Data centers drive up power bills for Ohio brick maker, Reuters reports

Belden Brick Company in Sugarcreek, Ohio, saw its electricity expenses jump 90% last year as data centers multiplied across the PJM grid, pushing its monthly capacity charge from about $1,600 to $12,000. For the 141-year-old brick maker, the increase has landed not as a line item in a utility spreadsheet but as a direct threat to margins in a business that depends on steady, predictable power costs.

The pressure is spreading well beyond one factory. Industrial users in the PJM Interconnection territory, which spans 13 states across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, are facing higher bills as energy-hungry data centers serving the AI boom draw more power from the same grid that feeds factories, warehouses and homes. Some manufacturers now pay as much as three times the share of capacity costs that households do, a shift that hits heavy users hardest and raises the cost of doing business in the industrial heartland.

PJM’s capacity market is designed to secure enough long-term electricity supply to meet forecast demand, but PJM has said generation retirements are outpacing replacement capacity even as peak-load forecasts rise. That tightening balance helped push PJM’s 2025/2026 and 2026/2027 capacity auctions to the federal price cap of $329.17 per megawatt-day. Monitoring Analytics said data-center load was the primary reason revenue in the last capacity auction rose by $7.3 billion, or 82%, and the same monitor reported that PJM wholesale electricity prices averaged $136.53 per megawatt-hour in the first quarter of 2026, up from $77.78 a year earlier.

For Belden Brick, the arithmetic is already visible in prices and profits. The company, whose products have been used in landmarks including the Alamo and Notre Dame, has raised brick prices by 4% and seen profits shrink, but executives have limited room to absorb more utility cost increases. The broader risk is that manufacturers may raise prices further, slow expansion or shift operations if power bills keep climbing while data-center clusters continue to expand.

The fight is becoming political as well as economic. President Donald Trump has been promoting domestic industrial growth at the same time that the digital economy’s electricity demand is forcing regulators, utilities and state officials to decide who should pay for grid upgrades and reserve capacity. As data centers scale up, the question inside the PJM market is becoming sharper: whether legacy manufacturers will keep footing part of the bill for Big Tech’s expansion.