Why West Virginia?

In the past two years, West Virginians have watched one announcement after another: gas plants built to power private data centers, a 765,000-volt transmission line across the mountains, industrial solar projects proposed on farmland, and a new state law that takes away counties' right to say no.

It can feel random, like bad news arriving from every direction at once. It isn't random. There is a logic behind it. Once that logic is clear, so is why West Virginia is being targeted, and what communities can do about it.

It starts with electricity

Tech companies are racing to build artificial intelligence. AI runs on enormous data centers that use as much electricity as a city. The companies have the money. What they can't get fast enough is power.

The world's largest cluster of data centers is in Northern Virginia, just across the state line from West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. It has run out of room on the grid. In 2022, Dominion Energy told data centers in Loudoun County's "Data Center Alley" they would wait four years for full power. In 2024, it extended the wait to seven years. Dominion now has more than 300 data center projects approved or waiting to connect, with a combined load of over 70 gigawatts. Source: Prince William Times A Loudoun County supervisor projects the county's data center demand will more than triple, from about 5.3 gigawatts to nearly 18 gigawatts by 2030.Source: Piedmont Environmental Council

When the center runs out of power, the industry looks outward. West Virginia is next door.

Everyone is already paying for it

West Virginia and Virginia share one regional power grid, run by an organization called PJM. Every year, PJM holds an auction that sets what utilities pay to guarantee there's enough power. That price went from $28.92 in 2024–25 to $269.92 in 2025–26, then to $329.17, and it has stayed at record levels since. Sources: Citizens Utility Board; Utility Dive PJM's independent market monitor estimated that data center demand caused 63% of the increase in the 2025–26 auction, about $9.3 billion, a cost recovered from ordinary customers' electric bills.Source: PJM Independent Market Monitor

Families across the region are already helping pay for the data center boom, whether or not a data center is ever built near them.

The shortcut: build a private power plant

New power plants can wait years to connect to the grid. So some data center companies have found a shortcut: build a private power plant right next to the data center and skip the line entirely.

HB 2014, passed in 2025, was designed to allow exactly that. It lets the state create "microgrid districts" where a company can build its own power plant for its own data center. Inside those districts, the Public Service Commission has no authority over rates, service, or complaints. Counties and towns are barred from applying their own zoning, noise, lighting, land use, and building rules to these projects.Sources: Charleston Gazette-Mail; WV Center on Budget & Policy; The Real WV

That explains why the projects on this site look the way they do. The Monarch campus in Mason County plans a 2.16-gigawatt gas power plant using 864 gas engines. The Ridgeline project in Tucker County would have its own 785-megawatt gas plant. See the Projects page.These companies aren't just buying land. They're buying speed, and the state is selling it.

Why here: West Virginia has what they need

West Virginia has land, natural gas, coal plants, water, transmission corridors, and a location next to the largest data center market in the world.

And state leaders want to sell. Gov. Morrisey's "50 by 50" plan aims to more than triple the state's power generation, to 50 gigawatts by 2050. Source: West Virginia Watch The coal and gas industries gain new customers. HB 2014 even creates a fund to help keep coal and gas plants running. Source: GovTech/Charleston Gazette-Mail And half of the property taxes from these data centers go into a state fund to cut income taxes, a top priority of the governor.Source: West Virginia Watch

Some of the power isn't even for West Virginia. Dominion says the new gas plant it wants to build at Mt. Storm, in Grant County, would serve its customers in Virginia.Source: West Virginia Watch Opponents of the Valley Link transmission line, including the Jefferson County Commission, oppose seizing West Virginia land to serve data centers in Loudoun County, Virginia. Sources: Jefferson County Commission resolution, Aug. 2026; Commission minutes, Aug. 6, 2026

The chain reaction

1. 1AI companies race to build data centers
2. 2Northern Virginia runs out of power
3. 3Grid prices rise, and new power plants wait years to connect
4. 4Companies build private power plants to skip the line
5. 5West Virginia removes local control to attract them

What state leaders say

The governor and his allies see this as West Virginia's chance. The state has lost population and jobs for decades. They argue these projects will bring investment, construction jobs, a bigger tax base, lower income taxes, and a stronger America in the technology race with China. See: The Plan, In Their Own Words

That argument deserves to be taken seriously. West Virginia communities need jobs and investment. But the real question isn't whether West Virginia should have a future. It's who decides what that future looks like, who gets the benefits, and who pays the costs.

A bet on an uncertain boom

No one knows how big the AI boom will actually be. Data center developers often request far more power than they end up using, and some projects here don't yet have a customer. The company behind West Virginia's first certified "high impact" data center, in Berkeley County, hasn't named who will use it. Source: West Virginia Watch Nine months after HB 2014 passed, the promised data center boom still hadn't arrived.Source: GovTech

If the boom is real, West Virginia becomes the power plant for someone else's economy. If it fades, the state could be left with power plants nobody needs, and the bills to pay for them. Either way, investors can leave. Communities can't.

A familiar story

West Virginia has seen this before. For more than a century, outside companies came for the state's coal and timber. The wealth left. The damage stayed. And the people who lived here had little say in any of it.

What's different now is the speed, and the fact that the state government has written a law to make sure communities can't say no.

There is another path between decline and industrial takeover: an economy built on West Virginia's land, towns, small businesses, tourism, and trades. This site exists so West Virginians can see what's coming, understand why, and have a voice in deciding which future they choose.