreed to sell Amazon 66 acres, which the city valued at $100,000 an acre, for $1 in total. Amazon agreed to pay the farmers previously leasing the land up to $40,000 total to abandon their soybeans and corn crops and terminate the lease. It told Dublin it expected to hire 25 full-time workers by the end of 2018, a nonbinding projection. In contrast, Amazon projected that it would hire 1,000 Ohioans at a new fulfillment center in Canton several years later — without taking any local property tax abatements or state incentives. Amazon's Hurst said the company works hard to create every job it projects. The deals keep coming, from Batavia, New York, to Meridian, Mississippi. Nathan M. Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies regional tax incentive programs, said cities are better off sitting these deals out. Communities throw everything they can at tech companies, yet when the costs of lost tax revenue and escalating electricity prices are factored against what the communities get back in jobs, revenue, and prestige, "there's just no evidence that you're going to benefit from that data center," he said. If data center developers threaten to walk from cities that refuse to compete for these deals, Jensen's advice is blunt: "Let 'em walk." Jensen said data centers were shaping up like professional sports stadiums, where cities give millions in tax revenue savings in exchange for temporary construction jobs and minimal economic impact. Construction of data centers generally lasts one to two years, or sometimes longer, and many construction jobs run for only part of that period. In Virginia, one analysis found that about 80% of jobs from data centers created over a recent two-year period were in construction. And the numbers of such data-center-supported jobs cited in this year's Data Center Coalition report may be misleading, multiple economists and researchers who study incentives told Business Insider. Timothy Bartik, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a not-for-profit organization focused on reducing unemployment, said his own study suggests job numbers in the high-tech sector, like data centers, could be less than half of industry estimates. Microsoft estimated last year that a campus with six data centers that it is building outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, would have 1,005 jobs at peak construction, falling to 335 full-time employees and contractors by the end of next year. At a construction project in Columbus for the data center operator Cologix, one contractor, Baker Concrete Construction, had 63 people on payroll. Those jobs lasted an average of 6 ½ weeks. Cologix said that overall the site had an average of 146 workers during the project's construction. Incentive packages often spell out how many jobs a company commits to creating in exchange for its tax breaks. Data center companies generally commit to deliver only the jobs inside their facilities in exchange for their tax breaks — not the construction and other ancillary jobs they say their projects create. Based on what is actually promised in such deals, those jobs can be expensive for local governments. Business Insider identified five deals in Ohio where, as of December 2023, each long-term job in the data centers cost over $1 million in abated taxes over the life of the deal. An Amazon data center in Hilliard had saved at least $195 million in state and local taxes as of December 2023, according to annual disclosures, driving the price of each job to over $1 million in abated taxes. New Albany, Ohio, garnered 98 jobs at a Meta data center, but forfeited $189.6 million in state and local taxes as of the end of 2023 — making each job worth about $1.9 million in foregone tax revenue. "We disagree with this way of thinking about the benefits we bring to communities," Amazon's Hurst said, adding that it benefits communities in ways beyond direct job creation, such as spending with local businesses and funding job-training efforts. A Meta spokesperson said it helps communities where it operates through grants and partnerships. The Data Center Coalition spokesperson said that focusing on jobs inside data centers understates the impact on service providers and suppliers, such as electricians, HVAC manufacturers, and portable sanitation companies. Companies are still required to make yearly payments to the cities in lieu of property taxes to help ensure minimum contributions to the communities, which Business Insider incorporated into our cost-per-job calculations. Meta, for example, paid $21.8 million in total to New Albany as of December 2022. A spokesperson for New Albany said the payments ensure "data centers contribute meaningfully to the community, even with tax abatements in place." And tech companies often sweeten the deals by promising to invest in education programs to upskill local workers. Amazon, for example, donated $25,000 and some equipment two years ago to the Tolles Career & Technical Center in Plain City, Ohio, to support the school's IT and cybersecurity training programs, which include a four-week training program for entry-level data center workers. At the nearby Columbus State Community College, the company pledged $50,000 in scholarships for a new data center technician certificate program. The ultrapowerful computer chips crammed into data centers consume enormous amounts of power. A 2024 Department of Energy report estimates their electricity use, driven by the AI boom, could soon command as much as 12% of total US electricity use, from just over 4% in 2023. Data centers are getting breaks on that, too — which residents and other businesses are helping pay for. From 2020 through last year, Ohio data centers' load on the grid rose sixfold. By 2030, American Electric Power Ohio, the state's largest electricity provider, expects to grow by another 700% to reach 5,000 megawatts, enough to power at least 2 million homes. If all hookup requests across more than 90 planned data center sites in Ohio are approved, AEP Ohio told regulators, demand could skyrocket to over 30,000 megawatts. Since 2017, Ohio regulators have authorized multiple 10-year electricity rate subsidies for data center developers, reducing power costs for tech companies in exchange for their promises of new jobs. Other AEP customers have to pay for the shortfall. Matt Schilling, a spokesperson for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said in an email to Business Insider that while the commission had approved some discounted rates for data centers, it had denied other applications for such arrangements. At the same time, AEP has proposed spending at least $850 million in new or upgraded grid infrastructure and power plants to serve data centers, and another $350 million in other upgrades to support Central Ohio's extreme demand growth, according to filings. Ratepayers across Ohio foot the bill for this too, as AEP spreads the costs across all customers. Walmart, one of Ohio's largest employers, said last June that an increasingly expensive electricity bill — owing partly to data centers' demand — imperiled its continued expansion in the state. That warning came in a filing supporting the