These policies risk increasing costs for Virginians while reducing future tax revenue and destroying economic opportunities. Data centers can continue to deliver for Virginia residents — if politicians stop getting in the way.
Data Center Accountability Framework is Wrong Approach
Ross Marchand
October 15, 2026
This op-ed was originally published in The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Data centers have been a boon to Virginia’s economy, generating billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs. The state’s leaders have responded … by making it needlessly difficult to bring these projects to fruition. Case in point: Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, who recently signed Executive Order (EO) 22 directing implementation of initiatives under her “Data Center Accountability Framework.” This misguided EO excludes new data center projects with anticipated peak demand exceeding 25 megawatts from certain expedited-review programs, accelerates noise and cooling-water rulemaking, and orders a review of backup-generator emissions. The broader framework also calls for limiting the extent to which data centers can rely on behind-the-meter natural gas generation.
Spanberger’s framework is just the latest in a series of efforts by state leaders across the country to hold back data centers. Underlying these ideas are a series of overstatements about these projects’ impacts on communities. For example, the framework emphasizes the need to “expedite the new state noise regulations for data centers” and calls for “less noise pollution.” But an extensive 2024 review by the Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) found that a large majority of data centers do not generate noise complaints because of their location or design. At facilities associated with complaints, sound levels were below hearing-damage thresholds, although residents reported that persistent noise disrupted sleep and affected their well-being. Those problems warrant attention, but I believe a statewide regulatory push risks becoming make-work for bureaucrats and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
Similarly, water concerns should be kept in perspective. The framework’s talk of “Cooling Water Scarcity Areas” reflects concern that evaporative cooling could reduce water available for other uses. Yet JLARC’s 2024 review found that data center water use was sustainable at the time, while warning that growing demand required management. Statewide figures cannot settle questions about local water availability, but neither should local concerns become a rationale for unnecessarily restricting an entire industry. Holding back a highly successful, job- and revenue-creating industry without adequately weighing its benefits would be economic self-sabotage, pure and simple.
Popular arguments regarding energy consumption also deserve scrutiny. Data centers require substantial amounts of electricity, but the question is how to meet that demand and allocate its costs. Virginia uses large-load pricing mechanisms and connection charges intended to ensure that data centers and large industrial energy users bear the costs of serving their loads. Under GS-5, which will take effect in 2027, certain large-load customers must pay minimum transmission and distribution demand charges based on at least 85% of their contracted demand.
Dominion Energy data presented in 2024 indicated that residential customers’ allocation of transmission costs had declined since 2020, while the allocation for the largest energy-user class had increased, driven by data centers. That does not guarantee lower household bills, but it shows how large customers can shoulder a growing share of infrastructure costs. Virginia should build on that approach to support private-sector investment and bolster the grid.
Yet bizarrely, Spanberger’s framework wants to limit data center developers’ ability to reduce their reliance on the grid by restricting on-site natural gas generation. Constructing behind-the-meter generation (such as dedicated natural gas turbines) can help meet a data center’s power demands and reduce the need for some grid investments. However, the benefits depend on the project’s design and remaining grid requirements.
Limiting on-site natural gas generation to the “maximum extent practicable” — as called for in the plan — could narrow developers’ options for meeting demand, increase costs and slow development.
Virginia leadership should be doubling down on data centers, not leaning on overstated claims to tear these projects down. The “Data Center Accountability Framework” is quite simply the wrong approach for Virginia.