Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and as more and more of these resource-hungry facilities proliferate in the Commonwealth, Virginians are seeing higher energy bills, dirtier air, and a number of harmful local impacts.
Given the opportunity to hold data centers accountable to strong environmental standards this legislative session, lawmakers failed to deliver solutions in the final budget deal that was signed into law in June.
This breakdown followed a months-long stalemate on the budget due to disagreements between the House and Senate on how to handle a multi-billion dollar tax break for the data center industry, with the Senate wanting to end the subsidy altogether and the House wanting to require environmental standards in order to receive it.
Budget conferees advanced a budget deal that does neither. The budget bill instead establishes an energy consumption tax for the data center industry estimated to only generate about a third of the revenue that Virginia loses out on because of the large sale and use tax exemption that goes to data centers, which was $2.1 billion in 2025 alone, while doing nothing to require data centers to transition to clean energy or be better neighbors.
HB30 passed out of the House of Delegates on a vote of 72-21 and cleared the Senate on a 23-16 vote.