Whether it’s at the expense of our climate goals, health, or economic security, Virginia’s families cannot afford unchecked data center expansion. As the data center capital of the world, Virginia is seeing relentless growth, with over 1,250 data centers in operation or proposed across the commonwealth. This explosive growth leads to degraded air and water quality, skyrocketing electric bills, massive loss of agricultural land, and setbacks in the state’s climate progress. Despite the long list of harms, no substantive safeguards have been enacted on the federal, state, or local level.
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How Data Centers Drive Up Electric Bills
The formula is actually simple: Explosive data center growth + no ratepayer protections + no state oversight = unaffordable electricity bills.
Without data center growth in Virginia, our energy demand would be flat or even decreasing. Unfortunately, all data centers require a massive amount of energy to operate. Many of the new, Artificial Intelligence data centers will use more energy than medium size cities. As the data center capital of the world (no, seriously), Virginians are forced to foot the bill for the world's internet access and America's part in the AI race. Here's a breakdown of how data centers raise your electric bill:
- Dominion Energy is justifying the build out of a new fleet of power plants -- most are fossil fuel projects -- by pointing to explosive data center growth;
- Virginia allows nearly 110% of the costs associated with new power plants to be passed on to customers (i.e. anyone who pays an electric bill);
- Dominion will also force customers to pick up the tab for infrastructure that delivers electricity exclusively to data centers like transmission lines and electric substation -- a buildout that will cost billions;
- Virginia's families pick up the tab for all this while Big Tech and data center industry enjoys at least $1.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies and tax incentives to operate in our state.
How Data Centers Harm Local Air Quality
Beyond dirty power plants, Data centers intensify air pollution in the communities that house them. All data centers in Virginia come with large concentrations of shipping container sized diesel generators on-site. Why is this a problem?
- These machines leak a multitude of toxic chemicals like Benzene and Arsenic that cause chronic respiratory illnesses like asthma and life threatening conditions like cancer.
- There are virtually no restrictions on the locations of data centers. This poses an enormous health threat to communities like schools, neighborhoods, and population centers that reside within a few miles away.
- The data center industry claims that these generators are for "emergency power" -- which is an issue if the area experiences a blackout -- but the industry conveniently leaves out the part where generators run for maintenance reasons up to 2.5 hours a day, and 500 hours per year.
- There's also a question of "demand response" -- the need to provide power when our energy systems can't deliver electricity effectively during high and low temperatures. Simply put, the "emergency power" excuse can be used to turn on the polluting generators continuously during the hottest days of the summer and the coldest days in the winter.
How Data Centers Harm Water Quality and Access
There are virtually no restrictions on how much water one data center can consume. Some of the largest data center campuses consume as much as 1-5 million gallons of water per day. Some of the concerning impacts on Virginia's waterways include:
- Across Virginia, data centers consumed over 2.1 billion gallons of water in 2023, with 1 billion consumed by Loudoun county's data centers alone.
- In Louisa County Amazon signed a water Performance Agreement to use an 620,000 gallons per day for its two new campuses.
- The Caroline County water authority proposed to increase water withdrawal from the Rappahannock River largely to allow 2.4 million of gallons of water to two data center facilities.
How Data Centers Increase Climate Pollution
Virginia's data center growth is already being used as an excuse to build a new fleet of fossil fuel plants in the State. The massive amount of power required to operate these facilities coupled with the rapid, uninterrupted growth has led to Dominion Energy -- Virginia's largest monopoly utility -- to propose six new natural gas plants over 10 years. Building these plants is in direct violation of the Virginia Clean Economy Act's goal to transition to 100% clean energy by 2045. If Dominion's plan is approved by state agencies, the carbon emissions generated by Dominion will double.