A view of the rooftop of a Haymarket, Virginia data center. (Hugh Kenny/Piedmont Environmental Council)
Rappahannock will be significantly affected by the proliferation of data centers in Northern Virginia, even if the county manages to fend off future construction proposals within the county, according to Christopher G. Miller, longtime president of the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC).
Miller gave this warning to attendees at his talk July 30 at the Rappahannock County Public Library on the rapid growth of data centers and its impact on Rappahannock. Some 80 people attended the event — either in person or via Zoom — sponsored by the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP).
Dominion Energy, which generates the electrical power for the county, is ramping up its power production plans to feed the data centers, and it’s likely that residential users across the state will be saddled with rate increases to cover a big part of the company’s investment.
The energy demands will also require new or expanded transmission lines to carry electricity to the clusters of computer-packed centers in Fauquier, Culpeper and Loudoun counties, possibly including the lines now crisscrossing Rappahannock. Data centers use large amounts of water, which could stress the Potomac and Rappahannock river watersheds at a time drought conditions are a recurrent worry. Miller also warned that the surge in energy demand will mean that carbon-heavy fuels, including coal, will continue being part of the energy mix.
“It’s the biggest explosion of an economic sector that we’ve ever seen,” Miller said, “and we’re dealing with the cumulative impact on our region.”
Chris Miller speaking at the 2025 Piedmont Environmental Council Annual Meeting at Eldon Farms in June. (Hugh Kenny/Piedmont Environmental Council)
The data center worries stem from an under-appreciated transition: Virginia has taken on a new identity as the world’s most concentrated magnet for sprawling, energy-hungry data centers that are critical in the global race to dominate the AI, or artificial intelligence, super-sector. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, along with dozens of lesser-known corporations, are investing billions, and towns like Culpeper, Manassas, and Remington, have been altered irrevocably.
PEC calculates that Virginia’s data centers now claim 60 million square feet of built space. But the nonprofit organization, created in 1972 to protect and restore lands and waters in the Virginia Piedmont, found there are another 265 million square feet that companies are planning to build in the commonwealth. The added data center construction would be comparable to 1,472 Walmart supercenters, according to PEC.
In a PEC fact sheet, Miller states that “Virginia is being expected to host and pay for the infrastructure of the data centers supporting the world’s wealthiest companies. This is destined to have extreme negative consequences for Virginians in both the rates they pay and the permanent loss of precious natural resources.”
Citizen groups and some local governments are starting to get involved, but the data centers continue going up. “We’re seeing very, very few of these turned away,” said Sarah Parmelee, PEC’s land use field representative for Culpeper and Rappahannock counties.
The data centers create few jobs, but this can make them attractive to counties where the tech giants hope to build. From the vantage point of a local jurisdiction, a facility packed full of humming computers doesn’t generate demand for more housing or larger classrooms. However, the centers do create needed tax revenue for the counties where they’re located.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently unveiled its AI strategy, emphasizing accelerated investment, including in the data centers, while pushing back on local zoning regulations and environmental rules that might slow the momentum. Miller pointed out that leaders of both parties are “promoting AI dominance and the electricity needed to get there.”
While a key part of the AI infrastructure, the data centers also help companies outsource certain technology functions, along with cloud computing and data storage. But the big jump in energy demand stems from the AI boom.
This year, Dominion expects to supply 23 gigawatts of power at times of peak demand. By 2045, the company anticipates a peak demand of 51 gigawatts. A gigawatt is a unit of electrical power equal to one billion watts, which could serve hundreds of thousands of homes or many large manufacturing facilities.
At a recent technical conference, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC), which delivers power to county residents and businesses, said it anticipates a 445% jump in the total demand placed on the electricity supply system by end-users in the next five years. Electricity users include everything from three-room houses to manufacturing plants to the new data centers which account for most of the increased demand.
The State Corporation Commission in Richmond is reviewing Dominion’s integrated resource plan,which maps out energy needs and production options for the future. The commission also reviews the rate structures that will determine how the costs of new energy production will be shared among different categories of users. New proposals for data centers will be considered by supervisors and zoning boards in the counties where they would be built.
Miller called for citizens, nonprofits and local governments to get involved, though he didn’t offer a specific blueprint for action. ”It’s all in the spirit of sharing information,” Miller told the group. “We don’t have all the answers.”
