Surry County supervisors voted 3-2 on Feb. 8 to approve rezoning for the first-in-the-nation combination data center and hydrogen fuel hub Green Energy Partners plans to build adjacent to Dominion Energy’s nuclear power plant.
Supervisors Amy Drewry and Timothy Calhoun, who urged their fellow board members to delay a decision, cast dissenting votes.
The Middleburg-based company announced last year it had acquired the roughly 600-acre tract of land following a multiyear search across the East Coast for prospective sites. Greg Davis, an attorney representing Green Energy, said the $6.45 billion investment in Surry over a 13-year buildout will by 2036 bring more than 1,300 permanent jobs, half with six-figure salaries, to the largely rural county of 6,500 residents.
Green Energy’s announcement last year estimated 2,000 to 3,000 jobs, though company and county officials each later acknowledged that not all would be permanent, nor would the influx occur all at once. Most of the permanent positions, according to an economic impact analysis submitted with Green Energy’s rezoning application, would be tied either to the hydrogen plant or the operation of the three small, modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, Green Energy is proposing to power the data centers on site.