The aroma of hay and manure hangs over Culpeper County, Virginia, where there’s a cow for every three humans. “We’ve got big farms, most still family-owned, and a lot of forests,” says Sarah Parmelee, one of the county’s 55,000 residents. “It’s very charming small-town USA,” she adds.
But this pastoral idyll is in the middle of a twenty-first-century shift. Over the past few years, the county has approved the construction of seven large data-centre projects, which will support technology firms in their expansive plans for generative artificial intelligence (AI). Inside these giant structures, rows of computer servers will help to train the AI models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT, and deliver their answers to what might be billions of daily queries from around the world.
In Virginia, the construction will have profound effects. Each facility is likely to consume the same amount of electrical power as tens of thousands of residential homes, potentially driving up costs for residents and straining the area’s power infrastructure beyond its capacity. Parmelee and others in the community are wary of the data centres’ appetite for electricity — particularly because Virginia is already known as the data-centre capital of the world. A state-commissioned review, published in December 2024, noted that although data centres bring economic benefits, their growth could double electricity demand in Virginia within ten years1.
“Where is power going to come from?” asks Parmelee, who is mapping the rise of data centres in the state and works for the Piedmont Environmental Council, a non-profit organization headquartered in Warrenton, Virginia. “They’re all saying, ‘We’ll buy power from the next district over.’ But that district is planning to buy power from you.”
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