Thomas, who won re-election last week, points to local opposition to the proposed Prince William Digital Gateway, which would put more than 30 data centers on the edge of a national reserve located in the state’s north. A group of homeowners challenged the project in court, and a judge invalidated the development plan in August, temporarily halting construction.
“The little guy won in the end, which is rare in any industry, much less where the Magnificent Ten play,” he says, referring to the largest U.S. technology companies. “I think it united people in Virginia politically.”
Thomas, like Hubbard, also says many of his constituents are concerned about the impact of data centers on their electricity bills. “People are just much more cost-conscious,” he says. Energy bills, Thomas says, “are something that have remained relatively unchanged for many years.” But in Virginia, the electricity load from data centers is there helping to raise utility bills– says Tomasz.
Both Thomas and Hubbard are Democrats, but opposition to data centers, as the Data Center Watch report highlights, is entirely bipartisan. And some national Republican politicians, incl Senator Josh HawleyCongressmen Thomas Massie and Congressmen Marjorie Taylor Greene began speaking out against them.
“People should pay close attention to local city, county and state data center permits and demand protection for their water and energy bills!!!” Greene, who has been criticizing the expansion of data centers for months, published in October November 7.
Substantial tech companies have so far made few public statements about exiting data center projects. Although some, like Meta, assure publicly available information in their data centers, others in the industry rely heavily on them confidentiality agreements when building recent data centers, providing the community with little or no information about these projects, including about technology companies that may be involved.