Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger recently announced that data centers will be required to pay for new transmission infrastructure to operate in the state. The announcement sparked mixed reactions among Virginia residents, as some welcomed the change while others argued it did not go far enough for the world’s largest data center hub.
As reported by WSLS, Spanberger announced that the State Corporation Commission (SCC) recently ordered all data centers in Virginia to cover the cost of transmission infrastructure built solely for their use. The goal is to shift these high costs from taxpayers to the companies themselves, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars.
According to Spanberger, the policy would ensure that “data centers are paying the full cost” of their own infrastructure. The issue has already been contentious in recent months, as 20 state regulators previously sent a letter urging the commission to adopt the change.
Virginia Residents Discuss Data Center Policies
While this was arguably good news for Virginia residents who do not want to subsidize data centers through higher utility costs, the announcement was met with considerable skepticism on Reddit’s r/Virginia. One user said: “This is nothing but lip service and a term checklist item. If this policy had any teeth, it would say ‘data centers will be required to pay all costs incurred by their construction and maintenance.’”
A few locals pointed to what they believed was a loophole: “Requiring it only for infrastructure that is being built exclusively for data centers just means the people who own the data centers will attempt to ‘prove’ one way or another that the infrastructure is ‘needed’ by other entities.”
Others were more radical: “How about banning them? I keep thinking I can’t get sicker of all of this and then it keeps happening anyway.”
Some people disagreed with the criticism, however, arguing that utility costs are increasing for multiple reasons: “The rises we are experiencing now are complicated. Some are because we don’t have enough plants for the amount of power we need- which is contributed to by data centers, but even without them we would still need more plants. So when we have to buy power from other states to cover that shortage, it costs more than making it ourselves.”
Only time will tell how companies will operate under these new regulations and whether the policy will ultimately benefit Virginians.
