I live in Northern Virginia. I go to school here, I grew up here and, unless something changes, I’ll be paying electric bills here for the rest of my life. That last part is what I want to talk about.
Most of my neighbors know data centers exist. They’re hard to miss: the windowless concrete buildings off the highway, the banks of floodlights, the hum. What most people don’t know is what’s coming on our utility bills.
Dominion Energy’s own projections show that if data centers don’t pay their fair share, monthly residential bills could more than double by 2045, from $159 today to $381, on average. That’s over $2,600 a year per household to subsidize companies worth trillions of dollars. That money comes from families in Woodbridge, Manassas and Stafford. Not from Amazon or Google…