This document discusses the impacts of data center growth on Virginia's clean energy future and outlines potential solutions. Key points: - Data center energy demand is growing exponentially in Virginia and straining the electric grid, requiring hundreds of acres of utility-scale solar per building. - This threatens decades of land, wildlife, water, and air quality conservation efforts in the state. One data center can require 300-900 acres of solar development. - Dominion's 2023 integrated resource plan forecasts doubling of peak electric load by 2037 due largely to data centers, and proposes billions for new gas plants and transmission lines rather than renewable energy. - Solutions discussed include accelerating the transition to distributed and utility-scale

1. Data Centers & Virginia's
Clean Energy Future
2023 Annual Meeting
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

2. Julie Bolthouse
Director of Land Use
jbolthouse@pecva.org
Ashish Kapoor
Senior Energy and Climate Policy Analyst
akapoor@pecva.org

3. Today’s Presentation
● Climate Change Action
and Policies
● Energy Transition
● Exploding Data Center
Energy Demand
● Dominion’s 2023
Integrated Resource Plan
● What can we do?
Photo Credit: Lynne Kaye

4. Climate Change Threat - Changing
Temperatures and Precipitation Patterns
● Hotter summers and the associated health impacts
● Seasonal cycles are shifting and impacting important
plants and animals, like crops and pollinators
● More flooding and more drought as rain events
become concentrated into fewer, bigger storms
between dry periods, and groundwater and
reservoirs can’t replenish as quickly as in the past

5. PEC’s Actions on Climate
● Reducing vehicle miles
traveled through better
land use and transportation
planning
● Land conservation and
sustainable land
management
● Green energy policy and
planning for resilience

6. ● National and Regional
policies
● Utility Scale Solar
● Distributed Generation
● Newer Technologies
Energy Transition

7. Energy Talk
● Definitions
○ 1,000 KW=1 MW
○ 1,000 MW = 1 GW
○ kWh= electricity produced
○ Transmission/Distribution/
Substation
● PJM
○ A regional transmission
operator that operates the
grid essentially from IL to
VA and NJ to NC

8. Virginia Clean Economy Act
● Mandatory Renewable Portfolio
Standard
○ 100% renewable energy by
2045
● 25% of renewable generation can
come from out of state
● Distributed Generation Cap → 6%

9. ● Market based, cooperative
agreement between 12
eastern states
● Pushed CO2 emissions
down by 50% and raised
$6B for local communities
● Air Pollution Board voted
6/7 to leave agreement
RGGI:
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

10. Inflation Reduction Act

11. Summary of National and State Landscape
State:
Virginia Clean Economy Act = 100% renewable by 2050
Regional:
RGGI = Carbon Cap Agreement has reduced CO2 by 50%
National:
Inflation Reduction Act = $400B of clean energy incentives

13. Utility Scale Solar

15. Large Scale Solar
Future in Virginia
● 11th nationally in solar
capacity
● South Atlantic fastest
growing solar region in U.S.
● Avg. 1 MW of generation
requires 7-10 acres of land
for solar development.

16. Source: VALEN Tracker

17. Process/Queue
Source: PV Magazine

18. Chesapeake Conservancy: Neural AI Mapping Research

19. ● Bullets
Best Practices
● Minimize impacts to:
○ Historical, cultural and
scenic resources
○ Prime agricultural soils and
forested land
○ Wildlife
○ Water Quality
● Minimal grading with soil and
erosion control
● Construction
● Decommissioning
● Pollinator-Smart Program

20. Summary of Utility Scale Solar in VA
● Big portion of solar future
● Best practices
● Data center demand = 100,000s acres of solar
● Interconnection queue backlog

21. ● Bullets
Distributed Generation
● Rooftop
● Community
● Brownfields
● Commercial
● Parking Lot
● Agrivoltaics

22. Challenges of Distributed
Generation
● Changing policy environment
● Often requires 5-7 year ROI
● Labor challenges

23. Benefits of Distributed
Generation
● Distribution based
● Less lost to inefficiency
● Protection against outages
○ Load shifting
○ Battery
● Faster interconnection
● Energy Independence
● Protection against rate increases

24. Source: Google Project Sunroof

25. About ¼ of
Virginia’s
demand from
rooftop solar
Source: Google Project Sunroof

26. ● Allow residents to get their energy
from small solar facilities not
located on their property
● Particularly appealing for those who
rent, live in multifamily buildings or
have shady yards or other physical
restrictions that prevent them from
mounting panels on their own roof.
Community Solar in
Virginia

27. Avoid the Queue!
● PJM currently has 150 GW of solar
in the interconnection queue.
● Community and distributed solar
is an optimal way to add more
solar, faster to the grid.
● Less impact to agricultural land

28. Brownfields
● Land developed in the
past – not currently
being used because of
contaminants on the site
● Thousands of sites
available
Source: DEQ

29. Parking Lot Solar

31. Challenges of Parking Lot
Solar
● Costs more than building solar
on an open space
● 10-12 year average ROI
● Need data on site viability

32. Advantages of Parking Lot
Solar
● There is a lot of parking
● Built land
● EV adoption can offset higher cost
● Shading/Protection from
elements
● PPA option

33. ● Bullets
Agrivoltaics
● Co-location of agricultural
production and energy
production
● Elevated panels
● Crop success has been
found with winter wheat,
kale, broccoli, potatoes,
swiss chard. Shade
tolerant crops tend to do
better

35. Challenges of Agrivoltaics
● Existing studies limited
● Need trials for Virginia climate and
crops
● Need local policy that shows zoning
districts where agrivoltaics can be
productive/compatible with local
ordinances
● Incentives and retention of agricultural
tax benefits
● More expensive
● Less effective crop yield
● Ordinances that limit net metering
for agricultural zones properties

