A new data center campus could be on its way to Loudoun on a scale never seen before in the county. Likely to be the largest campus in Loudoun if approved, the Spring Valley Technology Park is a proposed 362-acre data center campus to be located off of Evergreen Mills Road. This project would destroy swaths of mature forests and create excessive impervious surfaces close to Goose Creek. It could add up to 3.5 million more square feet of data center servers, which has the potential to counter climate goals and exacerbate Loudoun’s data center crisis by an order of magnitude.

There’s something else about this project that presents a unique challenge to conservation goals: it could be one of the first projects to be reliant on on-site power generation. This concept is one that has recently become a key talking point in Loudoun as the Board of Supervisors considers and implements methods to check the out-of-control data center industry. Ashburn’s district supervisor Mike Turner recently published a white paper detailing the need for on-site generation requirements for proposed new data centers in Loudoun to avoid further stress to the county’s overworked power grid.

Spring Valley Technology Park location.

Spring Valley has proposed to use “natural gas-powered hydrogen fuel cells that generate electricity without combustion, creating a low- or zero-emissions microgrid,” to power the site. The application also includes a special exception request for an on-site substation. While this method wouldn’t require additional high-voltage transmission lines to bring in power generated elsewhere, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy has serious concerns about how the applicant is over-emphasizing the “sustainable” elements of the data centers. While hydrogen fuel cells and the additionally proposed battery storage are less intense than, say, a coal-fired power plant, the natural gas required to power the fuel cells is still a fossil fuel – a nonrenewable resource that generates emissions that contribute to climate change. The scale of infrastructure needed to power data center buildings of the size proposed is massive. It’s impossible for the emissions to be low enough to negate the effect of cutting the carbon-sequestering forest and further imbalancing Loudoun’s ecosystems by destroying habitat and creating massive impervious surfaces near Goose Creek.

This application is being presented as a green-forward data center. The applicant touts low-zero carbon emissions, 60 percent open space and generous buffering. While these are commendable features, every new data center in Loudoun exacerbates the problems posed by the dominance of the industry. Rezoning 362 acres to industrial uses to add three million more square feet of data centers is far from a “low-impact footprint”*

Thus far, this application is moving quickly through the development process. We may see it come before the Planning Commission as early as this summer. You can make your opposition known by adding a comment on Spring Valley’s Land Application Comment page. Here’s how:

1. 1. Go to https://arcg.is/euPSW1
   2. Type in “Spring Valley Technology Park” next to the Plan Name prompt in the upper left section of the screen and click Apply
   3. The map zooms to a purple pin labelled LEGI-2024-0074. Click on the pin.
   4. In the bottom left section (which shows comments made by others), click on the green Submit Comments link or use the LOLA Public Comments link to speak your mind on the issue.

Check back for more information as this issue continues to develop, and keep an eye out for an advocacy alert ahead of its Planning Commission public hearing. Contact Trinity Mills tmills@loudounwildlife.org with any questions.

*Reference:  Active Infrastructure, “Active Infrastructure’s Post,” LinkedIn, October 21, 2024.

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