Last Updated February 13th, 2023

Virginia is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world, hosting 70% of global internet traffic. The data center industry is growing very large and very fast, but the Commonwealth does not currently have any regulatory oversight of data center development. This is a major problem as data centers consume massive amounts of resources:

• Data centers make up 21% of Dominion Energy Virginia’s power load, and many more data centers are in development as demand for cloud services continues to grow.
• A data center consumes up to 3-5 million gallons of water a day—the equivalent of a small city’s overall annual consumption.
• Data centers require massive amounts of land. One proposal in Prince William County is planning for 27 million square feet of data centers, the equivalent of 150 Wal-Mart Supercenters.
• The concentration of data centers in Northern Virginia’s suburban and rural areas has led to a loss of farmland, impinged on nearby parks and battlefields, degraded water resources, and impacted the quality of life in close-by neighborhoods. However, other areas of Virginia that actually need economic development the most are hardly being targeted by data centers at all.
• In addition to the environmental impacts of data centers, they are being subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers. A state tax exemption for the data center industry has cost taxpayers across Virginia in excess of a billion dollars over the past decade. The extremely rapid growth in energy demand also means utilities must build more generation and transmission, paid for by all its customers.

Governor Youngkin recently announced that Amazon Web Services plans to invest $35 billion to establish multiple data center campuses across Virginia by 2040. Numerous localities in the Commonwealth are currently under consideration and will be decided at a later date.

With potentially enormous repercussions, we need policies to study and understand the impacts of the huge and rapidly-growing data center industry on Virginia’s environment. VCN took a position on several bills that address data centers’ environmental impact. Unfortunately, the Senate bills made it through Crossover but were defeated in House committees.

The final remaining data center bill, SJ240 to study the impacts of data centers, passed the Senate. In the House, it died in the House Rules Subcommittee on Studies on a 2-1-1 vote.

It’s imperative that the General Assembly understand the full impact of data center development on Virginia’s environment, economy, energy resources and climate goals, so it can determine how best to manage the growth of this vital yet impactful industry. The Virginia Conservation Network will continue to advocate to protect our natural resources from large-scale development in the coming year and will prepare to advocate for similar bills in the next General Assembly session.

Thank you to our Partners at the National Parks Conservation Association and Piedmont Environmental Council for leading advocacy on this important issue!