Two weeks before the board of a Southern California environmental agency was to vote on a pair of landmark climate initiatives last May, staff raised an alarm. “An aggressive campaign” from an “AI powered platform,” they told executives, was flooding their servers with thousands of emails from the public opposing the proposals to phase out gas water heaters and furnaces in nearly half the state’s homes.

What started as a promising pitch in February to fix the Virginians' concerns by linking environmental protections to the tax exemption ultimately went nowhere. Virginia lawmakers balked and created a new tax instead.

The Fauquier Planning Commission Thursday recommended denial of the proposed Gigaland data center project in Remington, the second time the commission has done so in the last 13 months.

Lucas is focused on channeling that public anger into a repeal of Virginia’s sales and use tax exemption for data centers, which has grown to about $2 billion a year. “That is just much too much for the richest, richest, richest, richest corporations on planet Earth,” she said. “Now, enough is enough.”

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors is continuing to push Dominion Energy for better aesthetic designs for its substations, sending a vote on the utility’s Golden substation to a Sept. 1 meeting.

Loudoun is home to thousands of diesel generators used to provide support to the county’s hundreds of data centers. Typically, they run rarely, and far less than their air quality permits allow, but this week Dominion Energy representatives said the early July heat wave nearly prompted the need for all of them to be brought online.

NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy have formally filed applications seeking regulatory approval of their proposed $66.8 billion merger with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, starting the clock – and it’s a quick one – on the state review.

Spotsylvania County residents packed the Holbert Building to protest the proposed Crossroads Technology Campus at board of supervisors and planning commission meetings this week. The crowd was spearheaded by Safeguard Spotsy, a citizens group “advocating for responsible, community-informed, and safe data center development in Spotsylvania County.”

The Fauquier County Planning Commission rejected the proposed Gigaland data center project a second time Thursday night during a meeting that drew a crowd of more than 50 people, including many who spoke against it.

Chesterfield County residents packed a community open house Wednesday evening for their first opportunity to speak directly with Google representatives about the company’s plans to develop three data center campuses in the county. The event centered on three separate projects known as Project Peanut, Project Loch and Project Skye.

The world capital of data centers is reconsidering who foots the multibillion-dollar bill for grid upgrades.

Google Inc. has revealed its plans for 10 data centers on three campuses on opposite ends of Chesterfield County.

The Lynchburg City Council unanimously approved new rules that will change how future data centers are approved in the city. The new rules require developers to obtain a special use permit before a data center can be built, allowing the public to weigh in before a final decision is made.

The project, which would bring 2,500 jobs over a 20-year period, has brought to the surface environmental worries of such a large-scale metamorphosis of nearly 3,000 acres of land. Since data center developments use water to cool the computers running the operation, the impact on the Dan River is one fear that's bubbling.

New York's moratorium on data centers could serve as an opening salvo for leaders in other states looking to rein in tech infrastructure — as well as congressional Democrats hoping to seize on the issue in the November midterms.

Under Virginia law, anyone who pays an electric bill helps to cover the cost of transmission lines, but lately so many of those lines are for data centers that some people are demanding a change.

For years, the number of data centers asking for connection dates from Dominion Energy had been a secret. But there were hints of trouble.

A hearing that began Tuesday before Virginia's State Corporation Commission could change what every Dominion Energy customer in the state pays for electricity — and decide who foots the bill for billions of dollars in new power lines being built to serve Northern Virginia's booming data center industry.

Efforts to block new transmission lines on school property are likely to be unsuccessful, Loudoun County Attorney Leo Rogers told Loudoun County Public Schools Division Counsel Wesley Allen in emails obtained by Loudoun Now. Rogers said in the letter that the State Corporation Commission has the authority to allow Dominion Energy to condemn land owned by LCPS.

Part of the explosive growth of data centers in Loudoun County can be traced back to a 26-year-old zoning determination that in effect authorized the widespread construction of the then-new category of development.

The heavy clay soil at the site of the proposed Gigaland data centers, which could pose problems for construction, is among concerns raised in a Fauquier County staff report released ahead of Thursday's planning commission meeting on the project.

A pivotal hearing before state regulators may shift billions in power costs to data center industry amid the grid expansion debate.

Nearly half of registered voters in Virginia (47%) believe the commonwealth is headed in the wrong direction, and a significant majority (72%) oppose a sales tax exemption for data centers, according to the Summer 2026 Commonwealth Poll conducted by the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.

A filing from Virginia’s new chief energy officer says a monthly surcharge proposal by Dominion Energy would shift the costs for high-voltage transmission lines and equipment from data centers to residential customers. Dominion says it needs the surcharge to cover some $998 million for transmission lines and equipment projects.

Consumer advocates have joined Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration to argue that high-load customers like data centers should pay for the high-voltage lines that solely serve them, a stance now playing out as part of Dominion Energy’s case with state regulators to determine how power line costs should impact customers’ utility rates.