On the morning of July 9, 1918, the No. 4 train for the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway rolled west out of Union Station in Nashville, bound for Memphis.
What the engineers didn’t realize — and their station-bound operators didn’t realize until it was too late — was that the No. 1 train from Memphis was headed east, behind schedule, on the same track.
In the cornfields 5 miles west of Nashville, the inevitable happened. As described in a song written by Bobby Braddock and Rafe Van Hoy, and later recorded by David Allen Coe:
a young man in a milk truck out near Dutchman’s Grade
said oh my God two trains one track
then he closed his eyes and he prayed
a sister from the orphan’s home made a cross upon her chest
cause one iron beast was coming from the east
and another one was coming from the west
The result was what’s regarded as one of the worst rail disasters in American history (101 dead, 171 injured) — and a pretty good country song.
I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic, but it sure looks like a similar train wreck — this one more metaphorical — is about to happen in Richmond. Except this time maybe with more trains.
Some of this we’ve seen coming for some time — the state has mandated that utilities go carbon-free, which means we need more renewables, but onshore wind has proven almost impossible to build and the communities best suited for solar (rural ones, with flat, relatively cheap land) are becoming increasingly resistant to allowing more solar. That alone is a problem, and it’s prompted talk of potential legislation that would give the state some say in energy-siting decisions, something that alarms local governments.
Those concerns have been heightened by a recent state report that shows that data centers are gulping down so much energy that, if their growth isn’t restrained, electricity demand in Virginia will triple by 2040. That sets up an even more uncomfortable rural-vs.-urban conflict, where Northern Virginia is counting on rural Virginia to give up its land for more solar farms to power those data centers.
All that’s background by now. Over the past week we’ve had more developments:
Governor comes down on the side of local land use but also wants more energy
In his State of the Commonwealth address on Monday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin made it clear that he believes the state should not override local zoning decisions on either energy or data centers. Cardinal’s Richmond-based reporter Elizabeth Beyer has more about this in her coverage of the General Assembly. Meanwhile, he said that Virginia needs to double its energy production, which raises the question of how this will happen if localities can block solar development. State Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, points out that part of the problem is that localities (sometimes the same ones) are blocking energy projects but allowing energy-gobbling data centers.
A rural county seems poised to reject data centers
As data centers find Northern Virginia localities more resistant to allowing more, they’re looking elsewhere. However, a proposal for a data center complex in Pittsylvania County has stirred intense opposition, and the planning commission has recommended the project be denied. That starts to raise the question of just where data centers will go if they can’t find a welcome home even in a rural county that is otherwise eager to create more jobs. Data center technicians in Virginia make between $64,134 and $80,818, according to Salary.com. Meanwhile, the median household income in Pittsylvania County is $54,115, according to the Census Bureau. When a rural county that’s losing population, and seeing more people move out than move in, rejects jobs that pay so much higher than the prevailing amounts, well, that shows the depth of feeling on this issue. If Pittsylvania goes through with this decision, that would put it in the unusual position of allowing solar but blocking data centers, when usually it’s been the other way around.
Southwest Virginia legislators target Appalachian Power for high rates
There once was a time when it seemed that Virginia’s utilities got their say in Richmond. More recently, we’ve seen the rise of legislators critical of Dominion Energy, the state’s largest utility. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You, too, can be a donor and have no say.) With the notable exception of state Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, those legislators tend to be Democrats, and their criticism comes from the left. Now we have Republicans from Southwest Virginia who are going after Appalachian Power, which is part of the Ohio-based American Electric Power system. Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, introduced SB 1281, which would allow Appalachian’s residential customers to buy their power from elsewhere if their bills are 25% more than the statewide average.
The chief co-patron of Hackworth’s bill is another Southwest Virginia Republican, state Sen. Todd Pillion of Washington County. These are two of the nicest people I’ve met in my life, but the press release they sent out last week was pretty darned incendiary. Hackworth called Appalachian’s rates “unconscionable” and referred to its customers as “being held hostage by greedy corporations that put investors and shareholders profits before their customers.” When have you ever heard Republicans talk like this?
Pillion said much the same in his part of the statement: “AEP provides the most expensive electricity for one of the most vulnerable populations in the Commonwealth — the people of Southwest Virginia,” he said. “If they want to continue serving our population in Southwest Virginia, they need to find ways to lower their rates to the statewide average.” (Appalachian’s response is that it hasn’t seen the bill yet, but “we encourage our customers to contact us so that we may assist them in finding ways to lower their energy usage through participation in our energy efficiency programs or by learning about services available to help ease the financial burden.”)
The question of why Appalachian’s rates are so high is a matter for another day, but the point is, we now have Republicans saying worse things about Appalachian than I’ve ever heard the most anti-Dominion Democrats say about that utility. These aren’t the only Southwest Virginia Republicans unhappy with Appalachian, either. Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County, has been, too. He’s vowed to introduce legislation to block Appalachian from raising rates for two years to give the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation time to figure out ways to force Appalachian to lower rates.
