Whitney Pipkin Mar 2, 2023
Jessica Grove and her son, Myles, a 4th grade student from Gainesville, VA, share their concerns at a hearing on Feb. 27 about a proposal to allow data centers to use backup power generators, including diesel fuel sources, in the coming months during an upcoming period of energy transmission shortfalls. “How will you protect the air I breathe?” Myles Grove asked.
Residents and environmental groups during a hearing on Tuesday aired a long list of concerns over a proposal that would allow nearly 300 Northern Virginia data centers to regularly run emergency power generators this spring and summer.
Many of these industrial generators burn diesel or natural gas, releasing pollutants that pose risks to human and environmental health.
The data centers are also somewhat concentrated in certain areas — Loudoun County’s “Data Center Alley” being one of them — which has residents concerned about their cumulative air quality impact should hundreds of pollution-emitting generators run at the same time.
Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality has a permit program that typically regulates when, and how frequently, data centers can run emergency on-site generators for testing and redundancy purposes. But in late January the department proposed a temporary variance from those regulations that would allow data centers in Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties to run their backup generators whenever the grid cannot meet their demands from mid-March through the end of July. During that time, electricity demand from data centers in those areas is expected to exceed the capacity of the area’s energy transmission system, the DEQ’s notice stated.
A data center industry spokesman, Josh Levi, said during the hearing that the transmission issues are likely limited to Loudoun County, and he requested that the agency limit the scope of the variance to that one county, in response.
“Given [Dominion Power’s] assurance that the impact of the transmission constraint is limited to Eastern Loudoun County, we believe there’s an opportunity to be more precise in addressing these potential risks,” said Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition.
A 45-day public comment period on the proposed measure began at the end of January and ends on March 14. If approved, the variance would become effective immediately after the comment period, upon being signed by DEQ Director Mike Rolband, and expire on July 31.
Morgan Butler, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, was one of several speakers at the hearing who said the information provided by DEQ about the variance was not enough “to understand this proposal’s impacts.”
The agency’s variance notice did not detail how many generators the facilities would be running, how long they would run or how much additional air pollution they would contribute to the local environment, Butler said. The lawyer specifically noted the variance proposal lacked information about the types and amounts of pollutants that the variance would allow and the local impact of that pollution.
“DEQ was legally required to include that information in the public notice for the proposal, and it did not,” he said. “This violation must be corrected, and the comment period must be extended so the public can properly assess the information.”
In lieu of the agency providing such details, staff from the Piedmont Environmental Council used documentation from existing data center air permits to estimate that as many as 4,632 commercial diesel generators, with the capacity to produce enough energy for millions of homes, could be covered by the variance in Northern Virginia.
“In this action, you are inherently enabling almost 11 gigawatts worth of generation capacity via diesel fuels, which are high emission in terms of carbon [monoxide] and nitrogen oxide — which are ozone precursors — to operate during peak ozone season,” Piedmont Environmental Council President Chris Miller told DEQ representatives during the hearing.
Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, said at the hearing that his organization crunched the numbers to calculate the number of commercial diesel generators that could be allowed to run for extended periods of time under a variance on air quality regulations being proposed for data centers.
Whitney Pipkin
Thomas Faha, director of DEQ’s Northern Regional Office, was also at the hearing. When asked if he wanted to respond to any of the questions or figures raised in the comments, he said “typically we stay quiet until the comment period is closed.”
DEQ Spokesperson Aaron Proctor said before the hearing that the agency hopes the variance would not be invoked and that it is “intended only as a precautionary measure.”
PJM Interconnection, the organization that coordinates electricity transmission in 13 states and the District of Columbia, issues warnings when conditions indicate that stress on the grid in a particular area is high and could lead to a declaration of emergency, he said. “Such warnings are rarely issued [and are] for very short periods of time,” Proctor said. Since 2015, he added, the duration of such warnings has averaged 17 hours a year. But he also said the variance for the region’s data centers, which operate around the clock, would be the first issued “for this type of facility.”
PEC found that the grid manager has issued an increasing number of “maximum generation emergency” alerts over the last several years, indicating that the energy grid has been nearing capacity over time. There was one such alert in 2019, followed by 10 of them in 2020, 30 in 2021, and 82 in 2022, the nonprofit found. DEQ’s notice for the proposal also said that the transmission constraints are likely to continue through 2025.
One commenter at the hearing put his assessment of what led to the need for this proposal more bluntly.
“If you build more data centers faster than you can provide the power, it’s a lose-lose-situation,” said Kevin O’Neill, director of the Fauquier Climate Change Group. “This is a Band-Aid on a problem that’s going to get progressively worse. We need some planning here.”
Many county-based groups have formed in the past three years to oppose sprawling data center proposals that have cropped up next to neighborhoods, national parks and schools. Almost all data center proposals that have come before county boards of supervisors in the region recently have gained approval, despite growing opposition from residents.
Spencer Snakard, president of Protect Fauquier, said her group formed in response to a proposed 220,000-square-foot data center in Warrenton, VA, that the Town Council narrowly approved in mid-February. “Litigation … is under serious consideration,” the group’s website said of the decision.
“The data center industry is taking over our area, at our cost,” Snakard said at the hearing.
Counties west and south of Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William, such as Fauquier and Orange, are beginning to seeing more data center proposals as global demand for data use continues to rise. Northern Virginia’s data center infrastructure is already crucial to moving about 70% of the world’s internet traffic.
Residents also raised concerns about the additional noise impacts of hundreds of diesel generators kicking on. One speaker, a retired NASA engineer who has studied data center noise, said the sound could be 50% louder than the typical data center noise levels, which are already high.
Bill Wright, a Gainesville resident who actively opposed changes to Prince William County’s comprehensive plan that made way for expansive data center projects, said he has repeatedly asked DEQ to provide an environmental analysis of the cumulative impact of these projects. But agency officials told him they do not tend to get involved in local zoning decisions unless a state permit is required. Wright said that approach has set the stage for “the crisis in electrical grid strain we are facing.”
“At what point will some local, state or federal agency step up and acknowledge what any child can see? The data center industry is way out over its skis and requires more responsible regulation,” Wright said. “If we know this industry is the source of the problem, the onus should be on them to be part of the solution.
Virginia legislators, rather, at the end of February approved an expansion of sales tax exemptions and grant funds for data center companies looking to locate projects in the state. This followed an announcement in January that Amazon Web Services plans to spend $35 billion to establish several new data center campuses in Virginia. Meanwhile, a bill proposing a statewide study of the water and energy use impacts of data center developments died in committee in February.
Wright and others have wondered if selective service reductions by the data centers could be an alternative solution to using onsite generators, rather than asking residents to bear the potential pollution costs. Others expressed concerns about the precedent established by the variance, with the opportunity for similar measures to be regularly passed in the future, especially as recently approved projects in surrounding counties are brought onto the electric grid.
The public comment period for the data center variance proposal ends on March 14.