36. Advantages of Agrivoltaics
● Farmers can diversify income
● Cost saving on vegetation
management
● Increased overall use of the land
● Increased efficiency for panels
● Higher panels run cooler and more
efficient
● Increased moisture content can lead
to higher biomass growth and/or
nutrient rich content for grazing
● Shade for cows and sheep
● Waste as fertilizer

37. Pieces of a Puzzle
● Rooftop/Community
● Brownfields
● Parking Lot Solar
● Agrivoltaics

38. But we have a big problem…
…exploding data center energy
demand
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

39. Source: www.vedp.org/industry/data-centers

40. Threat to Decades of
Conservation
● Land
● Wildlife/Habitat
● Water
● Recreation/Parks
● Air Quality
● History Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

41. Power Hungry → Land Hungry
Even if additional power is met through renewable utility scale solar that
requires hundreds of acres of solar panels per building along with new
substations and transmission lines.
1 data center = 30-90 MW
1 MW of solar ≈ 10 acres
One data center building ≈ 300-900 acres of utility scale solar

42. Threat to Decades of
Conservation
● Land
● Wildlife/Habitat
● Water
● Recreation/Parks
● Air Quality
● History Photo Credit: Graham Cullen, Frederick News-Post

43. Threat to Decades of
Conservation
Photo of Occoquan Reservoir from Kokosing Dam Upgrade Project
● Land
● Wildlife/Habitat
● Water
● Recreation/Parks
● Air Quality
● History

44. Threat to Decades of
Conservation
● Land
● Wildlife/Habitat
● Water
● Recreation/Parks
● Air Quality
● History Photo of cyclist passing AWS data center on the Washington and
Old Dominion Trail in Ashburn, VA. Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

45. Threat to Decades of
Conservation
● Land
● Wildlife/Habitat
● Water
● Recreation/Parks
● Air Quality
● History
Source:
www.pecva.org/work/energy-work/data-centers
-diesel-generators-and-air-quality-pec-web-map/

46. Threat to Decades of
Conservation
● Land
● Wildlife/Habitat
● Water
● Recreation/Parks
● Air Quality
● History
Full story available:
www.datacenterdynamics.co
m/en/news/historic-black-cem
etery-was-moved-for-microsof
t-data-center-in-virginia/

47. The Digital Age
● Outsourcing of information
technology functions
● Advancing smartphone
technology and apps (5G)
● Roll out of rural broadband
● Digitalization and storage of
data
● Internet of things
● Artificial intelligence and
machine learning

48. What is a Data Center?
North Fork of Broad Run
Fuel Storage
Diesel Generators
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC Photo Credit: Christopher Bowns,
Wikimedia Commons
Photo Source: www.globalpwr.com

49. Types of Data Centers
● Cloud - hosted off-premises (ex:
Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure),
Google
● Colocation - companies rent space
(ex: Digital Realty and QTS)
● Enterprise - built, owned, and
operated by companies (ex: Meta)
● Bitcoin Miner - dedicated to
cryptocurrency (ex: TeraWulf)
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

50. Local Land Use Impacts
of Data Centers Vary…
● Traffic
● Noise
● Lighting
● Water Vapor Plumes
● Wastewater Discharge
● Effect on Adjacent Uses
● Water Usage
● Air Quality
● Water Quality
● Energy Usage Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

51. Data Centers Consume a Huge Amount of Electricity
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC
Photo Source: www.dominionenergy.com

52. Dominion’s Quarterly Report from Q4 2022
Source: Dominion Q4 2022 earnings presentation

53. Source: www.pjm.com/-/media/library/reports-notices/load-forecast/2023-load-report.ashx

54. Regional Growth for Entire PJM Area
Forecast assumptions:
● Increased adoption of EV’s
● Increased adoption of
behind-the-meter solar
generation
● Increased battery storage

55. PJM Mid Atlantic Section

56. PJM Western Section

57. Dominion Area Explosive Growth Trends

58. That’s a doubling of peak load within 14 years!

60. Source: cdn-dominionenergy-prd-001.azureedge.net/-/media/pdfs/global/company/2023-va-integrated-resource-plan.pdf

61. Large increases in cost compared to just last year…
Source: cdn-dominionenergy-prd-001.azureedge.net/-/media/pdfs/global/company/2022-va-integrated-resource-plan.pdf

62. Reason for drastic increase in cost is demonstrated by
this chart showing how the projections for power
demand have increased over the past 4 years.

63. Dominion’s Five Plans
● All delay retirement of fossil fuel
power sources
● All include 970 MW of new
fracked gas generation with one
proposing nearly 3GW!
● All include small nuclear reactors,
a costly and unproven technology
● All have a heavy reliance on
purchasing out of state power
● All include billions for new
transmission line construction Source:
cdn-dominionenergy-prd-001.azureedge.net/-/media/pdfs/global/company/2023-va-int
egrated-resource-plan.pdf

64. Existing Transmission Lines
Source: www.pjm.com/

65. Source: www.datacentermap.com

66. What can we do?

67. 1. Keep up progress on
transition to renewable energy
● Well sited and designed utility scale solar
● Peak load and resiliency
○ Smart thermostats
○ Batteries
○ Virtual Power Plants
● Lift cap on Distributed Generation
(currently at 6% of peak load)
● State incentives: parking lot, brownfield,
agrivoltaics, rooftop
● Solarize Piedmont & Solar on the Farm Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

68. 2. Raise Awareness and
Demand Data Center Reform
● Spread the word!
● Contact Elected Officials
○ Educate them about the
impacts
○ Demand a statewide study
○ Shift cost to the industry
● Join the statewide coalition!
Photo Credit: Hugh Kenny, PEC

69. Questions?