Maybe this simply proves the truism that all politics is local, but when we have rural conservatives and urban crescent liberals finding common ground, it seems time to pay attention. (Of course, Dominion customers may think their rates are too high, but the Appalachian customers in Southwest Virginia might find them a bargain.)
How does this relate to the power demand/rural solar issue? For the most part, it doesn’t. Hackworth, Pillion and Morefield would be unhappy with the power rates even if there were no such things as data centers. However, Hackworth has long advocated that data centers locate in Southwest Virginia — he sees jobs and tax revenue — but says they, along with other companies, are scared off from the region by high power rates. “When companies look at our utility rates, that’s a red flag,” Hackworth says. If Northern Virginia legislators want to slow the growth of data centers but keep that tax revenue in Virginia, then it suddenly becomes in their interest to help reduce power costs in Southwest Virginia. That doesn’t sound like a train wreck to me (although it may seem one to Appalachian), it sounds like a coalition.
Here’s where there might be a train wreck, though.
Natural gas could power some data centers, but natural gas is controversial
Why did Balico, the company behind the data center proposal in Pittsylvania, want to locate near Chatham? Because of the recently opened Mountain Valley Pipeline that pumps natural gas through the area.
Likewise, Hackworth touts abandoned coal sites in Southwest Virginia as ideal locations for data centers. They’re remote, so have fewer neighbors to complain about noise and such. Many also have natural gas on the property. Natural gas, though, is controversial because it’s a fossil fuel. The Democrats in Northern Virginia who would like to restrict the growth of data centers might not be so happy to see them go to Southwest Virginia if that means more natural gas. Finally:
The Martinsville NAACP warns about solar development
Because the opposition to solar is coming from rural areas, we think of this as conservative opposition. However, last week, criticism of solar came from what usually has been a liberal group: the NAACP, specifically the leadership of the Martinsville-Henry County chapter of the civil rights group.
“Solar farms are going up across Virginia, destroying acres … of land,” chapter resident Naomi Hodge-Muse said, adding: “That’s what people aren’t understanding. The poorest people pay the biggest consequence.” Cardinal’s Martinsville-Henry County reporter, Dean-Paul Stephens, has more on this story.
If some projects become a racial justice issue, that complicates the politics of developing solar in Southside even more. Southside counties generally have high percentages of minority populations. We saw racial issues surface in a previous energy project in Southside. When Dominion wanted to build a natural gas pumping station in Buckingham County (for the since-canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline), former Vice President Al Gore traveled to the predominantly Black community of Union Hall to protest the project. “This proposed pipeline is a reckless, racist ripoff,” he said.
Now, maybe it’s not surprising that an environmental activist such as Gore would oppose a natural gas project, wherever it might be, but what if we see this kind of opposition surface in regard to some solar projects? The politics are already uncomfortable enough with Democratic legislators from metro areas wanting to find ways to make rural Republican counties approve solar; if a key part of the Democratic constituency starts to oppose them, too, what then?
Four questions for Virginia
That’s why all this is looking to me like the proverbial legislative train wreck. That may not happen this year — this may be a slow-moving event that plays out over several years, given the complexity of the issues involved.
- Can we meet the renewable energy mandates in the Clean Economy Act if local governments are increasingly resistant to solar energy? What we have here is a state policy that is dependent on local governments, but those local governments often have different priorities that have nothing to do with energy decisions and everything to do with land use and neighborhood opposition.
- The state has made itself the nation’s capital for an entirely new and quite lucrative industry — data centers — but those data centers are driving electricity demands, which means we need even more energy. Whether we keep the Clean Economy Act intact, modify it or ditch it altogether, can Virginia meet those energy demands, particularly in light of the challenge in locating solar energy?
- The parts of the state with data centers are becoming more skeptical of them while some other parts of the state would love to have some data centers — but it’s difficult for the industry to simply pick the coal counties over the D.C. suburbs. There are complicated technical issues involving fiber optic connections and workforce — and, of course, energy costs. More distant locations, such as Southwest Virginia, could be good locations for data centers that aren’t so dependent on immediacy, such as some artificial intelligence programs, but AI is also what’s driving a lot of data center energy demands. Goldman Sachs projects that AI will increase data centers’ energy demands by 160%. Can Virginia keep attracting data centers but persuade them to locate in communities that want them? That, of course, raises the question: How many communities will want them?
- Finally, some of the parts of the state that would welcome data centers the most would also do so with energy sources that others find bad for the environment. Youngkin has urged more development of natural gas, not less. How is that going to play out?
It’s also unclear whose responsibility it is to figure all this out. Some legislators are trying to make that state renewable mandate work, and you see the pushback on that. If someone wanted to get all the stakeholders together around a table, is there a table big enough?
The Great Nashville Railroad Disaster happened because no one knew, until it was too late, that two trains were on a collision course. Here we can see quite plainly multiple collision courses, but can anyone prevent that?
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