Two views of the proposed Valley Link transmission line

Cobos: Building the reliable and resilient grid that Virginia needs: Why transmission investment is a consumer issue

By Lori Cobos, former commissioner at the Public Utility Commission of Texas and former chief executive and public counsel at the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel

As Texas’s former chief consumer advocate and a former commissioner at the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), I spent nearly six years working to keep electricity affordable for Texas consumers, while ensuring our electric grid remained reliable and resilient. At the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel, I helped secure nearly $1.5 billion in annual utility bill savings for Texas consumers by challenging unnecessary utility spending and ensuring ratepayers only paid for investments that truly benefited them. At the PUCT, I helped lead a historic transmission buildout into the Permian Basin Region in West Texas and the Rio Grande Valley to serve rapidly rising electricity demand.

My experience during and after Winter Storm Uri in 2021 reinforced just how critically important “keeping the lights on” is for the lives, safety and welfare of people. The storm left millions of Texans without power for days, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people and billions of dollars in financial losses. That experience is why I believe investing in transmission infrastructure is not just justified for a reliable and resilient electric grid but also for the welfare and safety of consumers. 

The Valley Link Transmission project, a portfolio of two 765-kV transmission lines through Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, is a smart, future-focused investment that will help ensure Virginians continue to have reliable, resilient and affordable electric service.

First, Virginia’s electricity demand is rising much faster than anyone expected. Data centers, new industrial and manufacturing facilities, population growth and a growing economy are all putting pressure on the state’s grid. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Virginia’s electricity sales grew faster from 2019 to 2025 than any other state except Texas, while the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission predicts Virginia may need twice as much electricity within the next decade.

This is not a challenge that can be addressed later. It represents a pending infrastructure emergency that could ultimately threaten grid reliability if left unaddressed. When the electric grid cannot keep up with electricity demand, consumers pay the price through reliability problems, higher costs, economic losses and their own safety. I experienced this firsthand during Uri in Texas.

Some critics argue that Virginia must choose between investing in their grid and keeping their electricity affordable. These issues are not mutually exclusive. Congestion caused by an inadequate transmission system increases the cost of delivering electricity, while reactive infrastructure investments ultimately cost consumers more in the long run. Proactive, well-planned investments, like Valley Link, help utilities better manage ratepayer cost impacts while reducing the risk of costly reliability failures. The choice is simple: pay now for a reliable and resilient electric grid or pay more later to fix problems caused by an electric grid that is unprepared to meet rising electricity demand.

Second, PJM Interconnection, the independent regional grid operator responsible for delivering electricity to more than 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C., identified and selected Valley Link through a thorough, competitive process. That independent review demonstrates Valley Link is not simply a utility investment, but a solution to an identified reliability need.

Third, like Texas, Virginia has earned a national reputation as a top state for business. Sustaining that success depends on a reliable and resilient electric grid. Valley Link will help support continued economic growth and job creation while creating construction jobs and increasing local tax revenue, particularly in rural communities along the transmission line route.

Investing in transmission infrastructure isn’t a luxury or a “nice to have” initiative — it’s a necessary long-term investment in Virginia’s economy, energy securitya nd the welfare of its people. As someone who has spent my career ensuring policy decisions benefit everyday consumers, I believe Valley Link is the right and necessary step forward for Virginia and its consumers.

* * *

Miller: The Valley Link lines are the most disruptive power projects in Virginia history

By Christopher Miller, president of The Piedmont Environmental Council. 

The headlong rush to build out energy infrastructure for data centers has created a crisis by contract. Dominion and other utilities claim an obligation to serve the unrealistic requests from data centers, which are not reviewed by any state agency. They justify multiple transmission lines — as many as 20-30 over the next two decades — requiring thousands of miles of new and expanded corridors. This would impact Virginia landowners, ratepayers, communities and natural resources in almost every county. Imagine 20-30 new highway corridors, all being planned and built within a compressed period, not by public agencies but by private companies based on contracts they have negotiated in secret with the data center industry.

The two proposals from the Valley Link co-conspirators Dominion Energy, FirstEnergy Transmission and Transource (jointly owned by American Electric Power and Evergy) plan one line cutting through central Virginia from Joshua Falls in Campbell and Amherst County to an undefined and unpermitted location in Culpeper, where it will link to massive and yet unapproved substations in Fauquier County, and a second cutting through a rural area of conserved lands. Warren, Clarke, Frederick and Loudoun counties would experience devastating impacts lasting for generations. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of Cardinal’s donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy).

The proposals are an archetype of the willingness of the technology industry to break things and disrupt. In this case, Valley Link is breaking and disrupting the plans and policies meant to ensure that communities can sustain and encourage a vibrant rural economy, protect natural and historic resources, and preserve the quality of life of their citizens. As a result, counties from Campbell to Culpeper are joining individual landowners, local civic organizations and groups like the American Battlefield Trust, the Piedmont Environmental Council and others to intervene in the State Corporation Commission (SCC) case in opposition to the proposed transmission lines. The SCC has a statutory responsibility to consider the impacts on communities, the environment, the history and scenic values of transmission line projects, and recommend ways to avoid and mitigate those impacts.

These projects also raise the threat of using eminent domain to take private property for the benefit of private companies. The Virginia constitution clearly prohibits the use of eminent domain to further the purposes of private companies. This project was conceived and designed only because of data centers and must be subject to a rigorous analysis of whether they would be necessary but for the demand requests from the private data center industry.

To detail all the impacts from a 765kv transmission line corridor would fill thousands of pages of reports and testimony. The concerns range from the conflict with local comprehensive plans and the reasonable expectations of landowners to the outright destruction of farms, forests, wetlands and historic sites. The scar on the landscape would be stunning. The Valley Link lines would include 200-foot-tall towers and a 200-foot-wide right-of-way. This industrial construction should never intrude on the rural landscape of some of the most hallowed ground in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. 

All of this is at risk because of the secret, unreviewed demand requests of the data center industry; it is a crisis by contract. As has been documented by the Peoples Council of Maryland, but for data center demand requests, none of the transmission lines proposed by Valley Link would be necessary. But the process at PJM, which conducts interstate transmission planning under the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has voted to recommend these projects. Voting is conducted by 520 utilities and a few members representing the public. The public has limited access to documents and no meaningful opportunity to offer comment. 

PJM’s process is the definition of regulatory capture, which in this case means that PJM is beholden to special interests — monopoly utilities — whose influence drives PJM decision-making and who benefit most financially. Citizens are cut out of that decision loop and pay the price both in billing and overall quality of life. 

PJM is a planning body created by an unconstitutional delegation of federal authority over interstate electrical transmission. PJM determines the fate of hundreds of Virginia communities and hundreds of thousands of landowners. The SCC must take the time to responsibly review the demand projections and determine whether there has been adequate consideration of the potential impact of these proposals, but also a full array of alternatives such as undergrounding.

Finally, PEC supports growing calls for the governor to intervene and for the General Assembly to support a Pause to Plan. A pause will allow a full and responsible assessment of what the data center industry has proposed and contracted for in Virginia and determine if these proposals are in the best interest of the commonwealth.