Virginia: The Data Center Test Case
The largest concentration of data centers in the world — and a live test of whether communities keep a say over their land, water, power, and public costs.
What happens in Virginia is being decided now, county by county. This is a plain-language summary of the most reliable statewide figures, each drawn from public sources. It is meant to be carried into a meeting. The fuller, fully-sourced version is in the downloadable document below.
Before the numbers — what they do and don't mean
A request is not a built data center; many of the figures below are applications, and many will change. A statewide average can hide a severe local impact. And Virginia still has no complete, project-by-project public accounting — so even the best numbers are estimates from partial data. Where that's true, this page says so.
| Measure | Best current figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Operating electric load | ~5 GW | JLARC estimate (2024), across ~340 buildings. |
| Dominion large-load queue | ~70 GW requested | Mostly data-center requests (Dominion SCC filing, Feb. 2026) — nearly 3× the grid's all-time peak. ~25 GW has projected connection dates by 2031; ~45 GW only under study. A request is not a built facility. |
| Dominion contracted data center capacity | 53.8 GW | Signed contracts with data center customers as of July 2026 (Dominion Q2 2026 earnings) — up 5.3 GW in six months. Firmer than the queue: these are agreements, not just requests. |
| Existing land (statewide) | 7,200+ acres | JLARC (2024). |
| Proposed NoVA land | ~21,000 more acres | Would more than triple Northern Virginia's footprint (Piedmont Environmental Council estimate). |
| Water used, 2023 | ~2.1 billion gallons | JLARC's statewide estimate for 2023 — just over a third of it reclaimed, and under 0.5% of Virginia's total water withdrawals. JLARC publishes no 2019 baseline, so no statewide growth rate can be drawn from it. The burden is uneven: data centers were 0.2–21% of total use (excluding reclaimed water) at the six utilities JLARC reviewed. |
| Permanent jobs / facility | ~50 | About 25 direct, 25 contract, at a typical 250,000 sq-ft site (JLARC) — roughly 1 job per 5,000 sq ft. |
| Sales tax exemption, FY2023 | $683M state $928.6M total | Two different scopes, both from JLARC: $683 million is the state's own portion of the forgone sales tax; $928.6 million is the total, including the local and regional shares. The state figure alone made it by far Virginia's largest economic development incentive — the next closest was worth $74 million. About 90% of the industry uses it. (JLARC 2024, Ch. 2.) |
| Return to the state | ~48¢ per $1 | For every $1 forgone, the state recovers ~48¢ — a net loss of ~52¢ on the dollar (JLARC). |
| Possible bill impact | +$14–$37 / month | On a typical residential bill by 2040, absent ratepayer protections (JLARC estimate). |
Figures current as of October 2026 and drawn from public sources. This field moves fast — Dominion's contracted data center capacity alone grew by 5.3 GW in the first half of 2026 — so verify against current sources before quoting, and tell me if something's outdated.
Sources: JLARC, Data Centers in Virginia (December 2024); JLARC, Economic Development Incentives 2025; Virginia Business on Dominion’s February 2026 SCC filing; Dominion Q2 2026 earnings; Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, data centers and water use; Va. Code § 15.2-2209.5; Heatmap, local opposition and Q1 2026 cancellations (May 2026); WHSV, Shenandoah County ordinance (June 2026); WSET, Amherst County special use permits (August 2026).
The gap between requested and built
Data centers operating today draw about 5 gigawatts. Dominion's queue holds requests for roughly 70 — nearly triple the grid's record demand. That number should never be reported as a certainty: about 25 GW has projected connection dates by 2031, 45 GW is only under study, and developers routinely withdraw or downsize. But it's a real measure of the scale the state is being asked to plan for.
