ROANOKE TIMES: Virginia's data center boom solves more problems than it creates
Next time you fly and have to land at Dulles, just north of Chantilly, Virginia, you can see with your own eyes the epic sprawl of data centers driving so much consternation amongst Virginians. It’s the topic du jour of every town hall and county board of supervisors meeting.
Petersburg residents are the latest to join the uproar about a proposed 175-acre center, with one local saying, "I don't think it will be good for us at all.”
It’s past time for tech firms and policymakers to explain what “good” looks like when it comes to the data revolution, because Virginia has a lot to gain from being the epicenter of the AI boom.
As it stands, Virginia leads the country in data centers — 663 operational facilities and 595 under construction for hosting thousands of computers to produce bytes of data. Out my window in Manassas, Virginia, two are going up, right next to one built last year. For local officials, the why is obvious: $4.2 billion in projected tax revenue over the next decade. But down the road in Richmond, state lawmakers are looking for ways to appease anxious voters complaining about energy bills and claims of pollution related to diesel generators at each data center.
Protestors at town halls are often concerned with money, as they should be. Data centers in Virginia used a quarter of the state's electricity in 2023, and the latest Consumer Price Index shows average electric bills kept pace with inflation by ticking up only 5% from late 2024 to the end of 2025. Some estimates show bills only went up by 1%, despite a 14% boost in demand.
But the actual driver of costs isn’t the data demand itself, it’s not your spouse and coworkers playing on ChatGPT all day, rather it’s energy grids that are decades behind in investment for hardware updates. A Washington Post investigation showed that since 2005, the cost of generating power has dropped by 35%, but transmitting that electricity has tripled in price, and distribution fees have gone up almost 100%.
It’s the equivalent of having a 1975 Oldsmobile that nets 9 miles per gallon. The efficiency problem isn’t the gas prices or the hobby itself, it's just old hardware. Localities perhaps underestimated how fast generative AI would advance, because in 2025, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. energy grids a D+ grade, a step down from its C- in 2021.
It’s not surprising that Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, is now talking about tech firms “paying our own way” on data center projects. With cooperation from local utility commissions, Microsoft is planning to front the upgrade costs and solve the hardware problem. NVIDIA, as recently as this month, unveiled its next-generation chip, which improves water efficiency by 300x, and has far lighter needs in terms of power generation to keep things cool inside data centers. Emissions and water use concerns will be innovated away very quickly.
Still, when Petersburg residents express that data centers won’t be good for them, no amount of techno-optimism is going to change that feeling. Material concerns count. That’s why President Trump is playing both sides of the dispute, chiding AI and tech firms for the energy consumption, while applauding Microsoft for putting their money where their future is — Virginia communities.
A dose of realism is overdue on data centers. No one has to like the way they look, and I certainly don’t. Despite all that, what I value most for people in my state is that we have genuine economic growth and work opportunities that improve standards of living broadly. A state that isn’t building things and offering skilled labor for emerging markets is a state where people aren’t moving up.
In surrounding states, nightshift welding managers are earning six-figure salaries as part of the data center buildout. Hundreds of construction jobs are attached to every build site, and infrastructure is getting built to accommodate them. National pay averages for these workers sit around $81,800 or $39.33 per hour, a 32% increase from before the buildouts began.
Affordability will remain the main political issue in the 2026 midterms, and data centers will inevitably be caught up in that hurricane of voter discontent. There’s no getting around the land use concerns or the eye sores, but what tech firms can do is contribute to better living for the people for whom data is a part of daily life.