Virginia's Executive Order 22 Draws a 25-Megawatt Line for State Help; Local Approval at 25 MW Waits for the Legislature

Twenty-five megawatts appears twice in Virginia’s new data center package, and the two appearances carry very different weight. In Executive Order 22, which Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed and put into effect on Friday, September 18, 25 MW of anticipated peak demand is the line above which the Virginia Economic Development Partnership may no longer help a new data center through state site-readiness or fast-track programs ^[1]. In the accompanying framework, “more than 25 megawatts” is the line above which every data center would need local approval, “regardless of prior project approvals” ^[2]. The first binds the executive branch as of Friday. The second is a bill nobody has filed.

This is the governor’s office, not a commission or a county board, so the question for every item is simple: does the order do it, or does it ask someone else to?

What the order does on day one

Executive Order 22 makes the Office of the Chief Energy Officer the lead for what the governor calls the Virginia Data Center Accountability Framework, with every executive branch agency told to support it on request ^[1]. Three provisions take hold immediately ^[1]:

• Site-readiness and fast track. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership “shall not provide assistance” through the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program, any expedited permitting program or any similar discretionary program “for a new data center project with an anticipated peak electrical demand of 25 MW or greater.”
• Nondisclosure agreements. Executive branch agencies may not enter into, enforce or require an agreement that keeps material information about a proposed commercial data center, its public incentives, “anticipated resource demands” or community impacts from the public. Existing commitments are honored; national security is the named exception.
• Cooling water. The Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area is designated a cooling water scarcity area, while the Department of Environmental Quality writes the criteria for designating others.

Everything else in the data center half of the order is a study, a workplan or an instruction to advocate. The governor’s own release describes the package as a mix of the order, “immediate directives to state agencies, and proposed legislation for the 2027 General Assembly session” ^[3].

The studies, and when they come due

The order sets its clocks in days from September 18 ^[1]. By this column’s count:

• January 16, 2027 (120 days): the Chief Energy Officer publishes a Data Center Planning and Community Engagement Toolkit for localities, including guidance for evaluating “anticipated electricity demand,” backup generation and air emissions, plus model community benefit agreements ^[1].
• March 17, 2027 (180 days): DEQ delivers findings from a cumulative-impact review of diesel and other backup generation, covering the number, capacity, fuel type, expected operating hours and geographic concentration of generators, and measures to move Tier II units to Tier IV controls, batteries or fuel cells ^[1]. Workplans for the noise rule and the cooling water rule fall on the same date, as does a methane update from the Chief Energy Officer ^[1].
• May 16, 2027 (240 days): Virginia Energy recommends where lower-impact development could go: brownfields, edge facilities and regions with infrastructure capacity ^[1].

The VA-LEAD designation, a tiered score for data centers modeled on LEED and Energy Star, has the longest fuse. Proposed criteria are due by the end of 2027 ^[1].

Where the cost and power pieces actually sit

For readers who follow who pays, the order’s affordability section is advocacy, not allocation. The Chief Energy Officer is told to engage utilities, the State Corporation Commission and PJM to push for “assigning costs associated with PJM’s Reliability Backstop Procurement to data center large loads causing those costs,” and for equitable cost allocation under PJM’s Interim Resource Adequacy Service, or IRAS ^[1]. Neither the SCC nor PJM answers to an executive order.

The curtailment directive is conditional twice over. The Chief Energy Officer is to work with the SCC and utilities on emergency curtailment procedures for data centers “who have not brought their own new capacity” under IRAS, “when such proposal is approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission” ^[1]. Curtailment means cutting a customer’s service when the grid is short. The order says curtailment should go easier on data centers that bring their own clean energy or shave their peaks ^[1].

The framework goes further on paper. It proposes priority grid access for data centers that source clean energy five years faster than the Virginia Clean Economy Act requires, cut backup generator emissions by 60%, and keep on-site gas to “at most a de minimis allowance,” with the state’s electricity consumption tax doubled for any operator that takes priority access and then falls short ^[2]. It also calls for “probability-of-dispatch” cost allocation in future SCC rate cases and stronger upfront financial commitments from developers so that speculative projects do not hold grid capacity ^[2].

At her press conference, Spanberger said, “We are the first in the nation to limit behind-the-meter gas generation” ^[5]. Behind-the-meter here means gas units on the data center’s side of the utility meter. The order’s text contains no such limit ^[1]. The framework lists it as a goal, to “the maximum extent practicable” ^[2].

This builds on one thing already decided. Over the summer, after a filing by the governor’s administration, the SCC ordered data centers to pay for transmission built exclusively to serve them ^[4]. That was a commission order. Most of what was announced Friday would need the same kind of follow-through from the SCC, PJM or the legislature.

Where the sides stand

The governor framed it as a bar for newcomers. “If you don’t want to meet these high standards, Virginia may not be the place for you,” she said, according to WTVR ^[5]. Asked whether the rules reach the hundreds of existing facilities, she said, “We are raising the standards for new folks to the game and ensuring that over time the others join in those highest of standards” ^[5].

The Data Center Coalition said it shared the goals but warned that “significant and abrupt policy changes without meaningful stakeholder engagement could prove unworkable,” WTVR reported ^[5].

Criticism also came from the other direction. Sen. Glen Sturtevant (R-Chesterfield), who wants a moratorium, called the plan “a Big Tech-friendly plan for more data center growth in Virginia” and wrote that there is “no cap on new data center electric load” ^[5]. Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) said it “does not end the $2 billion in sales tax exemptions provided to data centers” ^[5]. House Speaker Don Scott took the opposite reading of the same word: “This is a moratorium on bad actors in this industry” ^[3]. The Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter called the order “the strongest executive action taken on the environmental impacts of data centers in Virginia that we have ever seen” ^[3].

On local governments, A Holland & Knight analysis reads the order as imposing no binding obligation on counties, cities or towns, which take their zoning power from the General Assembly under the Dillon Rule ^[6]. The toolkit and VA-LEAD would push localities indirectly, through state incentives ^[6]. That matters for the kind of record this column found in Stokes County, North Carolina, on September 16, where a 1,849-acre rezoning carried no megawatt figure. A Virginia county could ask the toolkit’s demand questions in January. Nothing in the order makes it.

What I’m watching

First, the toolkit due January 16 by this column’s count, and whether its electricity demand questions ask for a megawatt figure and a service date ^[1].

Second, the 2027 bills. The 25 MW local approval rule, the gas limit and the probability-of-dispatch allocation exist so far only in an 11-page framework ^[2]. The threshold that matters to developers is the one that ends up in statute.