President Trump’s trade wars have waned. The price of gas is finally falling. But inflation has a new catalyst: America’s massive artificial-intelligence build-out is beginning to push up prices on everything from smartphones to electricity. The question now is how widely that build-out might ripple through the economy, and how long it could keep inflation elevated. The answers will have big consequences for the economy.

The supervisors did not pursue an outright ban. Keeping local control, they said, meant writing the rules themselves. The ordinance they adopted makes a data center a special use in the county's two industrial districts and requires a public hearing before one can be built. The room had asked the board to close the door.

For context, that water loss is 2.0 billion gallons a year, nearly three times Google’s contracted amount of 2 million gallons per day, which works out to 730 million gallons per year. For all the leaks we have, we could supply two Google complexes and still have water left over.

Virginia lawmakers passed a budget on Monday that would send millions of dollars to Richmond's water system, fund demolition of the Richmond Coliseum and give local voters another way to pay for school construction. The agreement — which Gov. Abigail Spanberger still has to sign — ends a monthslong budget standoff over data center tax breaks that could have sent the state into a shutdown if lawmakers didn't reach a deal by July 1. Negotiators punted the larger tax exemption fight to next year while adding on a tax that charges data centers for their energy use, a temporary fee expected to generate up to $600 million annually. They also ordered a broader study into the industry's economic and environmental impacts and whether Virginia should collect more revenue from data centers.

During a press conference in Richmond on Tuesday morning, Gov. Abigail Spanberger said she will propose amendments to the budget agreement that the General Assembly sent her on Monday night. “I will be putting forth some amendments, and importantly, some of those are technical amendments actually requested by patrons related to some of the implementation language,” Spanberger said.

"Whether it's the impact on communities from noise, from air pollution, from competition for drinkable water, to the larger regional and statewide impacts of building out an energy system that's three to five times what we have today," Miller said. "How do you assess the impacts of building 12 new transmission lines, plus all the generation, plus substations? Those impacts are starting to be felt all over Virginia."

“I understand the need to build data centers across the country and the desire to build them in the U.S., but I don’t think we should be building them anymore,” Subramanyam said. “I support a local moratorium. I don’t think we need any more in this area, way too many. I think the bill actually I’m going to be pushing is going to be a siting bill, essentially.”

“It is a great opportunity to do a number of things next to Ashbrook, the shopping center, housing, the [Community] church is on the other side, a school, and to have a data center right in the middle of that, I think that's not a good use for that parcel,” [Supervisor Glass] said.

The Front Royal Town Council said "no data centers" on Monday after more than 100 speakers urged members to take a stand against the industrial facilities. Council members voted 6-0 to deny proposed changes to the town zoning regulations that opponents of the measure warned would open Front Royal to data center developers.

The Ratepayer Protection Act would go a bit further than the pledge, amending the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act to “establish a Federal standard relating to the recovery of the full, incremental costs of upgrades that serve large-load customers.” Peskoe, however, described this to me in an email as “largely symbolic..."

About one-third of the state of Virginia is under extreme drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and Gov. Abigail Spanberger is urging citizens to conserve water. So when local water authorities implement restrictions on water use, are there specific carve outs and rules for data centers, which use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to cool their computer systems? No. Across multiple localities, they’re treated the same as all other commercial, industrial and residential customers, state and local officials revealed. The Department of Environmental Quality is responsible for permitting the groundwater withdrawal for public water authorities. Once that permit is granted it is up to each authority to manage their water use and limit customers as needed, based on the weather conditions.

Virginia budget negotiators have a deal for a new two-year spending plan on July 1 that resolves — at least temporarily — an increasingly bitter debate between Democratic leaders about how the state should tax and regulate data centers. The budget compromise emerged late Friday with a proposal to impose a new version of an existing tax on energy consumption for data centers, which have become a big part of Virginia's economy while rousing intense opposition in communities over the electricity and water they consume, as well as uneasiness with the artificial intelligence revolution they make possible.

