The following commentary was written by Sophie Loeb, policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, and Michelle Carter, director of clean energy campaigns at the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

If your energy bills seem high this very hot summer, brace yourself. Without drastic measures to curb pollution, summers will be hotter and staying cooler will be more expensive. Unfortunately, the biggest strain on our future electricity bills isn’t our air conditioning, our electric cars, or even our businesses — it’s artificial intelligence (AI).

Data centers have been consuming power all over the country since the 1960s. As the Internet has rapidly been integrated into our lives, so too have data centers. Big data’s assault on North Carolina continues unabated, creating more demand on our energy system and raising our bills.

The new wave of artificial intelligence has the power to change the very nature of our society, in many ways for the worse. Data centers running AI require a constant and consistent power supply, something the utilities in the Southeast have struggled with for decades. These centers raise our bills while providing virtually no benefits to our communities.  Data centers across the nation have been given tax incentives, lower electricity rates, and have created few jobs for the amount of resources they use.

As more energy intensive industries take root, we must protect our residents from both the increases in our power needs and our monthly power bills. Unfortunately, Duke Energy’s plans to meet the growing needs of industry expose us to further financial and health risks. Duke Energy claims that their plan, which proposes the biggest methane gas build out in the nation, is needed to meet growing demand, particularly for data centers.

Duke has also warned that ratepayers’ bills will rise if they don’t build these plants, but the opposite is true. Building out solar and utility-scale battery storage instead of gas would yield $8 to $12 billion in electricity savings by 2030 and $18 to $23 billion in savings by 2050. An Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) analysis shows that, for Duke Energy Carolinas customers, increases in fuel costs account for roughly 67 percent of rate increases since 2017. The research is clear: more dirty methane gas means higher energy bills, both now and in the future.

According to Goldman Sachs, data centers will require a $50 billion expansion in electricity generation infrastructure to meet the industry’s demand. This money to build big power plants will come directly from North Carolina consumers like you and me without proper protections from the state.

Why should residential customers, particularly those who struggle to pay their energy bills, pay for these costly plants? Who really benefits from the environmental, social, and economic burdens of artificial intelligence?

Unfortunately, protections from the pressures of data centers are nowhere to be found — for now. Duke Energy has undertaken deals with Microsoft, Google, and other major power consumers to expand renewable generation and protect our grid. Through these agreements, large customers can transition to clean energy while lessening the burden of their power demands on the rest of Duke’s consumer base.

Data centers must be subject to these same agreements — and more — to keep North Carolina ratepayers safe from massive price increases. Consumers deserve transparency and accountability with any new data center project in our state.

In lieu of data centers, North Carolina should invest in good, clean energy manufacturing jobs that promote economic development, resilience, and environmental sustainability. Already, the Inflation Reduction Act is slated to create almost 40,000 jobs by 2030. Tech companies could support these efforts with electric vehicle manufacturing plants, solar panel and battery storage manufacturing facilities, and further build the Southeast as a hub of clean energy manufacturing.

To better center people over tech companies and promote an affordable energy transition:

1. Utility commissions should require utilities to highlight explicit data on load growth from data centers so additional capacity is not passed on to residential customers.
2. Regulators should prohibit data centers from receiving subsidized industrial use rates.
3. The General Assembly should pass legislation enhancing stronger consumer protection laws for electricity ratepayers.
4. The state should form an Office of the People’s Counsel to protect customers from absorbing rate increases from industrial customers like tech companies.

As temperatures get hotter, there is no doubt our energy bills will go up. However, we must do everything we can to prevent massive projects from raising our bills even more. Investing in energy-draining artificial intelligence data centers not only increases electric rates for everyone, it takes away valuable jobs for rural communities. It’s time to invest in people over profits in North Carolina!

Commentary: Footing the power bills for AI is anything but smart is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Have you had a conversation with ChatGPT, experimented with Google’s email-answering generator, or used an AI-enhanced search on Bing or Facebook? All those AI-enabled activities take a lot more data processing than a regular internet search or scroll. And more data processing means more data centers — and more electricity to power them. Analysts predict these facilities, which house servers that send and store tons of data, could account for as much as 9% of U.S. energy demand by 2030.

