Dominion Energy recently announced their plan to build 15 more data centers – and the demand for them doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

     The societal shift to digital services has accelerated since the beginning of the 21st century. This change has especially been prominent in Loudoun County with the growth of sprawling data centers. However, in recent times, the expansion of these places has been rapid. According to the Loudoun Times, Dominion Energy plans on expanding its locations to an additional 15 this year. As a result of Dominion Energy slowly implementing transmission infrastructure in previous years, the corporation is making up for the pace by swiftly building large concrete buildings, metal poles and electric wires.

     This rapid pace may be in line with the growing energy demands of Loudoun residents, but Dominion is also facing backlash for safety and environmental concerns. Because of the demand for these data centers, power lines need to be built to connect them to the utility grid. This could impact communities by potentially raising taxes to pay for these utility lines. Furthermore, many environmental activists are concerned about Dominion’s plan to rely solely on natural gas to meet the demand. In response, Dominion announced plans for two offshore wind farms in the Chesapeake Bay and released its customer contracts and financial commitments.

     Virginia is the world’s largest market for cloud computing infrastructure, according to the Data Center Frontier – this threatens the clean energy future many Democratic lawmakers have envisioned for the state and widens the gap between both parties. Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, supports expanding data centers even further into Virginia. The rise of artificial intelligence is also pushing Dominion to hit the gas on building data centers, with many arguing that Dominion is not going fast enough to meet new technological issues, such as Artificial Intelligence, which is mainly driving the growth. 

     Northern Virginia is the crossroads of the Internet, with more than 250 data center locations that support Internet operations. These centers invested $6.8 billion in Virginia in 2021, which supported 45,460 jobs. Recently, Amazon announced an initiative to pour $1 billion into the industry, which includes building centers further south of Loudoun, but the concerns regarding these centers have not been alleviated. Many residents in Loudoun and Prince William counties are concerned about these cloud clusters, as the power lines connecting these data centers could impact their quality of life. 

     As said by Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition: “Data centers are the lifeline for our increasingly digitized world.” The pandemic sharply increased the data usage of many. Without these centers, the technology we use in our everyday lives would be much more difficult to access. However, the lack of sustainable alternatives poses a threat to the region and the planet. The carbon intensity of these data centers can be relieved through large-scale renewable energy, as encouraged by Virginia’s 100% renewable energy goal by 2045, with new data centers being built in less populous areas. This solution, proposed by researchers at Duke University, would lessen the risk of an electrical grid crash and promote smarter urban and regional planning. 

     Dominion Energy isn’t slowing its data center plans any time soon. Northern Virginia will continue to be nicknamed the data center alley of the world, but the pressure for more transparency and safeguards may change the tune of how Dominion will operate the construction of these centers.