How to Build a Data Center, According to an AI-Curious Conservationist

This week’s conversation is with Renee Grabe, a conservation advocate for the environmental group Nature Forward who is focused intently on data center development in Northern Virginia. I reached out to her for a fresh perspective on where data centers and renewable energy development fits in the Commonwealth amidst heightened frustration over land use and agricultural impacts, especially after this past election cycle. I thought her views on policy-making here were refreshingly nuanced.

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.

Tell me more about how you started focusing on data centers.

So, in Fairfax County, in 2020 or 2021, people were pursuing the construction of an indoor ski facility on a landfill. From a climate perspective, to build something that would need to be cooled 24/7 for indoor skiing seemed like a very bad proposal in terms of energy usage. And for what kind of gain?

Then our friends at the Sierra Club were saying, indoor ski slopes? Bad, yes. But data centers? Way, way worse. Those aren’t cooling to support snow but are cooling much larger areas on a much larger scale, dwarfing the area of that one ski slope. This was around the time the Prince William Digital Gateway was showing up – they were saying all these acres of agricultural lands and single-family housing zones were about to be rezoned. This was a big deal, and Sierra Club led the way in opening our eyes to this. The rezoning ultimately passed. The data centers were sued and the people who filed the lawsuit won, but pre-planning for the centers is still allowed to take place.

The way we think about the impacts of data centers, besides the loss of natural lands and the amount of energy that’s going to be needed to power these things, has been diesel generators. These are the things that are backup generation and the camel’s nose under the tent is trying to get them to be primary power.

Now I want to ask you a provocative question: is there any middle ground between letting these projects be built unfettered and outright bans on their development?

We have no regulation today. From our standpoint, these things are coming, they’re here. We know a lot more now than we did in 2022. As we make decisions about how and where to build these facilities we all need – I mean we’re using one right now. I use a data center all day at work. Teams conferencing. ChatGPT to answer a question. We need these. So if we’re going to build them, let’s not give a pass to some of the world’s largest and richest companies. Let’s ask them to put the guardrails on to protect our residences and our infrastructure to make sure they’re as sustainable as possible.

Okay, so what are the guardrails then?

The costs of what was going to go into a data center need to be more transparent. We need to bring accountability to the forefront right away as they’re being built.

In Ohio, they passed a law requiring data center companies to pay for a high percentage of the power they’re using. That cut a significant number of the projects in Ohio. This industry is so speculative and a land grab and a rush to be first to get the most.

You have this dichotomy of land values for residences being inundated, while land values for developers are skyrocketing. We have an affordability crisis going on and we are all on the hook for paying for the infrastructure to power these things.

So when you think about what regulation might make data center development more reasonable, it’s asking for the costs happening to be borne by the industry making them. Let’s get rid of some of the incentives for power users. We don’t need to be encouraging the loss of state revenue, either – we’re leaving money on the table to bring these facilities here.

Lastly, our readers love to get hyperlocal. I know you’re intently focused on Fairfax County right now which has been a big part of the data center boom in Virginia – what’s happening there?

There are a couple things that have happened over the course of this past year. Fairfax County passed a data center zoning ordinance amendment – minimum requirements a data center will have to adhere to. The big thing with that one is, you have to have a special exception if you build within a mile of a Metro station. When you think about good land use and building a data center within a walkable distance of a Metro, that’s eye-openingly poor land use policy and a missed opportunity for transit-oriented development. It doesn’t mean they can’t be built near one but you have to get a special exception.

Some things can’t be regulated at the local level. Like generators. That’s in the hands of the state.

Last night, we had a public hearing at the Fairfax County board level for our policy plan – our comprehensive plan providing guidance for developers who want to get a special exception or rezoning. It is not law. It is not required. It is a visionary document that helps us get to better. They’ve added a section for data centers in that. In May, staff put forward something pretty good, making sure data centers met a minimum level of efficiency. But our chairman of the county board said it went above and beyond our zoning ordinance and said he didn’t think it was appropriate, so staff rewrote that section and stripped out a lot of the specificity and higher standards that were in that document.

At the hearing, they deferred a decision, listening to the public but not having a discussion at the board level. They’ve left the record open through December 9th.