Virginia has earned the nickname of “Data Center Alley,” as it’s home to servers that see about 70% of global internet traffic, according to the Wall Street Journal. But as more devices connect to the internet and as AI drives up data demand, data center developers are looking for new places to locate these facilities. 

With its cooler climate, abundant water, and relatively mild weather, the Midwest may serve that niche, the Energy News Network reports. And clean energy advocates say data centers could help juice renewable energy development; Microsoft, for example, has promised to build renewables in Wisconsin to help make up for the power its planned data centers will use. Former coal plants and industrial facilities also make good homes for data centers since they’re already connected to the power grid.

But data center proliferation across Virginia and the Southeast is also provides a cautionary tale for clean energy. Utilities across the region have announced plans to build new gas plants and keep coal plants open longer, often citing data centers’ energy needs as part of their reasoning.

Read more about the promise and perils of a Midwest data center boom at the Energy News Network.

More clean energy news

💸 Where climate funding goes: More than three quarters of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $34 billion of announced investments have gone to congressional districts represented by Republicans who voted against it, an analysis finds. (CNN)

⚛️ Small nuclear fires up: The U.S. Energy Department announces $900 million for small nuclear reactor development, which along with a bipartisan federal bill to reduce fees and speed permitting could boost the industry. (E&E News, The Hill) 

🚘 Benefits for EV buyers: U.S. electric vehicle buyers have received more than $1 billion in point-of-sale rebates since the Treasury Department launched the instant incentives in January, discounting an estimated quarter of the 600,000 EVs sold so far this year. (E&E News)

🌊 Whatever floats your solar panel: Covering around 10% of the world’s lakes and reservoirs with floating solar panels could generate enough electricity to power the United Kingdom four times over, and could be used to cover all power use in some small countries, scientists find. (Grist)

⏳ What’s the holdup? Supply chain and interconnection delays are stalling large renewable energy projects across the Midwest, despite new efforts in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan to speed up permitting. (Inside Climate News)

🏠 Use ‘em or lose ‘em: Inflation Reduction Act funding for home energy rebates will likely remain mostly unspent until after the November election; Trump allies have indicated he would revamp the program and jeopardize the funding if he is elected. (E&E News)

🛣️ Lining up grid wins: An organization pushing to build transmission lines along highways recently scored a legislative win in Minnesota, and now looks to expand the policy to other states. (Canary Media)

🔋 FERC fills up: The U.S. Senate confirms three nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, filling the five-member board as it prepares to guide the nation’s grid buildout. (E&E News)

🛢️ Ten years later: Federal regulators approve the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline to enter service after a decade of regulatory, legal and on-the-ground battles. (Roanoke Times)

📢 We want to hear from you! Send us your questions, comments, and story tips by replying to this email.

💸 Support our work: The Energy News Network is powered by support from readers like you. If you like Energy News Weekly, share it with a friend! Or give today and help us keep our news open and accessible for all.

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The coming AI boom could keep coal and gas alive is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Southeastern Wisconsin and the Chicago area are emerging as major players in the national data center explosion, most notably with Microsoft’s $3.3 billion planned data complex near Racine, Wisconsin.

Clean energy advocates in the region say data centers pose both a risk and an opportunity, as they can put major stress on the grid, prolong the lives of coal plants and spark new natural gas plants, but also facilitate significant renewable energy investment. Wisconsin utility We Energies, for example, cited demand from data centers in its recent requests to the Public Service Commission for 1,300 MW of new gas generation. Microsoft, meanwhile, has promised to build renewables in the state while also likely creating demand for new or continued fossil fuel energy.

The organization Data Center Map shows more than a hundred data centers in the Chicago area and a handful in Southeastern Wisconsin, often located on the site of former coal plants or industrial operations. A data center is underway on the site of the shuttered State Line coal plant just across the border from Chicago in Indiana. The data center developer T5 recently announced plans for four to six data centers totaling 480 MW of capacity and costing as much as $6 billion in the Illinois town of Grayslake near the Wisconsin border, adding to data centers it already runs in the region.  

Virginia has long been known as “Data Center Alley,” with about 70% of global internet traffic passing through its servers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Dominion Energy said that because of data centers, its electricity demand in Virginia could quadruple and represent 40% of total demand in the state over the next 15 years. Georgia and Tennessee have also seen much data center construction and speculation. Utilities like TVA, Duke and Dominion have announced plans to build more gas plants and keep coal plants open longer in that region, along with building renewables.

