The utility fails to address data centers’ negative impact on electricity rates and environmental harm in its 2024 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).

PEC Media Contact:  Mike Doble, (703) 579-7963, [email protected]   

Warrenton, VA (May 20, 2025) – Based on the direct testimony and cross examination of witnesses in the Dominion 2024 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) case, The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) filed a brief with the State Corporation Commission (SCC) requesting the Commission to require new modeling to support the development of a more realistic rate structure for the data center buildout. 

“The scale and scope of the energy infrastructure needed to meet data center demand is like nothing the United States has ever experienced before, never mind Virginia. Over the next 15 years, Dominion is proposing to double or maybe triple the energy generation and transmission in Virginia, almost all as a result of contracts with data centers. It’s the SCC’s duty to ensure reasonable, realistic state oversight of the largest energy infrastructure project in our state’s history. They must ensure that Virginia non data center ratepayers are not bearing the burden of the costs,” said Chris Miller, president of The Piedmont Environmental Council.

Evidence introduced at the hearing demonstrated that Dominion has not merely been a passive actor in the data center boom. Dominion worked “collaboratively and proactively” to sign over 8,000 megawatts (MW) of Electric Service Agreement contracts, over 5,800MW of Construction Letters of Authorization, and over 7,500MW of Substation Engineering Letters of Authorization without SCC oversight. This one-sided approach to economic development will put a disproportionate strain on existing ratepayers, especially residential customers, if the SCC chooses not to act. 

“The reckless acceptance of these new contracts has created a crisis-by-contract, which could obligate residential customers and other existing ratepayers to subsidize data center expansion. More than 240 public comments were submitted to the SCC in April echoing this very concern,” Miller continued. 

It is vital that legislators and state leaders understand the scale of the additional load projected in Dominion’s IRP. According to the General Assembly’s JLARC Study, the Commonwealth is already home to the most operational capacity in the world—4,140 megawatts in Northern Virginia alone. For context, that is more data center demand than Tokyo (1,030MW), London (1,000MW) and the San Francisco Bay Area (940MW) combined.

PEC seeks a reasonable IRP that pauses the in-service dates for data center contracts until the Commission can be assured that transmission and generation assets are able to be in place—at just and reasonable rates and without cross-subsidization by residential, farmers and small business customers to meet projected loads. 

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