The jobs, honestly
The headline “74,000 jobs” is mostly construction — up to ~1,500 workers per building, but only for the 12–18 months of the build. Once operating, a typical facility employs about 50 people. The wage floor is real (150% of the local average, excluding benefits), but nothing requires the jobs go to local residents, and whether contractors are hired locally isn't tracked. A fair question at any hearing: how many of these jobs are still here in year three, and how many go to people who live here?
Water: local and seasonal, not uniform
Statewide use looks modest on average — but averages are the wrong instrument. In the Potomac basin, which serves 5 million people, data centers already account for about 9% of the Washington metro area's consumptive water use — up to 12% in summer — and river levels are lowest in July and August, exactly when cooling demand peaks. About 40% of facilities in the region use air cooling only (ICPRB), so impact depends heavily on the design a given facility chooses — which is why it's worth asking.
The subsidy the state's own auditors question
Two numbers get quoted for the same year, and the difference matters. The exemption saved data centers $928.6 million in FY2023 counting the state, local, and regional shares of the sales tax together; the state's own forgone revenue was $683 million of that. Either way it was by far Virginia's largest economic development incentive — the next closest was worth $74 million — and most of the savings go to a small number of companies — the top five took 82% in FY2023. By JLARC's own math the state recovers about 48¢ per dollar forgone. In fairness: JLARC rated that return moderate, and slightly better than the 41¢ average across all Virginia incentives, and found that about 90% of the industry uses the exemption and companies call it a key factor in where they build — while noting its exact weight in those decisions is impossible to determine precisely. That is a real debate the public deserves to have with real figures.
The case for — stated plainly
These facilities power services nearly everyone uses, this website included. In some counties the tax revenue has genuinely funded schools and eased residential tax rates, and the construction wages are real and well-paid. A community can weigh all of that and still ask for the studies, the written conditions, and the honest local accounting first. Requiring the evidence is not opposition to growth — it is ordinary diligence.
What communities have already won
Residents are not powerless here. Across Virginia, localities have negotiated real protections — moving data centers from “by-right” to special-use permits, requiring independent water studies, adopting noise limits and setbacks, and restricting where facilities can go. Shenandoah, Rockingham, Campbell, and Amherst counties have all acted. Nationally, local pushback cancelled at least 20 proposed data center projects — more than $41.7 billion in investment and 3.5 gigawatts of demand — in the first three months of 2026 alone (Heatmap Pro). Outcomes have been shaped by people showing up and asking precise questions. That is the point of gathering these numbers.
A new state law — and the gap in it. Since July 1, 2026, Virginia law (Va. Code § 15.2-2209.5) requires a site assessment before a locality grants a rezoning, special exception, or special use permit for any facility expected to need 100 megawatts or more. The assessment must cover sound effects on homes and schools within 500 feet, and the locality may also require it to address ground and surface water, farmland, parks, historic sites, and forests, along with a utility disclosure of substations and transmission. But the law is triggered only by those approvals. Where data centers are allowed by right — as in Augusta County’s General Industrial districts today — no rezoning or permit is needed, so no assessment is required. Requiring a special use permit is what puts this protection to work.
The thing that matters most is the thing we still can't measure
Virginia has no complete, project-by-project public accounting of how much land each facility converts, where its water comes from, its emissions, the transmission it needs, the subsidies it claims, or who pays if requested demand never arrives. That gap isn't a footnote — it's arguably the central finding. Decisions of enormous and permanent consequence are being made without the public information needed to weigh them. So when a project is pitched as paying for itself, the honest response isn't a rival number. It's a question: show us the parcel-level accounting — because the Commonwealth's own study couldn't find it.
A seventeen-page summary of the industry across the whole Commonwealth — how many facilities there are, what the jobs and the tax breaks actually amount to, who the developers are, and what environmental harm is on the record. The companion sheet lists every source behind it, so any figure can be checked at its origin.
A standing, fully-sourced reference on data centers across Virginia — written for Augusta County, useful to any Virginia community. Every figure is labeled with its source so you can check it. Informational, not legal or financial advice.