Meanwhile, some experts say the Great Lakes region is an increasingly promising spot for data centers because of its cooler climate that reduces energy demand and the availability of water.

“There is no better place” for data centers than the Upper Midwest, said Josh Riedy, who helped design North Dakota’s first tier-three data center, referring to a data center with high reliability — on a scale of one to four tiers — that includes multiple power sources. Riedy also founded Thread, a grid maintenance software company that he’s marketing as especially helpful to serve data center demand.

“The Upper Midwest can export data around the globe,” Riedy said. We’re starting to see the tide turn, it’s just natural.”

Growing load

Projections abound regarding the way data centers — including those processing cryptocurrency and running AI applications — will increase energy demand nationally and end an era of stagnant load growth.

Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission predicted 4.7% load growth over the next five years, up from 2.6% previously estimated for five-year growth. Data centers “supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence” will require between 9 and 13 more GW of electricity over the next five years, according to seven case studies analyzed in a December 2023 report by the Clean Grid Initiative, which does not include data center estimates for MISO or CAISO (California) regional transmission organizations. A McKinsey & Company report predicted 35 GW of total demand from data centers by 2030.  

Load growth sparked by data centers comes on top of a shift from fossil fuels to electric heating, cooling and transportation. A 2022 report commissioned by Clean Wisconsin and RENEW Wisconsin found load growth could increase to 166% of 2022 levels with building and vehicle electrification needed to meet the state’s goals of net-zero emissions by 2050.

“Everything from data centers to manufacturing to AI to cryptocurrency,” said Sam Dunaiski, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin. “These all could be triggers for new load, and it all could be coming to Wisconsin, though it’s not unique to Wisconsin. Things like solar and battery manufacturing are coming online that ironically need new load growth too. We think the best way to meet that new load both environmentally and economically is through renewables and transmission to go along with it. This is a great opportunity for a low-cost renewable energy boom in the state.”

Along with the generation demand, Riedy noted, come needs for grid updates and resiliency, which can ultimately help the grid as a whole.

“If you’ve built and designed a data center, you know the nature of them is in many ways fundamentally different than most energized structures,” Riedy said. “Walmart, for example, is going to consume power, but it will have peaks, and constant power is important but not in the way it is to a data center. With crypto mining or AI model training, you see machines running at near peak performance around the clock. That’s producing a type of strain on the grid that has few comparisons.”

Microsoft and more

Microsoft’s energy plans — like many details about the massive data project — are not yet clear, and the company’s ambitious climate goals give advocates hope that the company will finance much new renewable generation either on-site or through power purchase agreements. The company has announced it will build a 250 MW solar array in Wisconsin.

But Microsoft will likely also purchase power from We Energies, fueling advocates’ worries about new natural gas generation and rate increases for regular customers.

The data center will be located on the sprawling site between Milwaukee and Chicago that was previously slated for an enormous LCD screen factory by the company Foxconn. That plan was repeatedly scaled back and then scrapped in the face of economic issues and local opposition.

Citizens Utility Board executive director Tom Content noted that “under state law passed for Foxconn, Microsoft is eligible for discounted market-based electricity rates. They would pay basically for the transmission and distribution, but a portion of their rates would just be set at wholesale market rate,” rather than the retail amount customers usually pay.  

In February, a subsidiary of We Energies filed a plan with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for an estimated $304 million in grid upgrades related to the Microsoft project. Public auditors filed a letter with the commission noting exemptions that allow less oversight because the project is in a special technology zone.

The Microsoft plan was touted by President Joe Biden as an example of reinvigorated Midwestern investment, but it has faced concerns about its energy and water use. Meanwhile Microsoft has faced setbacks globally in reaching its climate goals, in part because of the massive energy demand of artificial intelligence applications.

Cost concerns  

Advocates said utilities may use data centers to justify more investment that earns them a rate of return, even when it is not necessarily needed.

“We are concerned that there could be an overinflation of expected demand in order to capitalize on this trend and build more gas as a last-ditch effort,” said Ciaran Gallagher, energy and air manager for Clean Wisconsin.

