Energy and Datacenters: Implications of new regulations with a spotlight on Northern Virginia

The datacenter industry globally is racing to achieve a more sustainable future, spurred on by both governmental and customer climate goals. A central point to that sustainable future is decarbonizing the energy being consumed by datacenters, thereby eliminating the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. Regulatory changes here in the United States will impact the green energy markets across the country and will subsequently impact datacenter operators looking to procure additional energy. For the first roundtable discussion we will examine:

• US wind and solar capacity outlook under the Inflation Reduction Act.
• Impact of federal tax credits on the economics of green energy, and implications for datacenter electricity procurement.

While green energy procurement is a key challenge faced by datacenter providers, sometimes access to – any – energy can be a key challenge as well. Earlier this year, Dominion Energy, which covers the Northern Virginia (NoVA) datacenter market, announced potential problems with interconnecting electricity to new datacenter projects within its service area. Taking the discussion more local, what does this mean for datacenter providers in NoVA still looking to build out datacenter capacity to meet customer demand? For the second roundtable we will cover:

• Regulations, green energy, and siting -- overview of the Northern Virginia market and implications for datacenters
• New datacenter energy hookup -- is Northern Virginia becoming constrained?