Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia said on Wednesday that states should do more to regulate A.I. data centers and address their effects on air and noise pollution, energy prices and surrounding communities.
“While ultimately the decision needs to live with the locality, as they’re balancing what they’re choosing to approve or not approve, the state has a role in creating the real rules of the road,” Ms. Spanberger said at The New York Times’s Climate Forward event.
She said some residents “are putting mattresses up against their windows because the noise is so significant” from the cooling systems used in data centers. She said the backup diesel generators that help power many centers have also created air pollution that has exacerbated childhood asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Ms. Spanberger, a former Democratic congresswoman and C.I.A. officer, was sworn in as Virginia’s first female governor in January. Last week, she announced a set of policies aimed at putting guardrails on her state’s booming data center industry.
She called for limiting the amount of electricity that data centers can generate from natural gas and incentivizing developers to supply their own clean energy. But she stopped short of endorsing the one-year moratorium on data center construction enacted by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, who is also a Democrat.
Virginia has more data centers than any other state. Loudoun County alone has more than 250, which have brought in huge tax revenues but also sparked intense backlash from neighbors.
Dominion Energy, the largest utility in Virginia, has raced to procure enough power for the colossal facilities, which can use as much energy as a small city. At the moment, the utility is not on track to meet the state’s legal requirement of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.
Governor Spanberger said the Trump administration’s failed attempt to stop the construction of a $11.2 billion wind farm off Virginia had slowed, but not stopped, the state’s transition to clean energy.
“Their choices are impeding our ability — unsuccessfully, in the case of our offshore wind — to innovate and to deliver what the people of Virginia want, which is the largest offshore wind installation in the country,” she said.
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