The City of Hilliard has withdrawn its appeal challenging the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's permit allowing the installation and operation of a fuel cell facility at the Amazon Web Services data center campus on Scioto Darby Road.
AEP Ohio is constructing and will own and operate the 72.9-megawatt facility that uses 228 Bloom Energy fuel cell units to meet the data center campus' electricity demands. The Ohio EPA approved the permit last year. The city appealed the decision in November after retaining outside counsel.
“Withdrawing this appeal is not an endorsement of this project,” Hilliard City Council President Emily Cole said in a prepared Sept. 15 news release. “From the beginning, we knew this would be an uphill battle because state
law intentionally gives local communities very limited authority over facilities like this. Even so, we believed we owed it to our residents to pursue every available option.
“We retained outside counsel, filed the appeal, commissioned independent air quality reviews, and evaluated every legal avenue available to us,” Cole said in the release.
However, city officials said outside counsel advised that the legal grounds were "narrow" for an appeal of the Ohio EPA's permit decision to the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission.
In addition, Hilliard officials noted that the Ohio Power Siting Board holds exclusive jurisdiction over electric generation facilities larger than 50 megawatts under Section 4906.13(B) of the Ohio Revised Code. Citing that provision, AEP Ohio last October withdrew its application to the city Planning and Zoning Commission for approval of the fuel cell facility.
Through discussions with outside counsel, city administrators and City Council "concluded there was no realistic path to achieving the outcome residents sought through continued litigation," the release said.
“While we did not achieve the outcome many residents hoped for," Cole said in the release, "we obtained important information about the project’s impacts and established a path for future air quality monitoring.”
Bloom Energy and AEP Ohio completed an air dispersion study in February 2026 to evaluate carbon dioxide emissions from the proposed fuel cells at the request of Hilliard officials. The study found that "projected increases in carbon dioxide concentrations would remain well below levels generally considered a health concern," the city reported in its release.
An independent review by Pinyon Environmental that was commissioned by Hilliard confirmed the methodology and conclusions of the original projections. The city's release said that the two studies "indicate that air quality impacts from fuel cell operations are expected to remain below established health and safety thresholds."
Nevertheless, Hilliard plans to conduct air quality testing after the fuel cell power facility becomes operational to compare the model projections of the two studies against actual conditions.
In addition, the city said it will continue to support Norwich Township’s ongoing review of project drawings for safety and emergency response procedures for the fuel cell installation and the natural gas service that will supply the site, including emergency shutoff and shutdown procedures. AEP Ohio has pledged to provide emergency response training to first responders, the city noted.
Assistant Metro Editor Jim Wilhelm can be reached at jwilhelm@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hilliard withdraws appeal of fuel cell power for Amazon data center
