Virginia, home to the world’s largest data center market in Northern Virginia, is seeing its energy demand increase rapidly. Gov. Abigail Spanberger has released a 10-year energy plan outlining various ways to meet the rising need.
Data centers accounted for about 31 percent of Virginia’s annual electricity consumption in 2025, making predictions for 25 years from now far from certain. Instead, the plan focuses on possible peak demand scenarios by 2050 that range from 47,138 MW to 68,850 MW, with the plan centering on the moderate level of 55,823 MW.
This 2026 plan is the first Virginia energy plan to use capacity expansion modeling, examining combinations of generation, storage, demand-side resources and electricity imports. The plan is also one of the few state energy offices in the country to have this modeling capability in-house.
Rather than focusing on one energy pathway, the plan includes nuclear power, solar, storage, natural gas and other resources while maintaining a pathway toward net-zero emissions by 2050.
The plan’s recommendations include accelerating deployment of solar and storage, improving use of the existing grid, expanding distributed energy resources, addressing transmission constraints and improving permitting and coordination.
The plan calls for making greater use of existing transmission infrastructure rather than relying entirely on new lines, along with grid-enhancing technologies, advanced conductors, storage and virtual power plants.
It also calls for 10 GW of aggregated distributed-energy-resource participation by 2045, including distributed solar and storage, smart thermostats, heat pumps and managed EV charging.
The plan says Virginia’s energy future will depend not only on how much power is built, but on whether the growth improves reliability, affordability and opportunities for communities across the state.
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