Dear Friends,

One of the most difficult roles that PEC plays is as an organization that anticipates and plans for the future. Imaging scenarios — both positive and negative — is inherently subject to doubt and critique. PEC is unique in our nonpartisan, thoughtful and holistic approach to complex issues facing our communities. Bound only by our mission to protect and restore the lands and waters of the Virginia Piedmont while building stronger, more sustainable communities, we are simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic. That means that more than any other organization, we look for unintended consequences, consider the fullness of data and research, strive to understand on-the-ground policy impacts, and provide alternatives when needed.

Unfortunately, we see all that makes the Virginia Piedmont, and much of Virginia, special under tremendous threat from the rapid and unconstrained data center build-out and the energy infrastructure that build-out demands. For the past five years, PEC has been sounding the alarm about why and how the commonwealth’s lack of planning and failure to regulate the global concentration of this information technology-driven economy in Virginia are in sharp conflict with our long-term mission.

Over the past year, PEC’s perspective has become a kitchen table issue and a focus of 2025 elections in Virginia and beyond. Virginia will experience up to a trillion dollars in private and public investment through 2045 for data centers and the energy and water supply infrastructure they require. Now is the time for our state leaders to determine how we can leverage that investment to also invest in the lands, waters and communities of the Piedmont region and Virginia as a whole.

PEC’s founders believed that our engagement in planning for growth and for the conservation of land and water resources was essential. Since our origins, we have argued that Virginia can and should develop 10% of the land area and permanently conserve 50% or more, still leaving plenty of space for continuing debates about the needs of the future. Over my 30 years leading PEC, our staff have worked hard to bring our experience and knowledge into local, regional, state, and multistate planning about issues as diverse and complex as housing, food systems, transportation, water supply, water quality, air quality and historic and cultural resources.

Our consistent vision is that Virginia can accommodate population growth, new economic development, and the infrastructure needed to support both, while also conserving and restoring the natural environment and sustaining the network of communities in the nine counties PEC serves.

The questions of today are: How will Virginia manage the development of data centers to fit into this vision of the future? How can the state use the $200 billion to $300 billion investment being made to triple our energy infrastructure for data centers to also protect the climate and community benefits of conserved lands and clean waters? And how do we measure data center impacts on water resources and steer some of that investment toward enhancing water supplies?

Transparency is key. We need to be sharing as much information as possible about what we know and do not know, as well as the models we use to build out that future.

Virginia has to adopt and improve policies that anticipate and assess potential impacts and develop alternatives that avoid and even help mitigate impacts that can’t be avoided. Such mitigation could include better zoning and site planning to protect communities; putting transmission lines underground; and implementing energy strategies based on distributed generation, dual land use like agrivoltaics, and battery storage. Virginia also needs to set aside some of the revenue it’s getting from the data center industry to invest in strategies that balance conserved lands and water resources with the economic benefits for renewed and vital communities.

Knowing that Virginia is building out a global concentration of data centers and energy infrastructure, the people of Virginia must demand that the data center industry bear the costs that match the scale of its impacts, enough to ensure that Virginians and our natural resources are protected for years to come. PEC has argued to the State Corporation Commission that because data centers are creating no less than 90% of future energy demand, they should likewise bear no less than 90% of the costs to provide it and to mitigate its impacts on our lands, waters and communities. That will be the focus of the coming General Assembly session and policy debate at the local, state and regional levels in the coming years.

Sincerely,

Chris Miller, President

This article appeared in the 2025 winter edition of The Piedmont Environmental Council’s member newsletter, The Piedmont View. If you’d like to become a PEC member or renew your membership, please visit pecva.org/join.