“There’s a little bit of a sky-is-falling scenario here,” Dunaiski agreed. “In the early 2000s we saw this with load growth [projections] particularly around the internet. People thought the internet would cause our electricity generation needs to explode. They increased, but there were improvements that came with it — infrastructure getting more efficient, and software.”

That precedent raises questions about the rush to build out gas power to accommodate projected demand.

“Gas isn’t coal, but we shouldn’t be striving for the second worst option, for the environment or for our pocket books,” Dunaiski continued. “If we build these gas plants, customers will be paying for them for the next 20, 30 years.”

Gallagher noted that the EPA’s new rules for gas plants make new gas investments even more questionable.

“All the gas plants proposed in Wisconsin and across the country in relation to this demand from data centers will have to comply with these standards, and by 2032 either run not very often or reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% through carbon capture and sequestration or  low-carbon hydrogen,” Gallagher said. “That prompts the question: Is it worth the price tag to build these gas plants that could become stranded assets or have to spend additional money to comply with these rules?”

Using existing renewables or zero-emissions nuclear energy to power data centers can impact customers too. Content noted that this strategy “accomplishes the decarbonization goals for the tech companies and the reliability needs for the data center. But then you’re taking the fully depreciated, mostly paid-off asset on utilities’ books and having it serve one or two customers, and then the utilities will have to backfill that with a combination of natural gas, solar, storage, wind or future nuclear to serve the rest of the customers.”

“It’s on everybody’s mind how we’re going to tackle this in a way that ensures we don’t say no to economic development, but don’t make energy costs unaffordable,” said Content, noting that data centers have been a major topic of discussion among the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates – including at the organization’s conference in Madison in June.  

“Different states are trying different approaches,” Content said. “There’s talk of changing the way utility costs are divided up — currently among residential, industrial and commercial — and dividing it up four ways, with data centers becoming their own entity. Tech companies are pouring a lot of money into the development of these things. They have the wherewithal to contribute mightily to these projects.”

Renewable opportunities

Gallagher emphasized that renewable advocates are not opposed to data centers.

“We think data centers and the economic development that they can bring are not at odds with environmental protection and climate mitigation,” she said. “This can be a low-carbon industry but only if new additional renewables are built to supply all or most of their demands. We think that’s viable if renewables are cost-competitive with gas, and pairing renewables with storage can provide the type of reliability these data centers need.”

Riedy sees renewables and gas as a necessary mix to fuel data centers. While renewables’ intermittency might be seen as a barrier, he said renewables actually could have a unique role to play in energizing data centers – especially in the Midwest.

“In the heat of the day you’re delivering, so having alternate [energy] sources to peak-shave and normalize the cost of energizing that equipment is very important,” Riedy said. “It’s leading to a change in thinking around where to place data centers, that speaks to Wisconsin, the Dakotas. 

“The old way of doing things was generate power in one place, and transmit it for thousands of miles. What data centers are understanding with their insatiable and constant need for power is they are more logically placed by power generation so you can buy that off-peak power, to maintain that load consistently. Since solar and wind overproduce [at certain times], if you can harness that imbalance it’s somewhat of a win-win.”

Data centers offer energy peril and promise, with the Midwest increasingly in the crosshairs is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Virginia’s participation in an East Coast greenhouse gas emissions pact is pivotal to curbing the climate impact of its thriving data center industry.

Globally, northern Virginia has become one of the largest data center hubs over the last decade-plus. Offering generous tax incentives has attracted tech giants eager to construct massive server farms with proximity to crucial digital infrastructure. An estimated 70% of the world’s internet traffic moves through the suburbs of Washington, D.C., daily.

That burgeoning has propelled a surge in electricity use. In 2020, the sector consumed close to 12,000 gigawatt-hours in Dominion Energy’s territory — roughly one-sixth of the investor-owned utility’s total retail sales that same year.

And yet, the state’s carbon emissions from power plants have fallen 12% annually during the last two years.

William Shobe, an environmental policy professor at the University of Virginia, is among those crediting the 11-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Known as RGGI, the initiative is a voluntary carbon cap-and-invest venture designed to tamp down heat-trapping gases emitted by the utility sector. Virginia’s downward emissions trend will halt without that cap in place, Shobe said.

