Spanberger wants local approval for data centers over 25 megawatts, and created an AI task force
The order she signed does the parts she can do alone, and the 25-megawatt rule that would change how data centers get built waits on the 2027 General Assembly.
On September 18, 2026, Abigail Spanberger put out Virginia's Data Center Accountability Framework and signed Executive Order 22 to start on the parts she can do without the legislature. The same order creates a state AI Task Force.
Virginia is where a lot of the machines actually sit. One of her senators calls the state the data center capital of the world. Another says his constituents in Loudoun live among the largest concentration of them anywhere.
- Signed
- September 18, 2026
- Who
- Governor Abigail Spanberger
- The order
- Executive Order 22
- Proposed local-approval line
- More than 25 megawatts of power
- The rest of it
- 2027 General Assembly session
What struck me is how little of the plan the order does by itself. The framework's teeth are proposals for the 2027 General Assembly session, and Executive Order 22 is the part that didn't need anyone's permission.
What the order does today
It bans executive branch agencies, boards and anyone under the governor's supervision from entering into or requiring non-disclosure agreements for data center projects. That one's in force now. It also creates a planning and community engagement toolkit for local governments (an initial one, in the release's words), expedites the state's data center noise regulations, and directs a review of diesel and other backup generation.
The AI Task Force sits in the same document. Spanberger points it at workforce displacement, data privacy and cybersecurity, which she says are among the top concerns she's heard across the Commonwealth.
With the Trump Administration failing to listen to the growing concerns of Virginians, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that the technology around Artificial Intelligence is developed safely and responsibly.
The release names nobody who will sit on the task force and gives no date for its first report. Delegate Cliff Hayes, quoted welcoming it, says Virginia now has a chance to lead the nation in strengthening cybersecurity.
What needs the legislature
The framework's biggest change would end by-right approval for data centers and require local approval of any one using more than 25 megawatts of power. With it, a ban on non-disclosure agreements for commercial data center projects and an end to state subsidies in Virginia's site development programs. None of that is law yet.
On bills, the framework would have every utility allocate a more equitable share of transmission and generation costs to data centers and other large load customers, and limit how much electricity a data center can make for itself from on-site natural gas. (The costs coming out of PJM Interconnection get the same treatment.) Speaker Don Scott's read on the whole thing was blunter than the governor's.
This is a moratorium on bad actors in this industry
Every person quoted in the release backs it, from state senators to the Sierra Club and a former US secretary of energy. Granted, a press release is where you'd expect that.
The rest of it goes to the General Assembly when the 2027 session opens.