Glenn Youngkin, lame-duck MAGA governor extraordinaire, continues on his quest to data center the hell out of our state before the door hits him on the backside on his way back to the private life of being a hedge-fund half-billionaire.
“Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and I am thrilled that CleanArc has selected Caroline County as the site to invest $3 billion for their newest data center campus,” said Youngkin, from a quote in a press release from his office touting the groundbreaking for a new CleanArc Data Centers project that will, “at full capacity,” per the release, create 50 new jobs.
Wonderful.
Fifty jobs, maybe, eventually, and gobs of electricity demand in the meantime.
I mean, this is great news for CleanArc, which says the project will “offer nearly 1 gigawatt of critical grid capacity, supporting the growing demand for scalable, sustainability-focused, and hyperscale-ready digital infrastructure.”
Youngkin has bent over backwards in his four years in the Governor’s Mansion to give our state over to the data center folks, pretending that Virginia being “the data center capital of the world” is somehow a good thing.
His legacy will be the noise, the impact on local environments, and the higher utility bills that we’ll all be paying forever.
Not that he gets that.
“CleanArc is ensuring this campus brings great jobs and revenue to this community and the Commonwealth while ensuring the high quality of life Virginia is known for,” Youngkin said in the tone-deaf press release from his office. “This is the largest announced economic investment in the history of Caroline County and a testament to the results that come from strong collaboration between local and state leaders and industry partners.”
Reality check: data centers are essentially warehouses, a lot of the jobs are considered “unskilled,” and the “full capacity” part of the deal can be years down the road.
Oh, and there’s this tidbit, from the governor’s PR:
CleanArc is eligible for the Data Center Sales and Use Tax exemptions on qualifying computer equipment and enabling software.
Which is nice, if you’re CleanArc.
This is just lazy economic development.
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Chris Graham
