A data center in Ashburn, Virginia. Photo by Hugh Kenny, Piedmont Environmental Council. Virginia’s ever-growing fleet of data centers will take the spotlight when the General Assembly reconvenes this week. Along with bills addressing issues like energy use and siting, legislators will need to address a problem that received little attention in previous years: the diesel generators that provide backup power in emergencies.

When the State Corporation Commission approved Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposal to build a new, 944 MW gas peaker plant on November 25, it looked like the end of a long, drawn-out battle over the future of fossil fuels in Virginia. The approval seemed to signal that for now, at least, the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) would not stand in the way of new gas-burning turbines in spite of their high greenhouse gas emissions.

Legislators cue up last year’s vetoed legislation for a new session, but leave us wanting more Last spring Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed more energy bills than he signed, killing legislation designed to increase rooftop solar and energy storage, strengthen utility planning requirements, and make efficiency improvements more available to low-income residents. Now, with Abigail Spanberger set to replace Youngkin in the Governor’s Mansion and Democrats in a position of legislative strength, those bills are back.

An aggressive legislative agenda this year will demonstrate national leadership on managing the data center buildout while delivering climate, health and economic benefits to all Virginians Solar on schools and other public buildings reduce pressure on the grid while saving money for taxpayers. Photo courtesy of Secure Solar Futures LLC If Virginia’s election last month was more than an unleashing of anti-Trump sentiment (and it definitely was that), it was about affordability.

Sign at a dog park in Arlington, Virginia. Ivy Main The data center boom has catapulted Virginia into a serious energy crunch. We have more data centers here than in any other state, by far, and four times as many more are expected in the next few years. Virginia utilities don’t generate enough electricity to serve them all; fully half of our power is imported from the regional grid.

iamNigelMorris, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons The ad couldn’t help but catch my eye. “Building for Zero. Washington Gas’ Net Zero Energy Homes Initiative.“ This was a head-scratcher. Gas as part of a net-zero energy home? Do we need to define our terms? Natural gas is a product that Washington Gas sells to customers in Northern Virginia, D.C., and Maryland.

Photo credit Stiller Beobachter There is a principle in law that says someone intends the natural result of their actions. You cannot throw me out a window and say you didn’t mean for me to get hurt. By the same principle, if you block new solar and wind generation, you can’t say you didn’t intend to throttle energy production. President Trump has…

Visitors to a net-zero energy home in Vienna, Virginia learn about solar as part of SunDay, a national celebration of solar energy, on September 21, 2025. Photo courtesy of Meredith Haines. For solar energy, 2025 is the best of times and the worst of times. It’s the fastest growing energy source in the world and the largest source of new power capacity additions in the U.S.

What lights up your life? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Running for office requires candidates to know about topics they might never have given much thought to. Most Virginia campaigns are won or lost on hot-button issues like taxes, education, reproductive rights, guns and gay marriage, so everyone who runs for office has a position on these questions. This holds true for candidates in this year’s high-stakes races for the state’s…

 Rooftop solar panels are helping generate electricity after Hurricane Maria destroyed much of the island electrical infrastructure. (Photo by Aaron Sutch/Solar United Neighbors) Back in 2017, a hurricane destroyed Puerto Rico’s power grid. The island struggled to rebuild it, with limited success, and continues to experience a severe electricity shortage and frequent power outages. Customers and nonprofits have stepped into the void, installing solar panels on rooftops all over the island and backing them up with batteries.

Sharon Fisher (second from left) and other members of Southwest Virginia Nuclear Watch. Courtesy of Fisher. Gov. Glenn Youngkin wants to bring a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) to Southwest Virginia in the course of the next decade. The administration has put together a small amount of funding to search for a larger amount of funding to pay for a study.

When Dominion Energy Virginia filed its latest integrated resource plan (IRP) last fall, critics (including me) complained that the company failed to lay out a cost-effective approach that would meet soaring energy demand from data centers while complying with Virginia’s decarbonization mandate. We hoped regulators at the State Corporation Commission would reject the IRP and demand better of our largest utility.

