The Northern Virginia County of Loudoun now boasts the majority of worldwide data center locations, with more than twice the amount of operational capacity as the runner-up Beijing. In total, the two hundred facilities already operational in the “Data Center Alley,” as some are calling Loudoun, represent fourteen percent of all data center locations in the world.
These large facilities now occupy three percent of total county land and a full forty percent of the county budget but while the industry has been booming, local residents have suffered. Wholesale electricity costs have been driven up more than two-hundred and fifty percent in the last five years alone.
In a 2025 report from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review it has been revealed that in the previous year, the state of Virginia lost more than a billion dollars to its sales and use tax exemptions for data centers, compared to all other state incentive programs which cost the state a combined two hundred and thirty five million dollars. Meanwhile, as of 2024, data center tax breaks make up more than eighty one percent of of all Virginia state incentive costs.
In the areas surrounding the newly constructed data centers the constant humming of the giant computer systems has become loud enough to scare away the local wildlife. In a statement to the BBC, Loudoun resident Greg Pirio laments “There are no birds around here anymore.”
The Virginia House and Senate passed a bill this year intended to regulate private sector AI use and development but it was vetoed by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, leaving Loudoun residents vulnerable and without redress. As one Loudoun resident said to the BBC “I never thought that a data center would be built across the street from my house. I would not have bought this house if I had known what was going in across the street.”
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