Virginia’s debate over data centers has reached a turning point.
For years, the commonwealth’s principal challenge was attracting investment. That effort succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Northern Virginia is now home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers and has become an indispensable part of the nation’s — and increasingly the world’s — digital infrastructure.
Today, however, Virginia faces a different challenge. It is no longer simply recruiting an industry. It is stewarding one.
Recent discussions have focused on taxes, electric demand, transmission lines, water consumption, noise and local impacts. These are all legitimate concerns. Yet they are largely being addressed as separate issues rather than as parts of a single public policy challenge.
The more important question has received remarkably little attention.
What happens when Virginia’s data centers grow old?
Not obsolete overnight, but mature. Every successful industry eventually reaches a point where decisions shift from attracting initial investment to encouraging reinvestment. Data centers are no different.
Within the next decade, owners of existing facilities will increasingly face decisions about modernization, expansion, redevelopment and replacement of equipment. Those decisions will be influenced by advances in computing technology, artificial intelligence, cooling systems, power efficiency and economics.
Virginia should begin asking what will drive those reinvestment decisions.
The commonwealth already possesses an extraordinary concentration of private investment in land, buildings, substations, transmission infrastructure, fiber networks and skilled personnel. Those assets have enormous value. Before assuming that future demand must be met primarily through new campuses on previously undeveloped land, shouldn’t Virginia first understand the opportunities presented by reinvestment in the infrastructure already in place?
Could modernization of existing campuses increase computing capacity while making better use of existing electric and fiber infrastructure? Could reinvestment reduce pressure for additional greenfield development? Could it lessen demands for new transmission corridors, substations, roads and water infrastructure? Could redevelopment of existing industrial sites meet some future needs more effectively than extending development into productive farmland and rural communities?
These questions deserve careful study before the commonwealth commits itself to another generation of infrastructure decisions.
This is not an argument against data centers. Nor is it an argument against economic development. Virginia’s success in attracting technology investment has been remarkable and should continue to be encouraged.
But success changes the policy challenge.
The next chapter in Virginia’s data center economy should not be guided solely by recruitment strategies developed during the industry’s rapid expansion. It should be guided by a broader public-interest framework that integrates economic development, energy, transmission, land use, water resources, taxpayer protection and long-term stewardship.
Good public policy asks not only how to attract the next investment, but how to make the wisest use of the investments already made.
Virginia has mastered recruitment.
Its next challenge is stewardship.
Bill Russell is a former federal telecommunications policy official and former member of the Virginia Public Telecommunications Board.
