弗吉尼亚州长 Spanberger 发布新能源规划，让 AI 数据中心增长服务于零碳目标

• Virginia’s new energy plan: Make the AI boom work for — not against — us
• Account
• Donate

Clean energy journalism for a cooler tomorrow

Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s just-released blueprint doubles down on the state’s landmark climate law while aiming to solve the data center growth problem.

• Link copied to clipboard

For well over a year, the twin problems of rising utility bills and soaring electric demand spurred by the AI boom have consumed the energy policy debate in Virginia, the data center capital of the world.

Clean energy foes — mostly Republicans — say the state’s landmark zero-carbon mandate should be scaled back or scrapped to lower costs and meet electricity needs. Many environmental advocates, meanwhile, are calling for a moratorium on new data centers, a step taken recently by governors in both red Texas and blue New York.

But a new clean energy plan crafted by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger offers a different solution: Leverage the growth of data centers to go carbon-free.

Unveiled Oct. 1, the document doubles down on the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which requires utilities to produce all carbon-free energy by midcentury; and participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate compact to curtail carbon pollution.

At the same time, the blueprint lays out how investor-owned utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power can comply with those laws while feeding power-hungry data centers and getting them to foot the bill.

“There’s been a lot of speculation that our clean energy laws are too ambitious or out of reach,” said Josephus Allmond, Spanberger’s chief energy officer, at a news conference to announce the plan. ​“This modeling should put that notion to bed.”

State law requires the energy plan to be updated every four years. This year’s version uses advanced planning software to model a range of energy-supply scenarios, which is a first for a Virginia governor, and uncommon for governors’ offices across the U.S., experts say.

“I can’t think of other governors’ energy plans — high-level policy documents — where they’ve actually done their homework to show that the math works, the engineering works,” said Brandon Smithwood, a vice president for renewable developer Dimension Energy, which is active across the country.

The plan outlines four utility pathways to net-zero carbon by 2050, all while meeting ​“moderate” growth in electricity demand of 85%. That projection assumes most but not all proposed data centers will come to fruition.

All four routes involve massive growth in solar farms — between 1.2 gigawatts and 1.8 gigawatts per year — and a steady increase in distributed energy resources, such as customer-sited solar and batteries. One maintains current policies, while three add an emphasis on demand flexibility, an idea gaining traction across the country in which data centers reduce their use of the grid when electricity demand is at its height. The facilities can rely on batteries, on-site clean energy, and other sources instead as needed, helping to ensure regular customers don’t have to pay for massive grid buildouts.

Smithwood and others praised the plan’s focus on distributed energy, as well as its specificity. ​“Setting energy goals is one thing, but showing the path to achieving them is a step up,” said Jim Purekal, Virginia director at Advanced Energy United.

The plan also models a fifth scenario in which the state scraps its clean energy goals. The result is a near doubling of carbon emissions and more air pollution, to the tune of $145 billion in health impacts, with a savings of at least $90 billion in costs to the electricity system.

Republican critics seized on that last data point, saying the governor’s own calculations proved their case that the state should repeal the Virginia Clean Economy Act and exit the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

But the plan stresses that the total costs of meeting energy needs in the future, up to $422 billion, needn’t be paid for by most customers. Based on Dominion data, the tech industry could contribute $265 billion to utilities through 2050, the plan’s authors suggest.

“These costs appear high because the scale of growth Virginia faces is enormous, but the modeling shows that the problem is solvable,” the plan says. ​“Further, these results suggest that with proper cost allocation, Virginia can serve new data center growth with clean energy solutions.”

While the plan lacks the force of law, it could provide vital information to regulators and legislators in the years ahead — especially as they evaluate proposals from Dominion for new gas plants or weigh reforms on data centers.

“The plan is detailed, it is innovative, and it is the first of its kind to actually model how we can meet the goals of the Clean Economy Act,” House of Representatives Del. Rip Sullivan, the Fairfax County Democrat who sponsored that 2020 law, said in a call with reporters. ​“It is consistent with what we were thinking.”

And while environmental groups such as the Virginia League of Conservation Voters maintain that a pause on the gigantic computer warehouses is urgently needed, they, too, generally welcomed the blueprint — especially in contrast to the approach taken by Spanberger’s predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin.

“The previous administration threw up its hands on the VCEA,” said Lee Francis, chief program and communications officer for the group. ​“There is devil in the details, but the broad goals of getting to 100% clean are good.”

• Data centers
• Affordability
• Distributed energy resources
• Emissions reduction
• Policy & regulation
• Southeast
• Virginia

This signup form requires necessary cookies.

Allow marketing cookies to load the newsletter signup form.

Elizabeth Ouzts is a contributing reporter at Canary Media who covers North Carolina and Virginia.