Virginia hosts the world's highest concentration of data centers, featuring around 600 facilities, including 150 hyperscale data centers. The rise in data demand, especially from AI technologies, has led to plans for additional data centers in the state. These centers require significant resources, resulting in concerns from residents about their power and water consumption, as well as noise from cooling systems. Activists, like Elena Schlossberg, have opposed such developments due to their substantial environmental impact and the challenges of combating large corporations.
The buildings are data centers. Massive, sometimes multistoried warehouses filled with servers where every webpage and shred of data lives.
Virginia is a data hot spot. It has the world's highest concentration of data centers nearly 600 facilities of varying sizes, including roughly 150 of the largest kind.
The demand for data is growing with the proliferation of AI applications like ChatGPT, leading to plans for 70 more data centers in Virginia.
They'll consume so much power that the state's main utility company, Dominion, is contracted to build 40 gigawatts of new energy capacity for these new centers.
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