Data centers present unique energy challenges that play out on two levels – local and national. REC is in the vanguard of addressing the local challenges.
While the data center boom has indeed helped with tax revenue, the fact is, these things will end up going out of style to the next big thing and then what? What we need is some sustainable industry within the county that can help alleviate the tax losses when data centers start to fail; otherwise, residents are going to see quite a jump in their own taxes when the gap has to be filled.
Weevil Mar 11, 2025 7:54am
I get that this paper likes to do Loudoun boosterism but such uncritical reporting on a figure like Buddy Rizer serves no one. Great, he's saddled us with hundreds of giant, energy-sucking, noisy, polluting boxes with more wires than a puppet show connecting them. This is progress? Why not a story on how Buddy Rizer has personally benefitted from selling Loudoun county out?
Skyblue Mar 10, 2025 10:50pm
This guy is a fan of data centers? He is singlehandedly ruining LoCo with these ridiculous monsters. Every time I take a visitor to IAD they ask what are these ugly buildings doing here? When I tell them what they are, they howl. They say, "don't you realize that these brick and mortar buildings are already passe?" My retort is "what in the world will we do with all these data centers when the technology moves on? Rizer may think he is the emperor of data centers, but soon the curtain will be pulled back and LoCo will be the laughingstock of the world for swallowing this Kool Aid about their benefits. They are dog ugly!!
MAGA LoCo Mar 10, 2025 7:33pm
Please!! R(L)izer is at it again. Godfather of Loudoun Office that has never produced results! Never had any success in office leasing, but Rivana is going to change it all!
“I am a fan of data centers ...” Rizer said.
Because he doesn't have to live next to them. And the power lines to feed them aren't going through his back yard.
loudouner7 Mar 10, 2025 8:56pm
So true. If Rizer lived next-door to these hideous data centers, he wouldn’t be so big on them. Thanks Rizer, for turning Ashburn into a dead warehouse district!
“Without comprehensive action from our elected leaders, countless historic sites [and] national parks may continue to fall victim to this unchecked and unregulated data center growth,” said Kyle Hart, Mid-Atlantic field rep at the 5-1-2024 National Park Conservation Service press conference.
Data centers ‘draw on water from the (Rappahannock) River, which experienced drought-like conditions last year. Concerns about data centers’ impact on local waterways have been echoed around the state’. In ‘Virginia Explained: Data center expansion, with all its challenges and benefits’ Charlie Paullin 5-28-24
‘The prevalence of data centers are at the center of a debate over localities’ authority and revenue benefits’, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
“Is it worth losing all your water, and having noise pollution and everything else to get revenue for some of the things you need?” said Mary Damone, 67, who moved to Orange County, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
“We have to have a better way [to] think it through and it needs to be transparent,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
‘Everyone wants a continued investment in the economy and [to be] prosperous, but you want it done in a way that doesn’t destroy the underlying quality of life.” Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
Along with a bill to study if data centers or ratepayers foot the bill for transmission upgrades, a separate bill sent to JLARC this session came from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, and Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
AIR SHARE ENERGY ACT sponsored by Virginia Senators Russet Perry and Richard Stuart and Delegates Michelle Maldonado and Michael Webert (Senate Bill 960 and House Bill 2101). This bipartisan legislation protects Virginia families and businesses from unfairly subsidizing the energy costs of the rapidly growing data center industry. Electric utilities; data center cost allocation. Directs the State Corporation Commission to initiate proceedings to determine if the current allocation of costs among different customer classifications of electric utilities requires customers that are not data centers to unreasonably subsidize the costs of customers that are data centers. If the Commission determines that the current allocation of costs requires customers that are not data centers to unreasonably subsidize the costs of customers that are data centers, the bill directs the Commission to promulgate such rules as necessary to eliminate or minimize such unreasonable subsidies to the maximum possible extent. The bill directs the Commission to complete such proceedings prior to January 1, 2026.
When and why did you become a shill for the Data Center industry? Stack are the people who bribed City Council to pass the re-zoning
Seriously? You're running stories sponsored by a data center company now?
PracticalnLoudoun Mar 12, 2025 7:55am
While the data center boom has indeed helped with tax revenue, the fact is, these things will end up going out of style to the next big thing and then what? What we need is some sustainable industry within the county that can help alleviate the tax losses when data centers start to fail; otherwise, residents are going to see quite a jump in their own taxes when the gap has to be filled.
Weevil Mar 11, 2025 7:54am
I get that this paper likes to do Loudoun boosterism but such uncritical reporting on a figure like Buddy Rizer serves no one. Great, he's saddled us with hundreds of giant, energy-sucking, noisy, polluting boxes with more wires than a puppet show connecting them. This is progress? Why not a story on how Buddy Rizer has personally benefitted from selling Loudoun county out?
