Virginia EO 22: AI and Data Centers

Overview

Governor Abigail D. Spanberger signed Executive Order 22 on September 18, 2026, with immediate effect. Under Article V of the Constitution of Virginia and Virginia Code §§ 2.2-103 and 2.2-110, it directs implementation of the Virginia Data Center Accountability Framework in Part I and a rapid-response artificial intelligence initiative in Part II. The order addresses data center growth's environmental, infrastructure, affordability, community, and workforce consequences alongside AI development and deployment risks. It remains effective unless amended or rescinded by a further executive order.

The framework has five pillars: transparent community engagement, environmental protection, affordability, clean energy and grid reliability, and workforce benefits. The instrument combines immediate executive-branch restrictions with directions to develop programs, regulations, recommendations, and institutional capabilities. Agency mandates to develop rules or reporting criteria do not themselves enact their final content. Local governments, communities, developers, utilities, workers, and experts participate through consultation and engagement; the order does not establish universal licensing.

Definitions

The order uses artificial intelligence without an exhaustive technical or legal definition and does not define every data center type. Its express 25 MW threshold concerns anticipated peak electrical demand for new projects excluded from specified Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) assistance programs. It is not a general exemption for smaller facilities. Edge data centers and smaller or distributed models appear as responsible-siting opportunities; AI agents, bots, and frontier developers appear within the Task Force mandate.

Virginia Local Energy and Accountable Data Centers (VA-LEAD) is a proposed responsible-development designation using standardized, tiered scoring modeled on resource-efficiency frameworks such as LEED and EnergyStar. Final criteria and tiers remain to be developed. Cooling water scarcity areas are locations where evaporation for cooling could detrimentally reduce water quality or quantity available for other beneficial uses; the Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area receives that designation. Other terms include nondisclosure agreements restricting material project information, voluntary or enforceable community-benefit agreements, and PJM's Interim Resource Adequacy Service (IRAS).

Governance and Institutional Framework

Part I.A makes the Office of the Chief Energy Officer the primary coordinator and implementation lead, with continuous updates to the Governor. All Secretariats and executive-branch agencies must coordinate and support it upon request. The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) handles noise, cooling-water rules, and backup-generation review; Virginia Energy handles responsible siting and operational reliability; VEDP administers assistance restrictions. The Secretary of Labor develops job-quality practices, Virginia Works develops workforce reporting criteria, and the Department of Forestry develops sustainable procurement practices. The Chief Energy Officer also leads affordability, conditional curtailment engagement, and methane recommendations.

Part II creates a rapid-response AI Task Force co-led by the Chief Transformation Officer, Counsel to the Governor, and Secretary of Administration. The Chief Transformation Officer coordinates actions, supported by an AI Policy Planning Unit within that officer's office. Coordination includes the Secretaries of Education, Labor, Commerce and Trade, Public Safety and Homeland Security, and Health and Human Resources; the Joint Commission on Technology and Science; the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission; and Virginia's congressional delegation with support from the Director of Federal Affairs. Requested agency assistance is urgent and receives priority. The Task Force reports continuously until the Governor terminates it.

Key Focus Areas

Community transparency includes a planning toolkit, executive-branch nondisclosure-agreement restrictions, and VA-LEAD development. Environmental work covers noise, cumulative backup-generator emissions, cooling-water scarcity, and lower-impact siting. Affordability measures seek to prevent households from bearing data-center-driven infrastructure costs and support affordable community energy. Reliability work addresses conditional IRAS curtailment, ride-through and voltage protections, clean-energy investments, and methane reductions. Workforce measures concern quality jobs, local training and opportunities, project-level reporting, and sustainable local procurement. VA-LEAD scoring must consider energy and infrastructure impacts, water and land use, noise, workforce development, clean energy and resilience, sustainable construction materials, and community benefits.

The AI Task Force addresses displacement and personal-information privacy through executive and legislative action, examines existing Virginia enforcement and regulatory options, and develops expertise, staffing, and government systems. It identifies cybersecurity threats to state systems and critical infrastructure from agents, bots, and other AI developments, including partnerships to review and harden systems against attacks. It supports secure, responsible Commonwealth-wide AI use through governance, privacy, and data-security practices. Engagement includes governors, federal and international leaders, philanthropy, global experts, and frontier developers, specifically Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. These are coordination duties, not model-approval requirements.

Implementation Framework

Within 120 days, the Chief Energy Officer's Office must publish an initial toolkit with model questions, information requests, disclosure templates, impact-evaluation guidance, voluntary and enforceable community-benefit agreement approaches, accessible engagement practices, and mitigation recommendations. Evaluation covers electricity demand, water use, wastewater, backup generation, emissions, noise, traffic, and public-service needs. Consultation includes VEDP, Virginia Energy, DEQ, stakeholders, and relevant agencies. Lawful partnerships, grants, philanthropy, and other nonstate resources may strengthen community capacity. VA-LEAD criteria and an implementation plan are due by the end of 2027, incorporating legislative and regulatory requirements, Joint Subcommittee on Tax Policy recommendations, and broad stakeholder input.

