This is part of our series about Technology and Climate Change. Read part 1 of the series, about xAI in Memphis, Tennessee, here.
“This has gotten so out of control that it’s like we’re in an alternate universe,” said Julie Bolthouse, Director of Land Use at the Piedmont Environmental Council, during a rally outside a Loudoun County Board of Supervisors meeting last month.
Loudoun County, Virginia, a Washington, DC, suburb, boasts the largest concentration of data centers in the entire world. About 200 of these energy-sucking behemoths there power modern life essentials like internet connectivity, the cloud, online services, and AI.
Loudoun County is no stranger to technology; it’s the birthplace of the internet as we know it today. AOL moved its headquarters there in 1996, when the community was all trees and farmland. Just two years later, the Metropolitan Area Exchange-East, a major internet traffic hub, moved to Loudoun to be closer to AOL. More tech companies, wanting to be connected to the exchange, followed, and so did their data centers. Still it’s a shock that in the last 14 years, there has not been a single day without data center construction in the county.
The services these data centers provide are essential, but they come at a steep cost. “[We were] moving toward the Virginia Clean Economy Act,” Julie said, referring to a law that put the state on a path to 100% clean electricity by 2050. “We were moving away from fossil fuels, and now we have completely reversed our progress.”
Tell Administrator Zeldin: Cutting Climate Pollution Is One of EPA’s Most Important Jobs
The environmental footprint of data centers
Opposition to these data centers has been strong and focused on environmental impact. Along with the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Loudoun Climate Project has raised the alarm bells about these facilities’ energy burden and greenhouse gas emissions.
Data centers are the only growing source of energy demand in Virginia, and they are expected to double the load on the state’s electricity grid—which is primarily powered by natural gas—by 2040. This puts the state’s carbon-free electricity goal completely out of reach. And meeting data centers’ energy demand will require a substantial amount of new power generation and transmission infrastructure, which would be very difficult to achieve, according to a comprehensive report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC).
Data centers aren’t just an energy and climate issue. They are also an enormous land use burden and water suck. Loudoun County currently has 30 million square feet of operational data centers, with another 5 million square feet in development. And despite efforts to prioritize cooling these facilities with reclaimed water, their potable water usage has increased 250% since 2021. In 2023 alone, they churned through 899 million gallons of water.
They are also an air quality issue. While Loudoun County’s data centers are largely powered by the grid, all of them have dozens of backup diesel or gas turbine generators. The data centers have taxed the existing energy grid so much that there’s a long wait to get connected to it. To get new data centers online as quickly as possible, they are relying on on-site natural gas generation, releasing not only the potent climate pollutant methane but harmful co-pollutants including nitrogen oxides, hydrogen sulfide, and volatile organic compounds, like benzene.
Local air monitoring
Across Loudoun, data centers bump up against residential neighborhoods, schools, daycares, parks, and local businesses. “They are everywhere, like really everywhere,” says Moms’ Program Coordinator Luz Drada, who moved to the area with her husband and school-age son two years ago. “There are many of them within two, three miles of my house.”
Yet despite this proximity to families and vulnerable population centers, data center owners are not required to report their emissions data. “If there was one thing I’d like,” says Chris Tandy, President of the Loudoun Climate Project, “it would be more transparency so people could make informed decisions about their health and safety.”
Over the last five years, Chris’s group has sought to bridge the gap in air quality data by launching a local air monitoring initiative, investing in 12 PurpleAir particle pollution monitors and placing them throughout the county. They post real-time air quality data from the monitors on their website, and though none of the monitors are immediately next to emissions sources, like a data center, they are hoping to accumulate enough information to show the impact of local emissions on the air residents are breathing.
Baby steps toward accountability
In March, the Loudoun Climate Project tallied a win when the Board of Supervisors passed modifications to the comprehensive plan and zoning regulations. Now all data center proposals will be subject to scrutiny and public comment before they can be approved, rather than simply being rubberstamped if they meet zoning requirements.
There is still progress to be made. But awareness is growing. People across Virginia are sounding the alarm for responsible data center development. State Delegate Josh Thomas is one of these people, spurred by concern stemming from a proposal to build the world’s largest data center campus—with 37 “hyperscale” data centers and more than 700 backup diesel generators—in his district in Prince William County, which borders Loudoun to the south. This proposed project was approved in December, despite overwhelming public opposition, but is currently tied up in lawsuits.
This winter, Delegate Thomas sponsored a bill that would require anyone seeking to build a data center in Virginia to submit a study on impacts of the proposed project to local schools and neighborhoods as part of the approval process. It would also require the electric utility to provide information on the facility’s energy needs. The General Assembly passed this bill, and it’s currently sitting on Governor Glenn Youngkin’s desk, waiting for his signature.
In the meantime, Delegate Thomas urges everyone to get involved in this fight for environmentally sound data centers: “Go to every community listening session. Make your concerns heard, and at the same time take the developers to task. What type of generators are they going to run? Will there be some type of emissions recapture going on? Will the data center recycle the water that’s put in it originally? And then the biggest one, what is the actual electricity load?”
“Data and data centers are the new oil that lubricate the modern economy,” Thomas says. “They are absolutely integral to how our economy works right now, and we’re going to continue to build more of them. So I’m trying to drill down on how do people and data centers coexist?” Figuring out the answer to this question will have repercussions far beyond Virginia.
Tell Administrator Zeldin: Cutting Climate Pollution Is One of EPA’s Most Important Jobs