$33bn Japanese investment in gas plant tied to Trump tariff deal
Residents of Piketon, Ohio are weighing the promise of thousands of jobs against environmental and health concerns over a $500 billion AI data center project backed by OpenAI, Nvidia and Japanese investors on the site of a decommissioned uranium enrichment plant, The Guardian reported Tuesday. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and a delegation of Japanese and other dignitaries had descended on the Appalachian community briefly in March to break ground on the project, which developers describe as one of the largest artificial-intelligence campuses in the world and which is expected to open in 2028.
SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., will own and operate the campus. OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease with the company to use the computing capacity delivered by the site, and Nvidia will deploy AI computing infrastructure. The project is set to deliver 8 gigawatts of AI computing power across roughly 640 acres, an area about three-fourths the size of New York’s Central Park. SB Energy is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and is working on an initial public offering targeting $5 billion to $7 billion.
To meet the project’s energy demands, developers plan to build a natural gas power plant nearby through a $33 billion Japanese investment. SB Energy has told regulators that Ohio ratepayers will not pay to connect the facility to the local electricity grid and that surplus electricity generated at the gas plant would flow back onto the local grid, potentially reducing costs for area customers.
The project is in large part a consequence of the Trump administration’s tariff and reshoring efforts, The Guardian reported. The government of Japan agreed in July 2025 to invest $550 billion in the United States in exchange for lower tariffs on Japanese products entering the U.S. market. The possibility that a new administration could prevail after the 2028 presidential election and reverse Trump’s tariffs — potentially erasing the motivation for Japanese investment — is not lost on Mayor Billy Spencer. “But this is part of Japan’s deal — if you don’t put tariffs on us, we’ll spend money here,” Spencer said, describing Japan’s motivation. “So anytime it’s a political football like that, it’s subject to change, whether you support Trump or not.”
Environmental groups have raised concerns about the planned gas plant. “As one of the largest natural gas facilities ever proposed, the greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution associated with a project of this size represents an astronomical contribution to climate change, not to mention the public health risks associated with the air pollution created by natural gas combustion,” Carol Kauffman, chief executive of the Ohio Environmental Council, told The Guardian. She added that “there are also upstream impacts, too, with fracking wells and methane leakage from pipelines.” The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated in 2022 that CO2 emissions from burning natural gas for energy accounted for about 35 percent of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions. Flaring at the plant would release large volumes of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, according to The Guardian.
Part of the project sits on a decommissioned uranium enrichment site operated by the Department of Energy for nearly 60 years until 2001. Communities in Pike County have blamed the facility, known locally as the “A-Plant,” for above-average cancer rates and a host of other health issues. In 2019, a local middle school was forced to close after high levels of radiation were recorded in the building. Residents, including Spencer, have previously voiced opposition to a $650 million waste disposal facility at the site, where low-level radioactive and other materials from the disassembled uranium-enrichment plant have been buried; many are concerned that leaching could see hazardous waste enter the aquifer underground.
SB Energy defended its approach. “SB Energy performs thorough site reviews and due diligence for each of our infrastructure projects, including soil sampling,” a company spokesperson told The Guardian. “SB Energy has committed to paying for accelerated cleanup and remediation at the site.” The site covers six square miles, or almost 4,000 acres, and many locals support any effort that would speed funding for safer use and storage of the radioactive material that dots the property.
Local leaders have also flagged water demand. During construction, up to two million gallons of water may be required for waste purposes, according to local estimates. Dawn Winters, who runs several gas stations in the village, said her business was likely to benefit from the project. “I think it’s going to be a good thing for businesses like mine,” she said. “But on the other hand, we are seeing rent prices go up already. A friend of mine had to sell their land [to the project] and relocate. People are already needing affordable housing.”
SB Energy is actively buying up large tracts of land in the area, a move that has reset the local property market, according to locals. A report filed by SB Energy with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency says part of the project would be located on more than 1,000 acres of private land immediately adjacent to the former enrichment facility. At the time of The Guardian’s reporting, SB Energy had posted just four jobs based in Piketon.
The project promises 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 long-term operating jobs, and the surrounding community of 2,700 residents is small relative to the scale. “Since the [enrichment] plant closed, people have been wondering where the jobs will come from,” Spencer said. “Pike county certainly can’t handle that alone,” he added of the estimated tens of thousands of construction workers expected to descend on the area over the next six years. The allure of those jobs is hard to ignore in a place where the poverty rate, at over 19 percent, is almost double the national level, and where the median household income is $41,313 — 40 percent less than the Ohio figure.
For its part, OpenAI announced this month plans to invest $40 million in a community grant fund supporting priorities identified by local residents in Pike County. The company also plans to give college students across Ohio a $100 credit to use one of its ChatGPT AI tools. Pike County officials did not appear to have a public position on the package at the time of The Guardian’s reporting.
Data centers and their electricity and water needs have drawn opposition from communities across the country, The Guardian reported. In July, the state of New York announced a pause in permitting the development of hyperscale datacenters, the first state in the country to do so. Other states and municipalities have since moved to tighten rules on AI infrastructure. The Trump administration, by contrast, has positioned data center investment as central to its economic strategy.
On the streets of Piketon, several residents declined to comment on the project, saying they had no information about it. “There’s not an organized opposition to it around here,” Spencer said. “There hasn’t been that much talk. No one’s come to council – I don’t know that there’s been one citizen who lives within the village of Piketon who has come and said: ‘Mayor, what do you think about it?’” That absence of organized pushback, combined with the absence of organized support, captures the ambivalence The Guardian found on the ground.
As MSI previously reported on the Ohio data-center lease, OpenAI signed the 20-year arrangement with SB Energy in which Nvidia agreed to backstop up to $105 billion in value for the project’s first phase and take a $1.5 billion equity stake in the SoftBank subsidiary, with Nvidia to serve as the exclusive chip provider for the first half of the campus.