utility's recent proposition to increase tariffs and regulations on data center customers. A Data Center Coalition representative warned regulators in 2024 that those proposed tariffs and restrictions in Ohio could "depress the growth of an important emerging industry." The rate case remains ongoing. Regulators across the US have offered similar deals to subsidize data centers' electricity use, shifting billions of dollars of costs to all ratepayers, including residential customers. Regulators last year OK'd Georgia Power to construct an estimated $300 million 35-mile high-voltage transmission line and a new substation for a QTS data center near Atlanta. And this year, South Carolina regulators authorized Duke Energy to invest $66.5 million to upgrade a transmission line to serve a new QTS data center. The utilities will recoup their investments by increasing electricity bills for all their customers. Duke Energy said it follows federal rules in allocating upgrade costs. South Carolina's regulator declined to comment and Georgia Power and that state's regulator didn't respond. A QTS spokesperson said it pays for all utility infrastructure dedicated to its data centers "to ensure no impact to residential rates." "Utilities can fund discounts to Big Tech by socializing their costs through electricity prices charged to the public," a 2025 Harvard Law study of regulatory proceedings about utility rates for data centers found. Utilities profit, the study said, by "forcing the public to pay for infrastructure designed to supply a handful of exceedingly wealthy corporations." Amazon, Microsoft, and Google told Business Insider they were committed to paying their full share for infrastructure serving their power needs. Tech companies and industry advocates say that other factors, such as electric vehicles, also are driving electricity growth and that the transition to renewable power drives up electricity costs. To estimate the amount of power data centers demand nationwide, Business Insider used data from the air permits issued to data center backup generators. (See here for more on Business Insider's methodology.) If every data center that's been issued a permit comes online, Business Insider estimates data centers' total electricity use across the country could reach between 149.6 terawatt-hours and 239.3 terawatt-hours a year. Business Insider's low-end estimate is roughly equivalent to the state of Ohio's electricity needs in 2023, and on the high end, is nearly as much power as the entire state of Florida used that same year. A 2024 federal report estimated US data centers' electricity use could reach the high end of Business Insider's estimate by 2026. A 2024 report to Virginia's legislature found that data centers had historically paid their fair share of transmission upgrade costs but warned their sharply escalating electricity needs "will likely increase system costs for all customers, including non-data center customers." Last July, Dominion Energy, Virginia's largest utility provider, asked regulators to approve a $23 million grid infrastructure investment billed across ratepayers, a request that is still pending. Regulatory staff said the investment was likely needed just for a single data center customer. Months later, Dominion disclosed that it would need to roughly double its electricity generation by 2039 primarily to meet meteoric data center demand and new planned renewable energy capacity. Dominion estimates the planned expansion could cost up to $103 billion, increasing residential electricity bills by as much as 50%. Aaron Ruby, a Dominion spokesperson, told Business Insider that the company had asked regulators to approve additional consumer protections to shield ratepayers from shouldering costs incurred by large customers like data centers. The planned increase in power bills is primarily driven by the utility's transition to carbon-free power generation, as is required by state law, Ruby wrote. In Virginia, too, Walmart objected. "Electricity is a significant operating cost for retailers such as Walmart," Lisa Perry, Walmart's director of utility partnerships, told regulators in February 2025, warning that increasing electricity rates would harm Walmart's investment in Virginia. Andy Farmer, a spokesperson for the Virginia State Corporation Commission, said that data centers affected all the state's utilities, not just Dominion. Data centers' ballooning power consumption leaves other businesses, residents, and utility regulators in a bind: Either pay to expand capacity for the tech companies, or risk going without enough power to attract other new business. In Indiana, the River Ridge Property Owners' Association in Clark County told state regulators in 2024 that a single Meta data center project had bled nearly all remaining power from the grid. Meta promised at least 50 high-paying permanent jobs at the site and hundreds of construction jobs, but the community would have no available electricity to attract other prospective companies investing in the area for at least four years. "It is possible these data centers ultimately restrict, rather than foster, additional economic development," a representative of the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, a consumer and environmental advocacy organization, told state regulators. By 2030, the representative said, "just a few" data centers used for applications like AI will use "more electricity than all 6.8 million Hoosiers use at their homes." Walmart representatives told Ohio regulators last year that data centers' massive electricity use threatened the company's planned rollout of electric vehicle charging locations at its retail locations. "Growth in data center development is an economic boon for Ohioans," Google representatives told regulators this year, adding that the facilities were "pivotal in establishing the state as a leading technology hub." Walmart argues that it brings more jobs and other benefits to the local economy — a claim supported by research from AEP Ohio. The utility calculated that each megawatt allocated to traditional commercial and industrial customers like Walmart supported at least 25 jobs. Every megawatt used by a data center, the utility said, supports less than one job. About the data: Business Insider used air permits issued to data center backup generators to identify facility location and ownership, and estimate facility power use. We received permits from all but four states, plus Washington, DC. Read more about how we investigated the impact of data center growth here. Reporting: Hannah Beckler, Dakin Campbell, Daniel Geiger, Rosemarie Ho, Narimes Parakul, Adam Rogers, Ellen Thomas Editing: Jeffrey Cane, Rosalie Chan, Jason Dean, Esther Kaplan, Jake Swearingen Research: Darren Ankrom, Schuyler Mitchell, Trey Strange, Yuheng Zhan Design and visuals: Dan DeLorenzo, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Jinpeng Li, Kim Nguyen, Randy Yeip, Rebecca Zisser Photography: Kendrick Brinson, John David-Richardson, Greg Kahn, Brian Palmer, Jesse Rieser Video: Robert Leslie, Gary Moon, Marco Secci Copy editing: Mark Abadi, Kevin Kaplan Read the original article on Business Insider