The Virginia Democrat in the Middle of the Data Center Boom Wants His Party to Crack Down

GAINESVILLE, VA — Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam is hearing the backlash to data centers firsthand from his Northern Virginia constituents.

There are more than 660 active data centers in Virginia and almost 600 additional facilities currently under construction in the state, the most in the U.S., according to a December survey by American Edge Project, a pro-industry group. As they sprout up in suburbs and the countryside, people who live near data centers have concerns that range from the loud humming noise of their cooling systems to air pollution to the spike in utility prices tied to these power-hungry facilities.

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Subramanyam and some of his Democratic colleagues argue this is the moment for their party to show that they are listening and have ideas about how to regulate this industry. They argue there’s a way to balance the benefits of the data centers with the needs of the people who now have to live around them.

“People are angry right now at the way data centers are being deployed,” Subramanyam told NOTUS in an interview. “If we continue to deploy data centers in a way that negatively impacts people, we’re going to end up in a situation where there will be a political movement against them nationwide, and it will be difficult to deploy them.”

“They see a situation where they feel steamrolled, they feel helpless, and they’re frustrated, and part of that is because there are communities that don’t host data centers but get the benefit of data centers who are not really listening to them,” Subramanyam, who said he is drafting legislation addressing data centers, added.

He argued data center construction should be coordinated through federal oversight so no single community is overtaken by them.

His district is sprinkled with these facilities. A short drive through Prince William County offers views of data center parks roughly the size of a shopping mall and of massive locations under construction.

Technology giants like Google, OpenAI and Amazon use these facilities to store data and develop artificial intelligence models. These companies have pledged billions of dollars to the construction of new data centers, which they say will increase property tax revenue for local and state governments while creating construction and trade jobs in the communities where they set up. Some estimates suggest the industry will spend roughly $7 trillion in new data centers by the end of the decade.

But to the people who live near them, they can also be a nuisance.

“We feel put upon, we feel taken advantage of, we feel lied to, we feel like we’re also being robbed because we’re paying a portion of this energy bill,” George Stewart, a Democratic member of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, said in front of a crowd of roughly 200 people on Saturday who attended a town hall dedicated to the topic of data centers organized by Subramanyam.

Subramanyam and other local officials listened as more than two dozen residents voiced frustrations about the dozens of data center developments approved in their county in recent years. The high school auditorium where they took the microphone was located just a few miles south of a massive 45-acre data center park.

Attendants clapped and cheered as fellow Prince William County residents called for data center operators to pay more taxes and to offset their higher energy prices. The town hall ran for almost an hour longer than scheduled, and roughly a dozen people stayed after to talk to Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem and Virginia Del. Josh Thomas, who also participated in the town hall.

The approval process for new data centers is handled by state and local governments. For the past decade, local officials — from both parties — across the country have approved millions of dollars in tax benefits to attract data center developers to their regions, hoping they will bring along jobs and property tax revenue.

A 2024 audit commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly estimated that data centers have contributed billions of dollars in GDP to the state’s economy. But a lack of oversight and coordination over data center construction has created a challenge for many regions whose residents now wonder if opening the door to them has been a good bargain, especially given the environmental and energy costs associated with the data centers.

Subramanyam, who worked in technology policy during the second Obama administration, made the case that data center development will be essential in the long run and that Congress must find a way to avoid a nationwide movement against them.

“There’s some tension right now between building out these data centers and getting community buy-in. I don’t think this tension is necessary. I think we can do both,” Subramanyam said. “We should have a national strategy around the deployment of data center construction so that we can fulfill those projects while still getting the community buy-in that I think is so necessary.”

Others in his party have also spotted a political opening.

Democratic candidates like physician Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, have laid out demands for new data center developments looking to build in the state, and Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running a primary against Rep. Steve Cohen, has organized campaign events condemning pollution from data centers.

And on Capitol Hill, Democrats have also tried to push for legislation that would grapple with the data centers. Though so far, there is little momentum.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, for example, recently introduced a bill that would require data center developers to pay for the increase in energy use that these facilities demand from the grid. The bill, however, lacks Republican support.

In a recent video call with reporters, Van Hollen argued that data center regulation should become a bigger part of the Democratic platform.

“Democrats at large should be able to coalesce around these principles and these methods of enforcing those principles,” Van Hollen told reporters about his bill last week. “Data centers are expected to almost double and possibly triple their electricity consumption between now and 2028 — I mean, that’s right around the corner.”

Other federal and state lawmakers introduced hundreds of data center-related bills last year. Many of them are aimed at addressing voters’ concerns about energy prices and land use. But as these bills make slow progress through the legislatures, voters often feel left behind.

“I feel like nobody really cares about what’s going on here. I mean, I don’t know if Congress just doesn’t know or they just don’t care, but I feel that until more people feel the pain, it’s just going to be a local issue,” Christina Maximova, a flight attendant who lives in Prince William County, told NOTUS after the Saturday town hall.

“You know, they weren’t really here when we moved in 2019,” Maximova said. “It feels like our community has changed a lot in only a few years. I mean, they’re everywhere now. Everywhere you look, it feels like they’re building a new data center.”

Karen Sheehan, director of The Coalition to Protect Prince William County, a local advocacy group that opposes the construction of new data centers in the region, told NOTUS that growing local opposition is forcing Congress to finally pay attention to the downsides of data centers.

“The federal policies about fast-tracking data centers for AI being discussed right now are flawed. They’re not looking at all of the impacts, and data centers are impacting every citizen in the U.S.,” Sheehan said after the town hall. “Congress is absolutely feeling the pressure.”

“They have to understand that 100% of the people who spoke today are against what’s happening with data center proliferation. And that just really puts a spotlight on it for them. It makes them realize that they can’t ignore this anymore.”