If these tech companies were truly on board with clean energy, they would've built large solar and wind fields with battery storage to supplement their massive power draw on the grid. As a dominion energy customer, I am angry paying these additional fees on my electric bill so outdated coal and natural gas plants can supply the increasing electrical demand these data centers need.
If Virginia has a problem with overbuilding data centers, it's their fault. Data centers can be built practically anywhere because of Internet connectivity. I'm sure proximity to the centers of US Federal government has something to do with locating in Virginia but otherwise Virginia is no place special for data centers and data can be stored anywhere. Also, data centers in general are extremely energy hogs and wasteful. Most of the energy is used for environmental controls, ie extraction and releasing heat, but keeping humidity down is important, too. Some data centers explore Green methods to run their operations but most don't. Of course taxing energy usage would be logical but if Virginia is highly dependent on taxing data center revenue, gov4rnment is not incentivized to do anything about the problem. The citizens of Virginia just need to make some hard choices... Lower taxes, less government services or lots of data centers.
