For years, electricity costs barely budged at Belden Brick Company in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Last year, they grew by 90%, thanks to a proliferation of data centers in the region to feed the AI boom.
The 141-year-old maker, whose bricks are at landmarks including the Alamo and the University of Notre Dame, traced much of the pain to one line on his account. Its monthly capacity fee rose from $1,600 to $12,000, some of the same strain now Households in Europe are being asked to reduce their electricity use and US utilities account for $1.4 trillion in network spending.
Belden Brick is one of many manufacturers in the heartland facing distress, according to a Reuters review of energy data and interviews with nearly a dozen firms. Factory electricity bills, a major expense, are rising faster than those for most homes and businesses.
The pressure is concentrated in a 13-state region run by grid operator PJM Interconnection, stretching from New Jersey to northern Illinois and south to Tennessee. A single server warehouse there can use as much power as a medium-sized city, and five of the eight states seen as emerging data center hubs sit in the Rust Belt, according to Synergy Research Group.
Capacity fees, which pay generators to maintain supply for peak demand, have risen. PJM’s price has risen from $28.92 per megawatt-day in 2024 to $329.17 now, an increase of about 1,038% driven largely by data centers, which accounted for about 40% of the record $16.4 billion in spending from the most recent auction.
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These charges filter unevenly. Average industrial electricity prices rose 31% in Pennsylvania and 26% in Ohio through December 2025, according to Energy Department data from Reuters. Households in the two states saw milder increases of 14% and 9%.
Supply is not moving fast. Data centers “can be built faster than the generation needed to serve them,” PJM spokesman Jeff Shields said. Last week, the operator asked some users to limit consumption to avoid blackouts as a heat wave pushed peak demand to record highs.
The data center maintains that the surge is forcing overdue network updates. Aaron Tinjum of the Data Center Coalition also points to plant retirements and throughput limits as culprits.
For owners with thin edges, even a small rise bites. Belden raised brick prices 4% and still saw profits shrink. “There will be some companies on the razor’s edge” Brad Belden, the company’s president, said about it.
Others improvise. Plaskolite, a plastics manufacturer, has seen annual capacity increase from $200,000 to $1.2 million at its plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which draw direct natural gas feed. Tosoh SMD, an electronics-materials firm in Grove City, Ohio, is thinking about graveyard shift manufacturing when electricity prices drop.
Regulators respond, though not always in the factories’ favor. Manufacturers sit in the same grade class as data centers, so regulations meant to protect households can catch them as well.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants domestically generated firms to pay transmission fees for generator-applied power, and at least 10 states have their own pending data center regulations. The battle reflects the end times A vote on who pays for AI data center energy.
Interests are political. As President Donald Trump pushes domestic manufacturing, rising bills threaten some factories. The White House said it is signing technology firms “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” and ordered new PJM power plants funded by tech companies. The industry, meanwhile, is betting record of nuclear including SMR deals.
“Manufacturers are not data centers” Paul Cicio of Industrial Energy Consumers of America said. For now, the promise of an American industrial revival is quietly increasing the cost of keeping its oldest factories under construction.
