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The Issues
Ratepayer impact is detrimental -- and fundamentally unfair
Virginia families are subsidizing the richest tech companies in the world. Based on Dominion’s projections, energy rates could double or triple in the next 15 years in order to recover costs of over $100 billion for generation and transmission Ratepayers to coops and other energy providers in Virginia face similar dramatic increases in energy costs.
Every Virginia ratepayer is paying these costs, but not every community will receive the economic and tax benefits. Some communities are shouldering the burden of the significantly expanded energy infrastructure without reaping any of the financial rewards.
Virginia’s water, air quality, and natural resources are at risk
The exponential growth of the data center industry has put an exponential strain on Virginia’s energy and water resources.
Data centers are using an increasing amount of water. They are typically one of the local water utilities’ larger customers. Loudoun County, home to the largest concentration of data centers, has seen potable water use by data centers go from 337 million gallons in 2019 up to 899 million gallons in 2023.
More than 4,000 diesel generators are permitted as backup power for data centers in Loudoun. Diesel is one of the most polluting and harmful forms of energy production with well-known human health impacts, especially on vulnerable populations like children and the elderly, leading to serious health conditions like asthma and respiratory illnesses and worsening existing heart and lung disease.
Increasingly, utilities are proposing new gas plants and data centers are using onsite gas power generators to support primary power needs due to lack of power availability on the grid. Gas pipelines raise environmental and safety concerns. When burned, gas produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Methane, a primary component of gas, is an even more potent greenhouse gas with much higher warming potential.
Data center growth is devaluing Virginia’s communities with noise, traffic, declining home values and unsightly development.
Neighborhoods are becoming increasingly impacted, and the character of some communities is shifting towards a more industrial feel as construction begins on substations, transmission lines, and still more data centers.
The huge power lines and substations are destroying the quality of life in communities nearby. The use of eminent domain to take private land for the construction of transmission lines is alarming and raises concerns about equity and fairness.
In places with large data center markets, the cost of land has increased significantly pushing out all other types of development and encouraging speculative rezoning proposals. In some counties, it’s becoming too expensive for other businesses to locate, limiting the county’s ability to diversify revenue and becoming overly dependent on the data center industry.
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