The ancients looked into the heavens and saw the stars form patterns in the sky — what we now call constellations.

I look at the headlines in Virginia over the past few weeks and also see a pattern. I call it outlines of a potential controversy. 

Here are some seemingly disconnected news events:

• Gary Walker, the chairman of the Charlotte County Board of Supervisors, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of failing to disclose certain interests on his Statement of Economic Interests, which office-holders must file. The state investigation appears to have begun after a controversial rezoning for a solar development led to a dispute with a fellow supervisor.
• Dominion Energy released its annual planning document, which calls for more wind, more solar, more nuclear, more natural gas, and more battery storage for some of that renewable energy. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.) Dominion said that not only does it need some of those non-carbon sources to satisfy the Virginia Clean Economy Act, it simply needs to generate more power, period. “We are experiencing the largest growth in power demand since the years following World War II,” said Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia. Much of that power demand, about 24%, now comes from data centers, which have concentrated in Northern Virginia. 
• Environmental groups criticized Dominion for wanting to add more natural gas generation and not moving fast enough to go carbon-free, as required by the Virginia Clean Economy Act.
• A report from the data analytics firm Wood McKenzie found that the number of data centers being announced has more than tripled in the first half of 2024, and tied that surge to increasing power demands to the rise in artificial intelligence, which requires more power than typical internet activities.
• Another report, this one by the financial firm Goldman Sachs, said that artificial intelligence is going to increase power demands by data centers by 160%. If that number is too big to imagine, try this one: “On average, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search.”
• In separate announcements, both Amazon and Google said they had signed deals to pursue nuclear energy as a way to fulfill their growing energy demands. This follows Microsoft, which has signed a deal with the owner of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to restart a shuttered reactor there (not the one that partially melted down in 1979). In Amazon’s case, it signed an agreement to work with Dominion on a small modular reactor at Dominion’s North Anna nuclear power station.
• The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors looked at a proposed battery storage project and reacted with skepticism, putting off a rezoning decision until next month.

While some of these developments seem clearly connected — Dominion’s planning document and the opposition to its generation, the growth in data centers and the tech companies turning to nuclear energy to power those — it’s fair to wonder how the legal troubles of a Charlotte County supervisor or a rezoning in Pittsylvania County fit into this. I see them, though, as all connected.

Here’s how: Data centers were booming before AI; they’re booming even more now. They also require a lot of energy, and that energy has to be produced somewhere. Even without data centers, the Virginia Clean Economy Act requires Virginia’s utilities to go carbon-free. That has spurred a wave of solar development across the state, particularly in Southside. Data centers and AI are going to drive that demand even more. We’ve also seen considerable pushback to some of that solar development from people who feel their rural landscape is being turned into an industrial one. As the demand for data centers grows, that’s going to lead to more solar development in rural Virginia — and even more opposition. The push for more renewable energy is going to lead to more proposals for battery storage to store that energy; for technical reasons, sites need to be near the generation sites, so that’s going to mean more battery storage proposals coming to Southside — like the one that Pittsylvania supervisors questioned. 

For where I sit, I see a political trainwreck coming: The tech companies aren’t going to like it if data center development is stalled because some rural county in Southside Virginia balked at allowing a solar farm or a battery storage site. Environmental groups are also unhappy that utilities aren’t moving fast enough to rid themselves of carbon; for those utilities to increase renewable generation, they’re going to need to develop more wind and solar and battery storage, which is going to put more pressure on those rural counties, too. 

In broad terms, the growth of internet-based services and compliance with the Clean Economy Act both depend on the same thing: the willingness of rural counties to accept renewable energy (which, in the case of Virginia, is solar. While Dominion has off-shore wind, there are no on-shore wind farms in Virginia. A proposal for one in Botetourt County has dragged on for years). 

If those rural counties don’t become more willing to accept solar farms (and battery storage sites), then we’re going to see a push to bypass local governments and have energy projects approved at the state level. In fact, we’ve already seen bills introduced in the General Assembly that would do just that, or something close to it. None have passed but it seems likely that all will come back at some point, in some form. Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax County, and state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, introduced legislation that would give the State Corporation Commission some authority over some energy projects. Sen. Schuyler Van Valkenburg, D-Henrico County, introduced a bill that would prohibit localities from restricting or banning solar development. The Sullivan and Deeds bills were voluntarily continued until 2025; the Van Valkenburg bill passed the Senate on a near party-line vote of 21-18 but was continued until 2025 in the House. 

When all these bills come back up, the proponents will have more examples of how the demand for energy, particularly renewables, is going up, but rural localities are not doing their part to approve those projects. They’ll also have that Charlotte County legal case to point to. That might be a one-off situation, but it can be used to make the case that maybe small local governments simply aren’t equipped to handle decisions this big, that maybe the state should relieve local governments of these duties. 

I’m not arguing that any of this is a good idea, I’m just saying this is how I see it all coming together. I personally like solar energy and am not bothered by the sight of solar panels. I find them strangely beautiful and like the idea that we’re creating energy out of nothing rather than having to import oil from some unfriendly country. I also understand that I’m probably in the minority — and also don’t have a solar farm next to me to look at every day. What I think, though, doesn’t really matter here. It may not even matter what people in Southside think, either. 

We have some uncomfortable politics developing here. A key industry is Northern Virginia is depending on rural Virginia, particularly Southside, to make sacrifices (at least what are seen by some as sacrifices) on its behalf. The most pro-solar politicians are Democrats from metro areas who don’t owe anything to the rural Republicans areas where solar is usually going. I often hear from readers in Southside who look at the pictures of flat-topped data centers in Northern Virginia and wonder why those can’t be used for solar panels. It’s been done in some places. What if that became a requirement? Right now, many people in Southside feel that they’re being asked — not even asked, required — to shoulder the burden for something they didn’t ask for. I don’t have a solution to offer, but I can sure see a problem developing that someone will find a solution for, whether one side likes it or not.