Virginia voters demand answers on data centers, electricity costs
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Illustration: Maura Kearns/Axios
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia voters are raising questions about data centers and rising electricity rates as the state's November election nears — and energy officials, businesses and others are scurrying to answer them.
Why it matters: With most other states' elections happening a year from now, Virginia is seen as a bellwether of how hot-button political issues will play out nationally.
- The Old Dominion is the world's data center capital, with hundreds clustered outside Washington, D.C. and — increasingly — around Richmond.
Driving the news: At an Axios roundtable on energy in Richmond last week, state and local officials, business executives and others said AI's growing power thirst — and hikes in electricity bills along with the potential for rolling blackouts — are at the top of voters' minds.
- "This is the first time I've really seen energy as part of the conversation during election season," said Glenn Davis, a former state lawmaker and director of Virginia's Department of Energy.
- Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat running to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, has proposed increasing local electricity generation and speeding up timelines for bringing new projects online.
- Her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, has said she supports an "all-of-the-above" energy approach, including natural gas and renewables.
Catch up fast: Amazon Web Services in July pulled an application for a 7.2-million-square-foot data center in Louisa County northwest of Richmond after it provoked community opposition.
- And Dominion Energy has faced complaints in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond, for its plan to build a 944-megawatt "peaker" complex that would take the strain off the power grid during spikes in hot and cold weather.
- Dominion has proposed a rate increase for residential customers that would add an additional $10.51 a month starting in 2027.
Zoom in: To address growing demand and rates, participants at the forum suggested solutions such as requiring data centers to fund local needs and streamlining local permitting.
- "Virginia is probably the most difficult state I've worked in to permit a green-energy project, and that's largely because of local land-use permitting," said Erich Miarka, senior development director at Missouri-based Savion Renewable Energy.
- "We're starting to be catching some of the collateral damage from the growth of data centers and the growing opposition to those."
Jennifer Ganten, chief global affairs officer for Commonwealth Fusion Systems, said Virginia could take a page from Massachusetts, which developed a special economic zone outside Boston for one of her company's projects.
- "They did all the pre-work, so there were pad-ready sites," said Ganten, whose company is building the world's first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant in Chesterfield County.
- "Environmental work was done, some of the remediation was done. They also created a unified permitting process, which allowed us to go through and do our permitting in an expedited way."
The other side: The data-center industry is making the case that data centers are being unfairly singled out for power-grid impacts, noting that the centers have paid their full cost of service in Virginia.
The bottom line: Participants emphasized soliciting local input, particularly when requiring data centers to earmark a portion of revenue toward community-enhancing projects.
- "Every community is so different across the state, they need to be able to allocate it intelligently, and in a way that represents their citizenry," said Laura Thomas, Richmond's director of sustainability.
