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PEC launches statewide warning on data centers, pushing back against long-term impacts, including higher electric bills

by | Aug 25, 2025

Renderings of the Gigaland Data Center Campus proposed for Remington in Fauquier County. (Courtesy/ Fauquier County Community Development)

The Piedmont Environmental Council is scaling up its mission of awareness-raising and warning about the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers in Virginia by launching a statewide campaign, “Virginians for a Smarter Digital Future.”

It acts as a counterweight to the technology sector’s successful push to make Virginia home to an unmatched concentration of the data centers that form the critical infrastructure for the artificial intelligence frontier the United States hopes to dominate.

Announcing the campaign from its Warrenton headquarters Monday, the nonprofit intensified the alarms it has been sounding through a string of recent talks and presentations by PEC president Chris Miller. Addressing a Rappahannock audience last month from the Rappahannock County Public Library, Miller warned that while the county plans to stave off data center development, its residents will nonetheless feel the impact of their proliferation in neighboring counties. 

Launching the broader campaign, Miller stated that developers, along with the lawmakers who support them, have flooded residents with rhetoric about “short-term and speculative benefits of data centers while conveniently leaving out the long-term, definitive impacts every Virginian will feel, not least of which is a huge increase in their electric bills.”

Because Virginia’s current electrical power production can’t meet the demands  of data centers already built or in the pipeline, Dominion Energy, which supplies electricity to Rappahannock (REC purchases power from Dominion) and surrounding counties, must invest in new electricity production, along with expanded transmission lines and electricity substations. Costs for these new investments will be partly passed on to current households and businesses in the area.  

Miller said that “we have moved so fast over the past decade and failed to take into account the aggregate impact on communities, air, water, land and historic and natural resources.”

PEC’s campaign is pushing for four elements:

  • More transparency, including greater local statewide disclosure on how data centers consume energy and water, and emit pollutants.
  • Stronger state oversight by the State Corporation Commission, including evaluation of regional impacts of the centers. 
  • Protection of local families and businesses that may end up subsidizing the energy systems the data centers will need. 
  • Incentives for clean energy and efficient electricity consumption.

Author

  • Tim Carrington

    Tim Carrington has worked in journalism and economic development, writing for The Wall Street Journal for fifteen years from New York, London and Washington. He later joined the World Bank, where he launched a training program in economics journalism for reporters and editors in Africa and the former Soviet Union. He also served as senior communications officer for the World Bank’s Africa Region. He is author of The Year They Sold Wall Street, published by Houghton Mifflin, and worked at McGraw Hill Publications before joining the Wall Street Journal. His writing on development issues has appeared in The Globalist, World Paper, Enterprise Africa, the 2003 book, The Right To Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development. He is a regular writer for The Rappahannock News through the Foothills Forum. His profiles and stories on the county’s political economy have earned several awards from the Virginia Press Association. Carrington is also a painter, whose work is regularly shown at the Middle Street Gallery in Little Washington. He grew up in Richmond, Va., and graduated from the University of Virginia. In 2006, he and his wife became part-time resident in Rappahannock County, which is currently their legal residence. Reach Tim at [email protected]

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By Tim Carrington

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Tim Carrington has worked in journalism and economic development, writing for The Wall Street Journal for fifteen years from New York, London and Washington. He later joined the World Bank, where he launched a training program in economics journalism for reporters and editors in Africa and the former Soviet Union. He also served as senior communications officer for the World Bank’s Africa Region. He is author of The Year They Sold Wall Street, published by Houghton Mifflin, and worked at McGraw Hill Publications before joining the Wall Street Journal. His writing on development issues has appeared in The Globalist, World Paper, Enterprise Africa, the 2003 book, The Right To Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development. He is a regular writer for The Rappahannock News through the Foothills Forum. His profiles and stories on the county’s political economy have earned several awards from the Virginia Press Association. Carrington is also a painter, whose work is regularly shown at the Middle Street Gallery in Little Washington. He grew up in Richmond, Va., and graduated from the University of Virginia. In 2006, he and his wife became part-time resident in Rappahannock County, which is currently their legal residence. Reach Tim at [email protected]