Three stories made the news today that all have the potential to hit you where it really hurts; right in the wallet.

They are all interconnected with public policy, political considerations, and private sector profit, and while they are separate issues now; they are part of an increasingly important, and interconnected trend.

First, and perhaps the easiest to understand, is the ever-shifting price of gasoline. 

Today, GasBuddy.com reports that the average price for a gallon of gas in Akron over the past week rose by one cent, to $2.71. Nationwide, the average rose by three cents, to $2.76. 

But, because the price of oil, which has been falling for the past seven weeks, rose to $60 per barrel over the past week, and because more expensive summer gasoline will start showing up at the pumps within the next month or so; under $3.00 per gallon gas is likely soon on its way out.

Two other stories though, are also of some concern for consumers.

One, is that a number of cities, and 19 members of the Ohio House Energy Committee, have filed their opposition to First Energy’s recent request to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) that they be allowed more time to restore power after an outage.

According to a report from News5; the politicians believe lowering reliability standards would be harmful to both public safety, and consumers statewide.

Of course, the reason is that if you allow an energy company to more slowly respond to to an outage, without any regulatory repercussions; it could mean outages will last longer, and more customers will be without the power they need to light their homes, keep warm, and have access to vital life or death technology.

First Energy notes that more and more extreme weather conditions have been negatively impacting their operations since 2019, and they need extra time to adequately respond to them.

So far, the PUCO has not yet issued a decision on the matter.

The final story that caught our attention this morning, is an ongoing issue related to to the global technology race for AI, which has fueled unparalleled spending among technology companies that to a large degree have been supporting the the US economy over the past year or so, as other economic sectors have been feeling the pinch from tariffs, and shifts in global trading patterns.

It is about data centers being built all over the country, which are causing high levels of concern among both ordinary citizens, and political leaders.

First, there is increasing worry that the big tech companies behind much of the AI push, like Microsoft, Google, Alphabet (Google), META, x AI, and Nvidia, are all just spending money on each other’s goods and services, and propping each other up with this circular spending, like a big house of cards. 

The fear is that it could all come tumbling down, just like the Dot.com bust of the late ‘90s, or the housing bubble of 2007, because while there is all this spending; so far, there is very little actual return on investment, and there is also no proof that the AI models they are building will actually work the way they say they (one day) will.

But you can’t have all that AI which on the one hand promises to do great things like cure cancer, and which on the other hand, could potentially wipe out most jobs; without the great big data centers that are popping up all over the country.

The problem is; lots of people don’t want them in their neighborhoods,  and there aren’t enough blue collar workers right now to build and operate them, according to a recent report.

One example right here in the Akron area recently, is the City of Norton, where city officials recently rejected a proposal to build a big data center in their community. In addition, just last week,  a couple of state legislators just last week said they were going to put together a data center study commission to really look into the effect these huge facilities can and do have on surrounding communities.

Then on Friday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that he is joining with the White House and a bipartisan group of Governors from all around the country, in an effort to keep consumers from bearing the burden of potential electricity price increases that may occur when those power-gobbling facilities go online.

While both of these efforts are being spearheaded at the state level; what the legislators were talking about last week, is concerns their constituents are raising about high quality farmland being replaced with huge data centers, which also require huge amounts of both water and electricity to run.

But DeWine and the other public officials are taking their concerns about data centers not to members of the Ohio Legislature, but to PJM, which is the the regional electricity transmission organization that serves Ohio and other states including Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee.

In a nutshell; what they’re saying is that if data centers put an enormous strain on the electric grid, and the grid capacity doesn’t expand to meet the demand; then prices will increase for consumers–even though they’re not the ones causing the spike in demand.

As a result; they’re asking PJM–the electricity middleman in this scenario–to make some concessions that will encourage new energy supply to be built in Ohio, and ensure data centers pay their own way as they expand.

Some of their points in their petition to JPM include:

• Providing 15-year price certainty for new energy resources that serve data centers.
• If new data centers don’t provide their own energy; the proposal asks PJM to allocate the cost of any new procured energy to the larger market, are “passed on to those data centers and not other customers”.

In addition, they are also asking the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), to use their authority to design rate structures to ensure costs incurred by data centers to the larger market are passed on to the data centers and not other customers.