The world capital of data centers is poised to slap a new tax onto the energy-hungry facilities. Virginia lawmakers today voted to tax data centers for the electricity they use, capped at $600 million per year. Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger is expected to approve the eleventh-hour agreement — which breaks a monthslong budget stalemate and allows the state’s Democratic trifecta to avoid what would have been Virginia’s first government shutdown.

On Monday, Virginia legislators approved a two-year, $205 billion budget proposal to fund healthcare and public education, provide 4% teacher raises and a 3.5% pay bump to state employees, establish a retail weed marketplace and hedge against decreased federal dollars. The spending plan also includes a provision to tax data centers for their energy consumption, which is slated to generate a maximum of $600 million each year but doesn’t include the environmental standards the House of Delegates wanted to impose on the industry or the end of the sales tax exemption that the Senate sought.

During construction peaks, a single facility can employ 1,500 workers, earning family-sustaining wages while helping build cutting-edge infrastructure. These projects also create lasting employment; the original Mecklenburg County facility underwent six major expansions within a decade of opening, each requiring electricians, pipefitters, carpenters, ironworkers and others.

Chesterfield County looks poised — perhaps in less than two years — to become home to 1,500 acres of Google data centers, as the tech company makes a $9 billion investment in data center "campuses" in three locations across the county. The first campus announced last year, Project Peanut, is slated to go into Chester on Bermuda Hundred Road.

The spending plan also includes a provision to tax data centers for their energy consumption, which is slated to generate a maximum of $600 million each year but doesn’t include the environmental standards the House of Delegates wanted to impose on the industry or the end of the sales tax exemption that the Senate sought.

Nvidia announced Monday at London Climate Week that its latest AI system can be fully cooled with liquid warm enough to reduce the need for additional chilling equipment. "The water consumption challenge for data centers is largely solved," said Josh Parker, Nvidia's chief sustainability officer, in an interview last week ahead of his trip to London.

Newsom said the water in the area turned brown because of the construction, and his property has been covered in dust and mud from construction. He reached out to both Louisa County and Clark Construction with grievances regarding the construction process and how it has affected his life over the course of the year.

The large turnout in Strasburg, Virginia, this week underscored how contentious data center proposals have become for many local communities. Monday's forum at Strasburg High School brought together residents, town leaders, and technical experts to discuss Project Tallmadge and its potential impacts on water availability, electricity use, noise, and everyday life in Strasburg.

Chevron has struck a 20-year agreement to sell electricity to Microsoft, which plans to build what could become one of the country’s largest artificial-intelligence data centers in West Texas. The oil company is working with Joulent, an energy company launched by investment firm Engine No. 1, to build a massive power-generation complex that will supply the data center using natural gas...

The budget compromise emerged late Friday with a proposal to impose a new version of an existing tax on energy consumption for data centers, which have become a big part of Virginia's economy while rousing intense opposition in communities over the electricity and water they consume, as well as uneasiness with the artificial intelligence revolution they make possible.

“Any of the permittees that are withdrawing are very cognizant of what they’re pulling out,” Weedon Cloe, manager of the Office of Water Supply at DEQ, said. “They have the limits and those limits are baked in during specific times of the year to ensure that the resource is not depleted.”

Stafford is one of the latest counties in the bull's-eye of data center development, with approximately 40 million square feet of approved or proposed data center projects. Proponents point to the tax revenue these data centers will provide. But when you add up all the tax breaks, data centers don’t pay as much as you think.

In 2025, Virginia’s data centers consumed 31 terawatt-hours — more electricity than most countries use. Today, Virginia’s data centers consume 22% of its electricity, and within a decade they will be using half of the commonwealth’s electricity. This month Virginia’s House Appropriations Committee proposed new “Data Center Accountability” (DCA) rules that have no tangible accountability, stripped out environmental language, kept industry tax breaks, and established a new commission to conduct yet another data center study. This overlooks that Virginia funded an excellent, detailed data center report in 2024.