Even as electricity-hungry data centers multiply across the state, RGGI’s binding carbon cap keeps emissions in check. Basically, the amount of fossil fuels a utility is allowed to burn shrinks each year as the cap is lowered. 

It’s a crucial dynamic to understand, Shobe said, as Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has vowed to extract Virginia from the market-based climate initiative.

“As a planetary citizen, I’m happy with that [cap],” said Shobe, who directs the Energy Transition Initiative at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. “If the state relaxes RGGI, then data centers have climate consequences that we need to worry about.”

He’s hopeful that legislators won’t follow Youngkin’s lead on RGGI during the session that opened last Wednesday. Republicans control the House of Delegates while Democrats have a majority in the Senate.

Shobe also argues that continuing to build data centers in Virginia can be a net positive for climate change — assuming data centers will be built somewhere and the state stays committed to the regional greenhouse gas program. That construction trend shows no signs of abating in Virginia for at least the next 10 years.

“As long as we are a member of RGGI, then we should encourage data centers here rather than Ohio, Indiana or someplace else without a cap on carbon dioxide emissions,” Shobe said. 

Shobe played a significant role in designing the mechanisms behind RGGI, which debuted in 2009. In a nutshell, each member state limits emissions from fossil fuel power plants, issues carbon dioxide allowances and sets up participation in auctions for those allowances.

In 2020, Virginia became the first Southern state to join RGGI, after ample back-and-forth bickering. Advocates have hailed the program for its climate benefits and the upward of $450 million the allowance auction has so far yielded for statewide flood resiliency projects, energy efficiency upgrades, and home repairs for low-income residents statewide.

Youngkin has been itching to extract Virginia from RGGI since he took office a year ago. In early December, the state’s Air Pollution Control Board voted 4-1 to accelerate that exit. 

Attorneys with environmental organizations maintain that the Youngkin administration lacks the authority to leave the compact. That decision, RGGI proponents say, is in the hands of the General Assembly. A legislative effort to derail RGGI failed last year.

The air board’s initial vote to leave RGGI will trigger a 60-day comment period this winter. Shobe and his colleagues are prepared to weigh in with insights that the board will review before voting again on the proposal.

Shobe published an electricity use forecast in April 2021 predicting that data centers will be the driving force behind a 38% increase in electricity sales between 2020 and 2035. That equals an average increase in electricity use of around 44,000 gigawatt-hours per year.

“Whether we think this is a good thing or not, data centers are growing very fast,” Shobe said. “Unfortunately, they use a lot of energy. How we provide that energy is what will make a difference.”

Shobe noted that residential electricity sales are close to flatlining due to slower population growth and improved energy efficiency. Likewise, commercial and industrial demand have fallen for several years.

For the most part, large technology companies have pledged to power their facilities with renewable energy. However, it’s unclear whether or how they are following through on those commitments.

Thus far, Virginia’s solar expansion is on pace with a legislative mandate to decarbonize the grid by 2050, Shobe said. But the state can’t afford a solar stumble if it’s going to feed the needs of voracious data centers.

Some in the environmental community doubt that server farms will be able to live up to their vows to harness 100% of their energy from clean sources. Rooftop solar can’t cover those needs because the average solar array on a data center would only offset about 2.2% of its annual electricity consumption, according to calculations by solar developers.

That means operators resort to power purchase agreements, which allow them to go solar even if the utility-scale arrays they invest in are located miles away or in other states and might not be generating when data centers are consuming power.

Some are leery of those pacts. But Shobe defends the agreements as “perfectly fine ways” to contain greenhouse gases.

“If a data center has a solar farm built somewhere else to cover emissions, why wouldn’t you want to credit them for that?” he said, adding that his university does just that with two off-campus arrays. “From the point of view of resolving global warming, it doesn’t matter where it is built.

“As long as it’s on the same planet, it has the same effect on emissions.”

Shobe suggested that in the big picture, a third-party monitoring organization — along the lines of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval — should be tasked with holding data centers accountable for clean energy pledges.

“Enforcement is a tricky problem,” he said. “What it boils down to is, are people holding true to their promises?”

Boosting in-state solar capacity is far preferable to importing electricity because that might be sourced from states without a carbon emissions cap, Shobe said. 

