(The Center Square) — Amidst a nationally unprecedented surge in electricity demand, Virginia legislators continue to grapple with the challenges data centers pose to the grid and communities, the benefits they can bring and the purpose they serve in today’s digital age.
Del. Josh Thomas, D-Prince William, presented a bill Thursday before a House of Delegates subcommittee that is part of a broader bipartisan legislative package focused on “responsible data center growth” in Virginia.
According to reporting from the Piedmont Journalism Foundation, the expected growth of the data center industry in Prince William County will allow it to replace Loudoun County as “the data center capital of the world.”
However, a contingent of Prince William County residents have repeatedly voiced opposition to local data center expansion, often due partly to environmental concerns.
In addition to placing an enormous strain on the grid – making it more difficult to achieve an eventual 100% transition to renewable energy – data center cooling systems can use a lot of water, and their backup generators can produce carbon emissions. Both the cooling systems and generators can cause noise pollution in surrounding communities. But, due to the economic benefits data centers can generate for localities, Prince William supervisors recently have approved multiple instances of rezoning, according to reports.
House Bill 1601 “builds on House Bill 338” – a similar data center bill Thomas introduced last year – that would expressly grant localities the ability to “perform a site assessment to examine the effect of the data center on water usage and carbon emissions within the locality” before approving the project. Like many other data center bills in the last session, that bill was passed along to the 2025 session.
If a locality wants to rezone an area for data center construction and use or grant data centers an exception or special permit to build in a location not zoned for them, HB 1601 requires it to obtain a site assessment from the applicant that includes an evaluation of the facility’s sound profile as well as an assessment from the utility provider providing key details about the transmission voltage the facility will need.
Localities could also require the applicant to provide an assessment of the project’s environmental impacts and potential impact on registered historic sites.
“This bill is very targeted. It is just trying to help increase transparency and ensure that localities have the proper amount of information before them before they make siting decisions,” Thomas told the subcommittee. “I like to be very, very clear – nothing in this bill seeks to at all usurp the primacy of localities over their own land use decisions.”
Several environmental groups, the Students for Equity and Reform in Virginia, the Virginia Farm Bureau, and lobbyists representing Dominion Energy and the Virginia Forestry Association, testified in support of the bill.
“This bill is about transparency. It is about equipping localities with more information as they make decisions about what best makes sense for their communities, and we urge you to support the bill,” said Blair St. Ledger-Olson of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.
“We appreciate the support for localities and the considerations for agriculture, forestry and water,” said Rachel Henley from the Virginia Farm Bureau. “We are in support of the bill.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the director of the state’s Department of Energy, a lobbyist for Virginia’s electric cooperatives, and the Data Center Coalition opposed the bill as it now stands.
“VEDP has concerns regarding this bill as it could potentially negatively impact our competitiveness. The new mandates could cast doubts in the marketplace as to our ability to get projects online in a timely manner,” said a spokesman for the partnership, Vince Barnett. “Many of the utility requirements in the bill would be difficult to meet at the time of application, which could delay projects even further beyond some of the energy delays that we have currently.”
The Data Center Coalition expressed a desire to continue working with the delegate on some of the bill language, including the utility energy provisions.
“We appreciate that the patron has been so willing to discuss industry’s perspective on this legislation,” said Kate Smiley of the coalition.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
