Kyle Hart is with the National Parks Conservation Association, which has been tracking plans for new data centers in Virginia. Already, he says, we’re the world capital of these facilities, but we can expect ten times as much capacity in the years to come.
“Dominion Energy said in February that they have signed contracts with data center developers for 70 gigawatts. We have barely just begun the data center build out in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic if what is being talked about comes to fruition.”
Developers are especially excited, he says, about land adjacent to national parks.
“We have been successful at fighting off other developments there in the past, and so you have large swaths of open space that don’t have other things on them," Hart explains. "Developing on open flat arm fields, is much cheaper than taking old malls or old industrial sites and turning them into data centers.”
He adds that there are plans to build new high-voltage power lines to supply these centers across the Appalachian Trail, the Shenandoah National Park and the Wilderness Battlefield among others with towers up to 200 feet tall.
“What we’re seeing is new power line either upgrades or new systems that either cut across national parks or run very close to national parks.”
So his group is lobbying for greater government regulation and more industry transparency to protect the nation’s natural and historic resources and to prevent the air and noise pollution associated with data centers.
“They’re not like normal operating hours, like nine to five. It’s 24/7, 365 noise," Hart warns.