Skyblue Mar 10, 2025 10:50pm
This guy is a fan of data centers? He is singlehandedly ruining LoCo with these ridiculous monsters. Every time I take a visitor to IAD they ask what are these ugly buildings doing here? When I tell them what they are, they howl. They say, "don't you realize that these brick and mortar buildings are already passe?" My retort is "what in the world will we do with all these data centers when the technology moves on? Rizer may think he is the emperor of data centers, but soon the curtain will be pulled back and LoCo will be the laughingstock of the world for swallowing this Kool Aid about their benefits. They are dog ugly!!
MAGA LoCo Mar 10, 2025 7:33pm
Please!! R(L)izer is at it again. Godfather of Loudoun Office that has never produced results! Never had any success in office leasing, but Rivana is going to change it all!
“I am a fan of data centers ...” Rizer said.
Because he doesn't have to live next to them. And the power lines to feed them aren't going through his back yard.
loudouner7 Mar 10, 2025 8:56pm
So true. If Rizer lived next-door to these hideous data centers, he wouldn’t be so big on them. Thanks Rizer, for turning Ashburn into a dead warehouse district!
You'd be hard-pressed to find a pothole in Loudoun County, Virginia. The roads
are freshly paved and the schools are new — all paid for by tax revenue from the
200 or so oversized buildings in the county known as data centers.
"It has completely changed our economy from a failing economy to one of the
strongest local economies anywhere in the country," said Buddy Rizer, the
county's economic development director. Over the past two decades, he helped
bring the data centers to the area, which was ripe for growth due to old
infrastructure left by AOL.
Loudoun County resident Ben Keethler bought his home in 2014 because it had a
view of bucolic farmland. Now the neighborhood sledding spot he overlooks also
has a view of a boxy data center under construction. It's among more than 100
new ones coming to the county.
"I don't mind driving through an industrial zone where these facilities are situated
properly, but when they start to come up directly on your community, you just
can't leave it," Keethler said.
Northern Virginia is home to the highest concentration of data centers in the
world. Loudoun officials tout the benefits, saying the centers generate a third of
the county budget on just 3% of land.
And yet, Buddy Rizer admits he has regrets.
"I think if we had to do it over again, we would do it a little bit different.. There's
definitely instances where land has gotten too close to residential," Rizer said.
There are also major environmental concerns.
"A single data center building is using as much as a CITY WORTH OF POWER," said
Julie Bolthouse, director of land use for the Piedmont Environmental Council.
Bolthouse advocates for people who live near the booming industry. She pointed
out a recreational trail that used to feel rural before a data center moved in.
"Once you start to deteriorate the community to the point where you're pushing
people out, what is the value of that tax revenue anymore?" Bolthouse said
, director of land use for the Piedmont Environmental Council.
As his home's view changed, so has Ben Keethler's perspective. He owns an IT
company, so his own livelihood depends on the centers. But when one became
his neighbor, he ran for president of his homeowners association and took a seat
on a county zoning board.
"I bought this property because it was one that had a viewshed and something
that I can relax. I look outside now and I see [the data center] and I go, huh,"
Keethler said.
It's the pursuit of balance between community preservation and the growing
need to keep a digital world connected. (Loudoun Now, 2025).
QUOTES ON DATA CENTERS
“Without comprehensive action from our elected leaders, countless historic sites [and] national parks may continue to fall victim to this unchecked and unregulated data center growth,” said Kyle Hart, Mid-Atlantic field rep at the 5-1-2024 National Park Conservation Service press conference.
Data centers ‘draw on water from the (Rappahannock) River, which experienced drought-like conditions last year. Concerns about data centers’ impact on local waterways have been echoed around the state’. In ‘Virginia Explained: Data center expansion, with all its challenges and benefits’ Charlie Paullin 5-28-24
‘The prevalence of data centers are at the center of a debate over localities’ authority and revenue benefits’, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
“Is it worth losing all your water, and having noise pollution and everything else to get revenue for some of the things you need?” said Mary Damone, 67, who moved to Orange County, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
“We have to have a better way [to] think it through and it needs to be transparent,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
‘Everyone wants a continued investment in the economy and [to be] prosperous, but you want it done in a way that doesn’t destroy the underlying quality of life.” Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
Along with a bill to study if data centers or ratepayers foot the bill for transmission upgrades, a separate bill sent to JLARC this session came from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, and Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, Virginia Mercury 5-28-2024
AIR SHARE ENERGY ACT sponsored by Virginia Senators Russet Perry and Richard Stuart and Delegates Michelle Maldonado and Michael Webert (Senate Bill 960 and House Bill 2101). This bipartisan legislation protects Virginia families and businesses from unfairly subsidizing the energy costs of the rapidly growing data center industry. Electric utilities; data center cost allocation. Directs the State Corporation Commission to initiate proceedings to determine if the current allocation of costs among different customer classifications of electric utilities requires customers that are not data centers to unreasonably subsidize the costs of customers that are data centers. If the Commission determines that the current allocation of costs requires customers that are not data centers to unreasonably subsidize the costs of customers that are data centers, the bill directs the Commission to promulgate such rules as necessary to eliminate or minimize such unreasonable subsidies to the maximum possible extent. The bill directs the Commission to complete such proceedings prior to January 1, 2026.