“The question is how fast we can add renewable energy,” especially over the next five or six years, he said. “We are going to have to be more aggressive and do it faster if we are going to be a center for data center construction.”

In the meantime, the air board’s vote and the start of Virginia’s new, two-month legislative session has ushered in fresh fears that the state’s progress could be stymied. Shobe said he and other RGGI champions will meet with lawmakers to tout the climate value of sticking with the cap-and-invest program.

Withdrawing from RGGI would halt the flow of auction allowances. Instead, in mid-December, Youngkin proposed replacing that with $200 million in taxpayer dollars dedicated to a Resilient Virginia Revolving Fund.

That shift away from the RGGI model signals a lack of commitment to tackling climate change, Shobe said, because it removes not only environmental certainty but also the incentive for utilities to pivot from high- to low-emitting generation.

In Virginia, he emphasized, the original reason for joining RGGI was about having a cost-effective tool for reducing emissions. Producing revenue was an afterthought. 

“If what the governor is hoping is that we will give up on achieving carbon dioxide reductions, that’s another matter,” Shobe said. “If we’re serious about reducing carbon emissions, we need to be thinking ahead and asking ourselves what our energy portfolio is going to look like.”

In Virginia, carbon emissions drop as data centers boom, thanks to RGGI pact is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This is the first in a two-part series, read the second installment here.

No doubt a bachelor’s degree in conservation studies gave Giulia Manno a leg up landing her job as Prince William County’s first sustainability officer.

Five months in, however, it’s even clearer to the 30-year-old why her seemingly unrelated master’s — in conflict analysis and resolution — likely gave her an edge over other candidates.

Right off the bat, she’s delving into the design of an energy and sustainability master plan for the booming northern Virginia county that is lagging woefully on its November 2020 commitment to curtail emissions of heat-trapping gases.

By itself, that’s daunting enough. It’s even more of a juggling act when messy skirmishes are the backdrop. The once-rural county renowned for iconic Civil War battlefield sites has been roiling since a contingent of the Board of Supervisors announced its intent to trade cherished green space for energy-hungry data centers.

The wrangling has so cleaved residents that a local watchdog group is circulating petitions to recall two of the eight board supervisors. Land use is at the center of the debate, but environmentalists also fear the mammoth developments could put ambitious carbon-slashing targets out of reach.

“I didn’t expect this to be easy,” said Manno, a graduate of nearby George Mason University. “I’m aware of all the challenges.”

Manno already drew upon her conflict resolution skillset while gaining environmental analysis experience at the World Bank and Georgetown University. She’s doubling down on those same tenets as Prince William grapples with being smack-dab in the heart of Virginia’s robust internet corridor.

Crafting a climate action plan isn’t an exercise completed in a bubble without harsh words and flaring tempers. Manno expects to be a referee, of sorts, as elected officials, business owners, longtime residents, newcomers and other entities butt heads while under pressure to hash out a future with new restrictions on development that some will surely find unfair.

Her top tactic for forming more of a give-to-get collegiality is to listen to everyone affected by the monumental effort to rein in emissions.

“This is about creating a plan that engages stakeholders along the way,” she said about including residents, nonprofits, businesses and the public sector. “I don’t want any surprises. It’s important that we go out in the community to meet people where they’re at and offer enough benefits to get buy-in to the plan.”

Manno’s mandate is to present recommendations for a climate action plan to the board by July 2023. Essentially, it’s expected to be a blueprint for Prince William to halve its carbon emissions below baseline 2005 levels by 2030 and power 100% of the county with renewable sources by 2035.

In the meantime, before that deadline arrives, the board is set to vote on three contentious land development proposals with the potential to throw those ambitious climate objectives out of whack.

One is an unprecedented ask by neighbors adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park to amend the county’s comprehensive plan by selling a combined 800 acres to private companies that build data centers. The county has rolled that request into an overarching scheme for a 2,139-acre Digital Gateway that would replace agricultural land in Prince William’s safeguarded rural crescent with server farms.

Relatedly, the county is also updating its comprehensive plan to guide Prince William’s growth through 2040. And tied to that, officials are seeking to broaden the 8,700 acres countywide dedicated in 2016 to an overlay district for data center development.

