Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger — who promised during her campaign to prioritize affordable energy if she won — on Sunday doubled down on her views of the "energy crisis" that her state will face without new policies to hold the biggest users accountable.
"There's some bad energy policies in some of our neighboring states that have driven up prices, particularly in southwest Virginia," Spanberger said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "We have to be clear-eyed about the fact that we will have an energy crisis headed into the future."
Virginia has the world's largest concentration of data centers, which are facilities designed to house the technical infrastructure that allow artificial intelligence to operate, and demand for them has only continued to grow as the AI boom proliferates. But these data centers use massive amounts of energy.
Data centers can bring financial benefits to the areas where they're located, including in Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin said they resulted in $1 billion in tax revenue in 2024. But they also contribute to rising energy costs for consumers. Power bills in Virginia, for example, have increased by nearly 7% over the last year.
To offset the public burden of those rising prices, Spanberger has proposed a multi-pronged policy approach that involves ramping up energy production in Virginia and requiring data centers to pay "their fair share" for it.
"It will be important that large-scale energy users, particularly data centers, that the public know that they are paying their fair share for the energy that they are using," Spanberger said, echoing remarks from her victory speech in last week's election. "And we have to increase our energy production here at home, so that we can meet the demand, certainly of larger-scale energy users, but also of increased demand from our communities."
Working to ensure "data centers don't drive up energy costs for everyone else in Virginia" is one of the main pillars of Spanberger's energy affordability plan. The plan stipulates that the facilities should pay their share of the cost for electricity generation and transmission capabilities "that must be built to power them." Other tenets of her proposal include increasing local energy generation, storing energy more efficiently, addressing regulatory issues between states and making existing energy subsidy programs more accessible for low-income residents.
"It's a real challenge that we have to get ahead of," Spanberger said Sunday. "It's a challenge that is pervasive in our communities, and particularly acute in southwest Virginia."
A Democrat who previously represented northern and central Virginia in Congress, Spanberger won this year's gubernatorial election, against Republican incumbent Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, by more than 14 points. She will be Virginia's first woman governor when she assumes office in January.
Spanberger on Virginia energy costs
Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger says state heading toward "energy crisis"
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