Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Friday unveiled a sweeping new Data Center Accountability Framework aimed at tightening oversight of one of the Commonwealth’s fastest-growing industries. The plan targets transparency, environmental protections, energy costs, clean energy and workforce development, with some provisions taking effect through executive action and others requiring action by the General Assembly in 2027.

Among the biggest changes, Spanberger said Virginia will prohibit non-disclosure agreements for commercial data center projects, require community benefits agreements and eliminate by-right approval for data centers larger than 25 megawatts, requiring local permit approval instead. The administration is also pursuing tougher standards for water use, emissions, noise and land use, while requiring data centers to pay the full cost of infrastructure needed solely because of their operations.

What the changes will ultimately mean for Virginia’s economy remains to be seen. Data centers have brought billions of dollars in investment and substantial construction activity to Northern Virginia, but also enormous new demands for electricity and infrastructure. Will the new requirements protect residents and ratepayers without slowing investment and construction? Will developers absorb the additional costs, build elsewhere in Virginia or take future projects to other states? For now, those answers remain TBD.

Spanberger’s executive order will also create a Virginia AI Task Force charged with developing policy and legislative proposals addressing workforce displacement, data privacy and cybersecurity. That brings another issue into the debate that goes far beyond where data centers are built or how much electricity they consume: Who has access to all of the data increasingly being collected, stored and processed? Who can buy it, share it or obtain it, and what happens when information collected for one purpose is eventually used for another?

Virginia is beginning to tackle some of the physical infrastructure behind the rapidly expanding digital economy, but the economic consequences and larger questions surrounding data and AI remain unresolved. The News-Press will dig further into those questions next week as we continue examining data, artificial intelligence and the infrastructure increasingly powering both.