The Virginia Sierra Club doesn’t deny that data centers are a crucial cog in the computer-dependent 21st century. However, members have found Prince William’s maneuverings egregious enough to join conservation groups asking the county to reconsider its approach to growth.

“It’s as if the county hasn’t gotten the memo about not doing development from the 1960s and 1970s today,” said Ann Bennett, a volunteer who focuses on climate and energy issues with the Great Falls Group of the club’s Virginia chapter. “They’re moving forward as if climate change doesn’t exist.”

Bennett and other alliance leaders are adamant that server farms be sited on land already designated for that purpose. They claim that approach would limit carbon pollution and suburban sprawl, and protect cultural resources and green space.

As well, leaders wonder how Prince William would be able to power up to 27 million square feet of commercial development proposed for the Digital Gateway when neighboring Loudoun County has encountered a snag in procuring enough electrons for its gargantuan data center hub.

“Taken together, (these proposals) constitute an about-face that threatens to transform Prince William County forever,” Bennett wrote in a lengthy February letter to supervisors. “These major ‘updates’ portend to be a major downgrade.”

Opponents say they have been in the dark about when official county actions would take place. After this article was published, a board vote scheduled originally for Oct. 11 was delayed to clear up what board chair Ann Wheeler describes as “a great deal of questions and confusion about the process.”

In an ideal world, Manno said her climate action plan would be finished first so it could serve as a master navigational tool before a proposal as large as the Digital Gateway is green-lighted. With such overarching guidance, all government decision makers would be able to weigh with certainty the carbon impact of new construction, roadways and other developments. “Some things are not my call,” she said about the extent of her powers. “I do what I can do.”

One saving grace, she added, is that planners have agreed that the comprehensive plan can be amended later to accommodate sustainability concerns. She’s optimistic such flexibility will smooth the county’s ability to tame carbon pollution.

“I hope these timelines underscore the importance of taking action as soon as possible,” she said. “We need to be decisive and action-oriented.”

Prince William an emissions outlier

Wheeler, the county board chair, spelled out her data center vision for Prince William since rising to that position in January 2020. Residents in the county of 484,000 carry too much of the tax burden, she claims, adding that the commercial and industrial sectors need to swell and pick up the slack.

What some perceive as a too-aggressive stance means Wheeler is one of the two supervisors being targeted with a recall petition. 

However, Wheeler is convinced that she and a majority of her board colleagues are taking a balanced approach to both growing and greening the county. She didn’t comment about data centers, but she did highlight the county’s decisions to endorse limits on greenhouse gas emissions, write a climate action plan and put money into a previously unfunded sustainability program. A built-out Digital Gateway could generate roughly $400 million, according to an evaluation by the county finance department. 

In 2020, data centers generated roughly $13.50 in tax revenue for every dollar Prince William County invested in their infrastructure and other costs, according to a March report from the Northern Virginia Technology Council. That tax revenue figure was $13.20 in abutting Loudoun County, which has at least 140 data centers.

With its rising carbon pollution, Prince William is an outlier among the entities tracked by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG). Community-wide emissions rose 19% between 2005 and 2018 in Prince William. That contrasts sharply with an overall drop of 13% across the region. 

COG, a nonprofit, is made up of Washington, D.C. and 23 other cities, towns and counties in Virginia and Maryland featuring urban, suburban and rural communities. In an effort to guide the region’s climate resilience goals, COG updated its emissions targets in October 2020 — the same ones Prince William endorsed a month later.

To hit that 50% reduction goal in just eight years, Prince William will need to curtail emissions at least 58% from its 2018 levels. That arithmetic has Manno paying attention to two major emitters — commercial buildings and transportation.

“They are the fastest-growing sectors,” she said. “That’s where we must pay attention.”

‘What is the sweet spot?’

A network of fiber optic cable, ready access to electric power and proximity to the internet’s origins have fueled fervor for Prince William County from the likes of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google and industries that rely on mega-data and analytics.

Through January, Prince William already had 33 completed data center buildings totaling 5.4 million square feet, according to the county Department of Economic Development. Eight more projects are under construction. That county leaders want to be a magnet for an explosion in cloud computing is certainly not lost on Randall Freed, who chairs the advisory Sustainability Commission the county formed in December.

