June 4, 2025
Williams, the country’s largest natural gas pipeline operator, applied on March 7 to the Ohio Power Siting Board for permission to start building a $1.6 billion power plant project in a Columbus suburb.
It held its first meeting with the public to discuss the project on March 25.
Now Williams is set to receive the go-ahead tomorrow to begin the first phase of a 400MW natural gas power plant that will provide electricity to Meta, the corporate parent of Facebook and Instagram.1
That will be a total of 90 days from application to the Power Siting Board until approval.2
The Power Siting Board, organized under the Ohio Public Utility Commission, generally supersedes local zoning and development requirements. Projects approved by the Power Siting Board are still required to receive the appropriate permits from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
The Williams project, known as Socrates and located in the city of New Albany, is a pair of 200MW generating stations to be built to provide behind-the-meter service to data centers that are located on Meta’s 740-acre campus within the New Albany International Business Park.
The Socrates South project has the grading and erosion construction permits needed from Ohio EPA and is set to move forward once the Power Siting Board approval becomes official tomorrow. It is awaiting Ohio EPA approval for its air permits. The Socrates North portion of the project filed for approval with the Power Siting Board on April 25 and is still under consideration.
The total Socrates project is a $1.6 billion investment, according to industry news reports.3
Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a similar state-level power plant approval board as part of his Lightning Plan energy policy. The purpose of the Reliable Energy Siting and Electric Transition (RESET) Board would be “to speed up permitting, reduce red tape, and support the next generation of energy projects in the state.”4
A hearing is scheduled on the proposal on Monday, June 9, by the Pennsylvania House Energy Committee.
“We’re falling behind. Too often, red tape makes it harder to get large-scale reliable energy projects built in Pennsylvania than in our neighboring states—we are one of only a handful of states that do not have a central siting authority to facilitate development of large-scale projects,” the measure’s sponsor, Rep. Mandy Steele (D-Allegheny County), wrote to her colleagues. “Without a central siting authority, Pennsylvania is losing out on eligible investments.”
The New Albany International Business Park is a 9,000 acre development about 15 miles northeast of the capitol in Columbus.5 It is the site of the $28-billion computer chip manufacturing complex that Intel is building. Other employers in the park include Amazon Web Services and Google. The Columbus metro area is considered to be the third-largest hub of data centers in the U.S., behind suburban Washington, D.C., and a cluster in Oregon.6
Ken Zapinski
412-352-4364; ken@pghworks.com
