Ohio's Gas Queue Looks Empty Because Ohio Already Built Its Gas

Read Ohio through its interconnection queue and you would skip the state. That is the mistake: Ohio already built its gas.

Ohio front-loaded its gas in the Utica boom

From 2015 to 2025, during the Utica shale buildout, Ohio added about 6.4 GW of new gas generation (net-summer capacity; about 7.2 GW nameplate), so roughly 6.4 of its 16.4 GW of existing gas is post-2015. That is why the queue looks empty: the combined-cycle build that other markets are still trying to queue, Ohio largely completed last decade, next to the wellhead gas that fuels it. The queue-only lens, which works in a still-building merchant market, understates a market that already built.

The demand is here too

Ohio is not a quiet market on the demand side. Through the AEP zone and the Columbus data-center cluster, it is PJM's number two zone for forecast peak growth. So Ohio pairs installed dispatchable capacity, comparatively low-cost Utica gas, and a top-tier data-center demand hub.

What this changes for the buyer

Hyperscaler energy leads. For a campus evaluating gas-backed firm power, eastern and central Ohio deserve a closer look than the empty queue suggests. The relevant analysis is existing-fleet headroom, gas supply from the Utica, and behind-the-meter or existing-plant offtake, not a new queue position.

Infra funds. The Ohio opportunity is around installed and uprate-able capacity near low-cost fuel and rising demand, not a merchant new-build queue thesis. Diligence the existing asset and its fuel logistics.

Existing fleet capacity is not the same as available contractual headroom. Buyers must also test capacity obligations, transmission deliverability, fuel availability, outage performance, and utility service requirements.

Methodology

The 0.9 GW signed-gas queue figure is reconciled from PJM's public New Services Queue (PlanningQueues feed) for Ohio: gas with an executed interconnection agreement, progressing, not already operating. Existing and recently built gas capacity, including the 2015 to 2025 additions and the roughly 16 GW total, are from EIA-860M (the federal monthly generator inventory), by state and operating year. Demand-growth ranking is from PJM's 2026 Load Forecast Report. These are Tafel Power's filtered estimates from public sources, not ISO-published categories. Figures reflect early-2026 snapshots and may have changed since.

All data compiled by Tafel Power from public sources. Framing informed by the firm's transaction advisory work in ERCOT and cross-ISO markets.