Legislature Seduced By Economic Possibilities of Large Data Centers

Being an environmentalist in West Virginia is like being Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Every morning you wake up and there is a new over-hyped scheme proposed for the economic development of the state that is heavy on the promise of new jobs but light on the details. Worse, these schemes brush aside environmental concerns as secondary to economic ones, assuming they consider the environment at all. In March 2025 we’ve awakened again and the new scheme is the development of huge data centers, notorious energy and water hogs, that will be fueled by coal-generated electricity.

Data centers are literally taking over Northern Virginia. Environmentalists and water-rights advocates are putting up a fight, but have been late to the table. This is a chronic feature of our response in West Virginia to similar threats. Constant noise from data centers has created pushback in the Virginia communities where they are located.

The February 25, 2025 edition of the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the “job-bust” created by data centers. It pointed out that these centers cover huge pieces of valuable commercial space, but the number employed at them is a fraction of the number who would be employed if the space were occupied by an office park, factory or warehouse. It turns out that data centers are labor-intensive to build, but employ very few people to operate.

Nevertheless, at least two bills have been introduced in the Legislature in 2025 that not only promote data centers, they expressly override existing environmental, tax and energy-source concerns in the rush to do so.

HB 2014 would change the microgrid system established several years ago for the inducement of high-tech businesses like Berkshire Hathaway that insisted on renewable energy. The microgrids under HB 2014 would be open to coal-fired energy production. These microgrids would then serve the establishment of data centers. A High-Impact Data Center Program would be administered within the Department of Economic Development. Perhaps most alarming, HB 2014 expressly prohibits counties and municipalities from adopting or enforcing regulations or ordinances “which limit, in any way, the creation of, and acquisition, construction, equipping, development, expansion, and operation of any certified microgrid district or certified high impact data center project.”

HB 2014 was passed out of  the House Committee on Energy and Public Works, and received its first reading in the full House on March 27, 2025.

SB 583 takes a somewhat different approach, but is equally effusive about data centers. Its legislative findings state:

The Legislature of West Virginia finds and declares that the establishment of large data centers within the state is critical to fostering economic growth, technological advancement, and job creation. By providing targeted economic incentives, West Virginia can attract significant private investment, enhance its digital infrastructure, and solidify its position as a competitive player in the global digital economy. These data centers will be reliably supported by West Virginia coal-generated electricity, contributing to grid-stability and industrial growth within the state.

The bill then proceeds to declare the need to enlarge the amount of electricity produced by the burning of coal in the state and identifies large data centers as the way to do this. SB 583 woul create “targeted economic incentives” such as special property tax treatment to lure data centers to West Virginia and then provide a B&O tax reduction to electric utilities supplying them. It is hard to understand why electric utilities would need a tax incentive to participate in the orgy of electricity consumption that would be created by data centers. But it is clear that West Virginia taxpayers would give up a lot to get the data centers under SB 583 and suffer even more environmental and climate damage from grossly enlarging the coal burned in the state.

SB 583 is currently before the Senate Economic Development Committee, whose members can be found here.