“We have a classic balancing act between the desire for economic development and the desire to maintain and improve the environmental quality of the whole county,” Freed said. “The question is, what is the sweet spot for economic development while reducing, rather than growing, emissions?”

Freed, whose eight-member commission is collaborating with Manno on the climate blueprint, is well-suited for the task. Five years ago, he retired from ICF as manager of the global consulting firm’s climate and sustainability division.

Aware that rezoning proposals have become community lightning rods, Freed emphasizes that the commission doesn’t weigh in on specific projects such as the Digital Gateway.

Among other particulars, it’s incumbent on Freed’s commission to parse out exactly how data centers influence the fast-growing county’s carbon footprint. Part of that requires peeling back the onion on figures COG compiled.

Conversations with COG analysts have assured Freed that the county’s documented growth in commercial electricity use between 2005 and 2018 can be attributed primarily to data centers. 

In 2018 alone, COG reported in its latest full data set that the commercial and residential building sectors comprised 54% of Prince William’s total carbon emissions from all fuel sources. 

COG acknowledges that many owners and operators of data companies are investing in power purchase agreements and other mechanisms because of corporate commitments to carbon neutrality. 

That said, Freed is frustrated by how difficult it is to find definitive numbers from the industry on the carbon intensity of electricity used by existing and proposed data centers.

Lacking those specifics means it’s trickier for the county to reach decisions that align with Prince William’s commitment to a carbon diet.

“The supervisors must feel as if they are living in a data blizzard,” Freed said. “They’re getting all kinds of information from all kinds of people.”

Indeed, even the president of the Data Center Coalition, said it’s impossible to convert the square footage of a building into megawatt hours used because of construction variability.

Data center data hard to find

“I’m sorry I can’t give even a range with any sort of conviction,” Josh Levi said in an interview from his Northern Virginia office. The coalition’s headquarters is in Loudoun County, adjacent to Prince William.

Collectively, data centers account for roughly 2% of the nation’s electricity use, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. As one of the most energy-intensive building types, data centers consume 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.

Nationwide, big tech is “leaning in” to green energy and efficiency, Levi said, as the storage model evolved from mom and pop arrangements to utility-style behemoths.

Levi cited a 2020 federally funded study revealing that even though overall computing firepower overall grew 600% between 2010 and 2018, corresponding electricity usage increased only 6%.

Data centers in Virginia were an early driver of renewable energy, Levi said, noting that in 2019 they accounted for about half of the solar Dominion Energy had built or had in the planning stages. That figure dropped to 36% as other public and commercial entities now clamor for solar.

Solar and energy efficiency are all well and good, said the Sierra Club’s Bennett. Still, she is irked that the county board wants to designate prime land for data centers when the carbon footprint of such buildouts is unclear.

The conservation alliance would prefer that new data centers be sited on dormant property originally designated for that purpose because key infrastructure already exists there. Bennett reasons that deviating from that original containment plan will add roads and traffic that boost carbon emissions.

That exact number is disputed, but recent county figures indicate that as many as 1,800-plus acres inside the 8,700-acre overlay district are still vacant. Each parcel is at least 30 acres, considered a viable size for data center development.

After this article was published, county officials responded with a study conducted by a Saratoga Springs, N.Y. company indicating only six of those 30-acre parcels have compatible zoning for data center development. Numerous county residents have challenged the validity of that study’s findings.

Either way, Levi counters that bigger is always better. Smaller, non-contiguous sites aren’t practical because it confines construction to a “piecemeal and patchwork” approach that discourages investment, he said.

“The trend is to build campus environments,” Levi said. “Instead of one-offs, you see clusters of buildings located near one another. It’s about economies of scale.”

Meanwhile, Freed is trying to stick to the science while steering the sustainability commission he chairs toward a climate action plan that will flip Prince William’s reputation as a carbon pollution laggard. 

“It’s not like this development just started,” Freed said about the emergence of data centers seven years ago. “This train has been on the track and rolling. 

“But it’s going to take a lot of effort to bend the emissions curve downward. And we need to bend it way down to reach the regional target.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a comment from Prince William County that was received after publication. Also, an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a board vote on the comprehensive plan amendment had been delayed multiple times.

In Virginia’s internet corridor, climate targets and data center growth collide is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.