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by Nick Minock
RICHMOND, Va. (7News) — Last week, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger unveiled her energy plan as required by state law. This comes at a crucial time, as hundreds more data centers are expected to tap the electric grid and electricity bills are rising for everyday Virginians.
The Governor lays out a few scenarios in her plan. The ones she’s pushing for include more offshore wind turbines and solar panels.
“Virginia has been and needs to continue to be a place of energy innovation,” said Spanberger.
READ ALSO | Judge allows Virginia offshore wind project to resume construction as legal battles resume
Spanberger’s energy plan includes a big push for solar power, specifically 277,000 acres of solar panels. That’s the size of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and the City of Alexandria combined.
Right now, Virginia has roughly 30,000 acres of solar panels.
“Having read it, it's not really an energy plan,” said State Senator Glen Sturtevant (R-Colonial Heights). “It's really more of a data center growth plan that's wrapped up in environmentally friendly packaging. She wants to essentially carpet Virginia with another 300,000 acres of solar panels. The governor wants to increase what we already have by 10 times to be able to power these data centers. So it's concerning for folks like me who have been calling for a data center moratorium in Virginia. We've got hundreds of data centers already. We're the leading data center location, if not in the entire country, in the entire world, and the governor appears to not be putting the brakes on that development at all.”
Where does the governor plan to put all of the new solar panels?
Spanberger’s plan encourages solar first on places like rooftops, closed landfills, and parking lots.
“There's been a lot of talk about deploying them to brownfields, and we want to be explicit in our desire and efforts to get solar consideration in former mine lands,” said Spanberger.
The plan said 40% of the solar panels would go on farmland and 50% would go on forested areas.
But skeptics said this type of energy is unreliable and would destroy farmland and forests.
“Everyone understands as a matter of common sense that the solar panels aren't effective when the sun isn't out, and the windmills aren't effective when the wind isn't blowing,” said Sturtevant. “But I think it's also sort of a quality of life, and how do we want Virginia's forests and farmlands to be preserved and to look for the coming generations. Many of us don't want to see our hillsides and mountainsides and farms and Virginia forests to be cut down for more solar panels just to serve these data centers, and that's really what the governor's plan is.”
Spanberger said her plan would help make energy more affordable.
But Sturtevant disagrees.
Sturtevant points out that building new energy infrastructure like solar and wind costs money, and he said the governor's plan offers no protections for ratepayers.
How much demand are data centers adding to the grid?
More than 90% of new energy growth in Virginia is driven specifically by data center growth, according to the governor's report.
Right now, 30% of all of Virginia's energy goes to data centers.
Virginia is one of the biggest energy importers of all 50 states. Thirty percent of all of Virginia's electricity is imported from states like West Virginia and Ohio, which have coal power plants.
Can solar power data centers alone?
Spotsylvania County is home to the largest solar development east of the Rockies. The development includes more than 6,300 acres of solar panels, but it does not produce enough energy to power one data center. The solar development is also right next to homes. Thousands of residents spoke out against the project before the Board of Supervisors approved the project.
7News asked the Governor about that solar field two weeks before she unveiled her energy plan.
“Is solar really feasible for this power-hungry industry?” 7News Reporter Nick Minock asked Spanberger.
“The short answer is no, solar alone is certainly not going to meet the need,” said Spanberger. “That's why part of what we have considered and put forth in this plan relates to battery storage, recognizing the value of different types of renewable energy.”
ALSO SEE | Is solar energy enough to power Virginia’s robust, growing data center industry?
Last year, Texas-based Plus Power announced its plans to build a battery storage facility in Spotsylvania County near Gordon and Chancellor roads. Residents have complained that the project is too close to their homes.
In 2020, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Virginia) signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act. It mandates that Dominion Energy must transition to 100% clean, renewable electricity by 2045 and Appalachian Power Company by 2050.
EDITOR'S NOTE: We misreported when the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative surcharge will appear on customers' bills in tonight's newscast. (Oct. 5, 2026). The new charges are expected to begin in March 2027. The Governor's office tells 7News those charges will be offset by state contributions.
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