| Why the Virginia Data Center Study Does Not Apply to the Perry Technology Park
Perry Village, Ohio | May 2026 |
A February 2026 paper titled “Air Quality, Health, and Economic Impacts of the Vantage Data Center Facility,” authored by Michael Cork, PhD, MPH (EmPower Analytics Group / Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) and advised by Francesca Dominici, PhD, has been circulated in the Perry community. It is reasonable to read it carefully — and when you do, five critical limitations become clear. This paper is not a reliable guide to what Perry residents should expect from the proposed Perry Technology Park.
- Who Paid for the Study — and Why It Matters
The study was commissioned and funded by the Piedmont Environmental Council, an advocacy organization whose stated mission is opposing data center development in Northern Virginia. The group has actively campaigned against data center expansion in the region.
| Why this matters:
A study designed and paid for by an organization with a declared position against the project it is studying is not independent research. Its conclusions align precisely with its funder’s agenda, not because the researchers acted dishonestly, but because the framing, scope, and methodology were chosen to support a predetermined outcome. This does not mean the paper has no value. It means it should be read as advocacy, not as a neutral scientific assessment of what will happen in Perry Village, Ohio. |
- The Study Models a Worst-Case Scenario — Not Real-World Operation
This is the most important technical point, and the authors acknowledge it directly in the paper itself.
The study does not model how the facility actually operates. It models maximum permitted emission limits, the highest level of emissions regulators allow under any circumstance. The paper explicitly states that its “screening approach does not assume that the on-site generators operate only during emergency events.”
What backup generators actually do at a well-run data center in a reliable grid territory:
- Operate during rare emergency outages — typically a handful of hours per year
- Run for brief, scheduled monthly tests (usually under 30 minutes)
- Sit idle the vast majority of the time
| The bottom line:
The study’s health impact numbers are based on generators running at maximum capacity for the maximum permitted hours. That scenario essentially never occurs in practice. Using these numbers to predict what Perry residents will experience is like estimating how much fuel your car uses by assuming it runs at full throttle around the clock. |
- Northern Virginia and Perry Village Are Fundamentally Different
The Vantage facility sits in the heart of “Data Center Alley” in Loudoun County, Virginia — one of the highest concentrations of data centers anywhere in the world. The study’s findings reflect that unique environment.
Conditions at the Virginia site that do not apply to Perry:
- Many existing data centers in close proximity, creating compounding cumulative air quality impacts
- High suburban population density exposed to those cumulative impacts
- Already-elevated background air pollution from years of regional industrial activity
- Natural gas turbines as part of that data center’s power system — a fundamentally different and heavier-emitting configuration than emergency diesel backup alone. The Perry project will have no gas turbines whatsoever.
Perry Village has:
- No existing data center cluster or cumulative industrial air burden
- Lower population density and different wind/weather dispersion patterns
- A proposed project connected to the electric grid, using emergency diesel backup only, not onsite power generation
| A simple analogy:
Studying air quality impacts in the world’s most congested data center corridor and then applying those findings to a single new facility in rural Ohio is like measuring traffic congestion on Manhattan’s most crowded street and using it to predict traffic on a two-lane road in Lake County. |
- How Air Quality Is Actually Regulated for Projects in Ohio
Unlike a broad academic model, the Perry Technology Park will be required to complete a formal, legally enforceable permitting process before a single generator is ever started. This process is designed precisely to prevent the harms the local community.
Federal requirements (U.S. EPA):
- Clean Air Act New Source Review (NSR) — Prevention of Significant Deterioration review for any new or modified major source
- New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for stationary engines — 40 CFR Part 60 Subpart IIII for compression ignition engines
- Strict enforceable limits on hours of operation per year with mandatory recordkeeping
Ohio EPA requirements:
- Permit-to-Install and Operate (PTIO) required before construction begins — OAC 3745-31
- Compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and Ohio air toxics guidelines
- Ohio EPA review and public comment process before any permit is issued
| What this means in practice:
The health concerns raised in the Virginia study are exactly what Ohio’s permitting process is designed to evaluate and address — using Perry-specific data, not a worst-case model based on a Virginia facility. The project cannot be built unless it demonstrates compliance with every applicable standard. |
- FirstEnergy’s Reliable Grid Reduces Generator Use Further
How often backup generators actually run depends directly on how reliable the electric grid is. The more reliable the grid, the less generators are needed — and the lower the real-world emissions.
FirstEnergy (via The Illuminating Company) serves the Perry Technology Park site with two separate circuits on the site which is ideal for reliability (because if one circuit has an issue, the second can carry the load). FirstEnergy maintains one of the stronger reliability records in the Midwest, as measured by SAIDI — the System Average Interruption Duration Index, which tracks how many minutes per year the average customer experiences an outage. The data center is expected to draw power from the grid the overwhelming majority of the time — well in excess of 99% of all hours in any given year.
A low SAIDI means generators at the Perry Technology Park will:
- Run infrequently — primarily during storm-related outages
- Run for short durations when they do operate
- Undergo brief monthly testing per standard protocol
This is the opposite of the maximum-operation scenario modeled in the Virginia study.
| The Bottom Line for Perry Residents
Asking questions about air quality and health impacts is completely reasonable — and the right thing to do. But the Virginia study is the wrong tool to answer those questions for Perry. It was paid for by an organization opposed to data centers. It models worst-case hypothetical scenarios, not actual operations. It reflects a Virginia facility that is nothing like what is proposed for Perry. And it uses a population-level model that does not predict individual or community-level risk at a specific location. The actual protection for Perry residents will come from Ohio EPA’s site-specific permitting process to evaluate the actual project under enforceable legal standards. Residents should be skeptical of alarmist extrapolations from unrelated worst-case scenarios. The Perry Technology Park will be built — or not — based on what Ohio’s regulatory process actually finds. |