Community members interested in efforts by the county government and its partners to promote environmental sustainability gathered at the Academies of Loudoun last night to hear about the work championed by the Loudoun Environmental Commission.

Topics covered at the event including education on sustainable energy programs, tips for helping the environment at home and resources available to people looking to either learn more or be more involved in the efforts. 

The event’s keynote speech was delivered by Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Director Mike Rolband, who spoke on the work his office is doing to monitor and improve the state’s air and water quality, water supply and protect its land. 

Rolband highlighted the interconnection between environmental protections and a thriving economy. 

“If you go to poor areas of the world, or poor areas in Virginia, they can’t afford to protect the environment. So, our goal is to have a strong economy so that we can afford to protect our environment. They’re integrated and related,” he said. “… You’ve got to have both, and you can’t just have one or the other. And so that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Rolband also touted a newly established online system that increases transparency by publicizing all department permit requests and enforcement actions. 

“Anyone can see a status of any permit in Virginia,” he said. “It’s totally transparent and it helps set the staff up to perform better. … So, we’ve reduced the time it takes to get a permit by two-thirds. At the same time, we’ve reduced the time to do an enforcement action by two-thirds. So, we’re going to give you a permit, but you’ve got to follow the rules.”

The event also included smaller, breakout sessions covering topics such as upgrades to create an energy efficient home, promoting economic and environmental stewardship, stopping the spread of invasive plants, recycling and composting and data centers contributions to communities through environmentally friendly initiatives. 

Clifton Institute Landowner Outreach Institute Associate Kadiera Ingram led one of those sessions, walking attendees through how to manage invasive plants.

“If you have a healthy native plant community with a lot of diversity, it can support a diversity of native insects and wildlife,” she said. “So, we want to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to look out for native plants so that they can foster healthy ecosystems and foster a healthy environment.”

Being able to accurately identify which plants are invasive is critical, Ingram said. 

“It’s actually really important to be able to tell the invasives from the natives, identify some of the native plants, and not just the things that we want to get rid of, because a lot of these invasive plants, they have native counterparts that look very similar. So, we want to make sure, when we go out there, we can also pick out the native plants, make sure we’re protecting them and make sure we don’t accidentally cut them down,” she said. 

Environmental Commission members Scott Emery and Rey Cheatham Banks led the breakout sessions on ways data centers can contribute to sustainability goals specifically highlighting the opportunities with heat export. 

Heat export, also sometimes referred to as district energy, involves taking the massive amounts of thermal energy created by data centers and transferring it to be used for something else, rather than simply cooling it down. Equinix already does this in Europe, heating the swimming pool used in the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

In Loudoun, the company is looking for ways like that to partner with county government, Banks said.

“At Equinix, we don’t sell any of the heat that we have in the network system. We give that to the community. So, it’s not about us increasing our bottom line. It’s about how we can be better neighbors and be more sustainable. We have very ambitious sustainability goals that we are on track to keep, and this is just one of the examples of how we try to do that,” she said. 

“It’s not hard to imagine that with perhaps an advanced planning, or maybe future planning, these data centers could potentially provide heat to Ashby Ponds [senior living community] to heat the facility and provide hot water to the facility,” Emery said. 

In between breakout sessions, forum attendees browsed indoor and outdoor exhibits including nonprofits, businesses and county departments focused on energy and environmental sustainability. 

Assistant Director of General Services Marc Aveni said the annual event is a good opportunity to engage the community in the county’s efforts to implement recommendations by the Environmental Commission. 

“We’ve got things such as our tree canopy and our Solarize program and our electric vehicle charging initiative, and our work looking at data centers and energy efficiency and how we could work with them, and now we’ve added controlling invasive species,” he said. “So, we’re doing a lot of good stuff here in Loudoun and we’re very appreciative of the board support and funding to get these things going.”

The Environmental Commission was established in 2021 and is made up of 17 members charged with advising the Board of Supervisors on policies and practices dealing with the environment, sustainability and the management of energy.

Learn more atloudoun.gov/environment.