Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger warns state heading toward "energy crisis"

Source: CBS News

November 9, 2025 / 2:20 PM EST


Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger — who promised during her campaign to prioritize affordable energy if she won — on Sunday doubled down on her views of the "energy crisis" that her state will face without new policies to hold the biggest users accountable.

"There's some bad energy policies in some of our neighboring states that have driven up prices, particularly in southwest Virginia," Spanberger said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "We have to be clear-eyed about the fact that we will have an energy crisis headed into the future."

Virginia has the world's largest concentration of data centers, which are facilities designed to house the technical infrastructure that allow artificial intelligence to operate, and demand for them has only continued to grow as the AI boom proliferates. But these data centers use massive amounts of energy.

Data centers can bring financial benefits to the areas where they're located, including in Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin said they resulted in $1 billion in tax revenue in 2024. But they also contribute to rising energy costs for consumers. Power bills in Virginia, for example, have increased by nearly 7% over the last year. To offset the public burden of those rising prices, Spanberger has proposed a multi-pronged policy approach that involves ramping up energy production in Virginia and requiring data centers to pay "their fair share" for it.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abigail-spanberger-virginia-energy-crisis-data-centers-face-the-nation/