The World’s Largest Datacenter – That’s a Big Twinkie

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I’m originally from Ohio. This does not give me special insight in any meaningful form, but it does offer early and direct access to people’s thinking from a particular set of zip codes that are sometimes considered broadly representative.

Egon Spengler holds up a Twinkie in Ghostbusters (1984)
Egon Spengler holds up a Twinkie in Ghostbusters (1984)

In this instance, while visiting family there this spring, I was — let’s say ‘struck by’ — the universally unfavorable tone of neighborhood discussion around data centers and AI. By the middle of summer those strong negative outlooks were noticeably amplified. Almost no one had anything good to say, and no one really knew what was actually happening with or in the giant blank-faced installations.

Data centers and AI (and tech) are lightning rod topics now, of course, just a day before the 2026 midterms. But six months ago, while literally sitting on a porch swing (yes, an actual swing, though no, not one made of wood left over from a picket fence), it felt like I was hearing the kind of mistrust, suspicion, and hostility that would be front page news as soon as media outlets recognized this is what actual humans were thinking, feeling, and saying, and chose to report it.

I chose AWS region US East 2 as the primary source for several core CarbonGuru models that Bedrock serves for many of the same reasons Ohio is a major AWS hub, continuing the state’s early role as a national internet trunk. I felt connected to the neighborhood conversations because I grew up there, and because my product creates demand for this new wave of data centers.

There is an abundance of analysis on the environmental and climate aspects of the AI industry, data centers, ‘BigTech’, and related topics, at global, national, and local levels. Despite the interest and spotlighting, there’s also nowhere you can see a credible estimate of the carbon footprint of any individual data center. Ohio ranks fourth or fifth among U.S. states for data center presence, and CarbonGuru is made possible by AI, so I got curious: What exactly is the carbon footprint of building a data center? Especially if it’s one being built in your town?

Specifically, what’s the carbon footprint of the $500+ billion Portsmouth Energy Project in Piketon, OH — the ‘world’s largest datacenter’ — under construction now by SoftBank, Nvidia, OpenAI?

[Note: I wanted to share the answer last week, but discovered I had to rebuild the analysis pipeline, data storage model, and display layer for CarbonGuru.io just to accommodate the size of the calculated footprints, climate impact, and offsetting needed.]

Three days later, the answer is: the first phase of the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus has a carbon footprint of 7.41M t CO₂e, with an anticipated $1.99B climate impact. Using the standard carbon credits portfolio, offsetting is ~$197M: carbon removals would cost ~$3.88B.

CarbonGuru provides reference products with comparable footprints for recognizable items from cost of living indexes, to help make technical footprints and impact calculations understandable in everyday perspectives. Of course there’s no entry in any daily living items lists for ‘world’s largest data center’.

The nearest matching single item in the CarbonGuru reference list right now is one I analyzed half as a lark for my kids, and half as a technical capability test. It’s the USS Dallas [USS Houston SSN-713 in real life] from The Hunt For Red October (a family 80’s movie night selection back in the spring), with an estimated footprint of 452,290.0t CO₂e, and projected climate impact of $91.8M. The USS Dallas is offsettable for the comparatively modest amount of $12M, with matching carbon removal estimated at $236M. It’s about 1/16th the footprint of the PORTS-Pike data center.

No one I know has a Los Angeles class nuclear-powered attack submarine on their regular shopping list, for business or personal life, so I don’t think that’s helpful in terms of a relatable baseline, or framing a decision field.

One of the more whimsical CarbonGuru reference products is the humble Twinkie. Yes, it is a Ghostbusters reference, but the intent is to parallel its role in the movie as a cognitive bridge artifact – a familiar item that connects an incomprehensibly large and abstract measurement to something tangible and concrete. By the math, stage 1 of PORTS-Pike has a similar footprint to 8.23 billion Twinkies — as Winston would say, “That’s a big Twinkie…”

And that’s just for the first stage of construction, representing about 800 megawatts of capacity. According to the plan, total capacity for PORTS-Pike will be 10GW when completed, at a cost of ~$500B. In proper tech fashion, that’s 10x the first stage, equivalent to the average power use of about 8.4 million U.S. homes, and exceeding the 5 million households in OH by about 70%.

Whatever you think about data centers, the climate impact of one being built in your town should be something you can see and assess for yourself. CarbonGuru will provide the same readout for any datacenter you’re curious about.

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