Photo credit Stiller Beobachter Maybe it’s the heat. Heat-addled brains might explain the thinking of many Virginia lawmakers that what we need to do right now is burn more fossil fuels. Scientists have documented the way high temperatures affect the brain, impairing cognition and causing impulsivity and trouble concentrating. And this summer is already starting out hot, which is saying something given that 2024 was the…

In Wise County earlier this month I met the candidate daring enough, or foolish enough, to run against the most powerful Republican member of Virginia’s House of Delegates. When I walked into the community center in Norton, where I was to give a presentation at the invitation of the Clinch River Coalition, I found a volunteer wrangling wires to plug in the audio equipment.

I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately, and the strange way words that used to mean good things are now attacked as bad, and vice-versa. Diversity, equity and inclusion are radioactive. Mentioning environmental justice or climate change will get your federal program canceled. Coal is clean, even beautiful, and pointing out the connection to global warming makes you an alarmist, because speaking up when your government steers you towards disaster is now a bad thing to do.

On May 5, attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia — not including Virginia, regrettably — sued the Trump administration over its attacks on the wind industry. The lawsuit challenges an executive order, signed by President Donald J. Trump on his first day in office, stopping all approvals, permits and funding for wind projects across the country and offshore.

Photo courtesy of Solarize Blacksburg Virginia’s investor-owned utilities thought 2025 would be the year they put an end to net metering – and with it, rooftop solar installers’ modest competition with their monopoly.. The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) removed many barriers that residents and businesses installing solar panels under the state’s net metering law had faced, but it also called for the State Corporation Commission to reevaluate the program, beginning right about now.

A data center in Ashburn, Virginia. Photo by Hugh Kenny, Piedmont Environmental Council. For the past few years, observers have been warning that the huge surge in demand for electricity to serve data centers will mean higher electricity bills. In its December 2024 report on data centers in Virginia, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) confirmed projections that the increased demand for power and the need for new infrastructure to serve data centers would raise rates for everyone, not just the data centers.

This year’s General Assembly session notably failed to produce legislation addressing the widening gap between electricity demand and supply in Virginia. Legislators shied away from measures that would address the growing demand from data centers, but they also couldn’t bring themselves to improve the supply picture by supporting landowners who want to host solar facilities. By the time the session ended, a mere handful of bills had passed that could improve our ability to meet demand.

People line up in front of a Tesla Service Center to protest Elon Musk. Rockville, Maryland. Photo by G. Edward Johnson via Wikimedia It was only a decade ago that a governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was embroiled in a corruption scandal resulting from his acceptance of $177,000 in gifts and loans from a businessman in exchange for promoting the company’s diet supplement.

This was supposed to be the year the General Assembly did something about data centers. Two years ago, it crushed the first tentative efforts to regulate construction, choosing instead to goose the pace. Last year it again killed all attempts at regulation, punting in favor of a study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). JLARC’s report…

Photo credit Norfolk Solar. Virginia’s desire to be a leader on clean energy has faced numerous challenges over the past few years, coming from many different directions. Landowners who want utility-scale solar on their rural property face increasingly hostile county boards, with no provisions for relief. School systems, local governments and commercial customers that want solar on their buildings have been blocked by expensive new interconnection requirements imposed by Dominion Energy.

For low-cost electricity, Virginia needs renewable energy -- not gas plants Photo credit Stiller Beobachter via Wikimedia. Southwest Virginia leaders are up in arms over electricity rate hikes. It’s understandable: Appalachian Power, which serves residents in 34 counties, has raised rates by over 46% since July 2021, and its rates now rank among the state’s highest. Last March, it sought another increase that would have resulted in residents paying $10.22 more per month on average.

A data center in Ashburn, Virginia. Photo by Hugh Kenny, Piedmont Environmental Council. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a politician in possession of elected office must be in want of large economic development projects.  It does not seem to matter that in the case of Virginia, this compulsion is catapulting us into a costly energy crisis that will raise utility bills for residents; that the public shows no love for this industry; and that the benefits to be gained (mostly in the form of construction jobs) will continue only as long as new projects follow one another in perpetuity until the landscape is consumed by concrete and transmission wires. 

If Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly are aligned on one thing, it’s their enthusiasm for bringing more data centers to the commonwealth. Where they part ways is in how to provide enough electricity to power them. Youngkin and most Republican legislators advocate for an “all of the above” approach that includes fossil gas as well as renewables; Democrats are committed to staying the course on the transition to zero-carbon energy, with a near-term emphasis on low-cost solar.