From signing, supervised executive-branch entities may not enter into, require, or enforce nondisclosure agreements preventing disclosure of material proposed commercial data center information, while honoring existing commitments and allowing extraordinary circumstances such as national security. VEDP must immediately withhold specified site-readiness, expedited-permitting, and similar discretionary assistance from new projects anticipating at least 25 MW peak demand. DEQ must expedite noise and cooling-water rulemaking under existing statutory authority and review cumulative backup-generation impacts, including Tier II-to-Tier IV or equivalent controls and feasible alternatives. Virginia Energy must examine brownfields, adaptive reuse, distributed models, regional capacity, waste-heat or reclaimed-water co-location, and scenic and historic landscape impacts.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring uses continuous reporting to the Governor and agency deliverables rather than a new inspectorate. DEQ's backup-generation review assesses generator numbers, capacity, fuels, operating hours, concentration, cumulative emissions, localized air quality, transparency, and reduction technologies. Findings must recommend potential improvements in permitting, monitoring, reporting, enforcement, emissions controls, and disclosure. Noise rulemaking must meaningfully engage affected communities, local governments, operators, public-health experts, and other stakeholders. Noise and cooling-water workplans must include accelerated timelines and stakeholder-engagement plans.

Virginia Works must develop project-level data-collection criteria within 180 days covering quality jobs, workforce needs, training programs, and outcomes, for incorporation into VA-LEAD as applicable. Virginia Energy evaluates and solicits responsible-siting input within 180 days and submits recommendations within 240 days. Its reliability review determines whether operational best practices are necessary and recommends identified new practices to the Governor. VA-LEAD provides a comparative, tiered assessment approach, but the order establishes no audit intervals, mandatory independent certification, public dashboards, scoring weights, or universal operator reporting forms.

Penalties, Liability, and Appeals

The order creates no monetary-fine schedule, criminal offenses, private compensation rights, or dedicated appeal procedures. Immediate consequences are administrative: covered executive entities must observe the confidentiality restriction, and VEDP must withhold specified assistance from qualifying new projects. That restriction concerns particular discretionary programs, not a construction or operation ban for all facilities above 25 MW. Existing contracts and nondisclosure commitments must be honored. Extraordinary circumstances, including national security, may justify a future agreement otherwise inconsistent with the restriction, but no exception-granting procedure is established.

Further enforcement depends on existing legal powers and subsequently valid executive, agency, regulatory, or legislative action. DEQ must recommend possible backup-generation enforcement improvements, and the AI Task Force must examine Virginia law and precedent for existing regulatory and enforcement options. These directives do not create AI-specific damages or new environmental penalty amounts. The order mandates no universal generator retrofit, compulsory community-benefit agreement, or facility-certification appeal. Agencies must act consistently with applicable statutory authority; businesses should distinguish preparation for prospective measures from operative duties.

Relationship to Other Instruments

The order rescinds Governor Glenn Youngkin's Executive Order No. 30 of January 18, 2024, and Executive Directive No. 5 of September 20, 2023. Policies, standards, and guidelines published under EO 30 remain effective unless or until replaced by future executive or agency action. Rescission therefore does not automatically cancel every EO 30 implementation document. The new Task Force's secure-use work operates alongside retained policies where applicable. There is no blanket replacement date, and the end-of-2027 VA-LEAD deadline does not terminate retained AI policies.

Data center initiatives rely on existing statutory authority, legislative direction, regulatory requirements, and Joint Subcommittee on Tax Policy recommendations. LEED and EnergyStar model VA-LEAD's resource-efficiency approach; their certifications are not automatically mandatory. Introductory discussion references recent legislation, water-conservation and noise-reduction measures, and an energy-consumption tax without identifying enactment numbers or imposing a new tax through the directives. The order does not enact a double-tax penalty, fixed generator-emissions reduction percentage, specified accelerated clean-energy deadline, or elimination of by-right local approvals.

National/Federal Alignment

The AI rationale calls for a stronger state response to risks considered inadequately addressed federally, while operative provisions require intergovernmental cooperation. The Task Force partners with governors, federal and international leaders, and philanthropy on scalable mitigation and coordinates with Virginia's congressional delegation through the Director of Federal Affairs. It supports recognized governance, privacy, and security practices without making a particular federal AI standard mandatory. It creates no federal preemption rules, changes no federal agency powers, and does not resolve interactions between hypothetical future Virginia AI legislation and federal requirements.

The Chief Energy Officer engages utilities, the State Corporation Commission (SCC), PJM, and related stakeholders on equitable data-center-driven cost allocation, including PJM Reliability Backstop Procurement and IRAS where applicable. Emergency curtailment procedures for data centers without their own new capacity under IRAS depend on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval of the proposal. Practices should reduce impacts for facilities supplying clean energy, peak shaving, or other beneficial investments. Virginia Energy engages PJM, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), Virginia utilities, and other stakeholders as necessary to align operational practices nationally, including ride-through and voltage protections.

Implementation Timeline

The 120-, 180-, and 240-day calendar dates are calculated from September 18, 2026; the order expresses those deadlines as relative periods.

Sources and References