Labor and Commerce Subcommittee #3

Tuesday, February 10, 2026·1h 34m·▶ Watch / Listen

Labor and Commerce Subcommittee #3 advanced several data center accountability and grid reliability bills while tabling two major bills (HB 658 on cost allocation and HB 155 on facility certification) unanimously, and carrying over HB 503 — reflecting deep divisions between environmental and consumer advocates pushing data centers to pay their full infrastructure costs and industry, labor, and utility interests warning that additional regulation risks driving investment to competing states.

Key Actions

·HB 591 – Commonwealth Policy Statement on Data CentersNo Vote

+ 6 more actions

Controversies

Whether data center regulation bills are anti-competitive

Delegate Kilgore argued the bills 'kind of are anti data center bills' and that Georgia and Ohio 'are just looking at this and saying, yes, Virginia, keep doing what you're doing — we want your data centers,' while Delegate Thomas countered that the legislature was 'not trying to kill an industry, just trying to get a handle on energy's are on Virginia's soaring energy needs' and that without action Virginia is 'rapidly approaching a power cliff.'

+ 4 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“As of 2024, the data center industry requires around 5 gigawatts of power. And then the JLRC report went on to say that in an unconstrained load environment, we do nothing to tamper that load. It is expected to double to around 10 gigawatts in 10 years time. To put that into context, the Lake Anna or the North Anna nuclear power plant is, depending on the day, between 1.5 and 1.8 gigawatts of power. We would need to build two to three more of those to accommodate this new increase in power.”
Delegate Thomas — Delegate Thomas was sponsoring HB 155, which would require SCC certification before high load facilities over 25 megawatts can connect to the grid, and was making the case for urgency by quantifying the scale of projected data center load growth.

+ 4 more quotes

Votes

Motion to lay HB 658 on the tablePassed

Motion to report HB 591 as amendedPassed

Motion to lay HB 155 on the tablePassed

Motion to table HB 1087Passed

Motion to report HB 1151 with substitutePassed

Motion to report HB 1075 with substitutePassed

Motion to report HB 284 with substitutePassed

Motion to report HB 1256 with substitutePassed

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TranscriptPreview

Ladies and gentlemen, if we could gather, please. Want to call a meeting? Call it this meeting to order. Welcome to the last meeting of sub 3 before crossover. Yay. Good. I'll try not to take that personally. We're going to start with HB 650. Well, I guess we should take the role. We all know who's here. Go ahead. Okay, we have a quorum. Let's begin with HB 658. Delegate Maldonado. Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the committee, there is a substitute amendment. Second, I have a motion to substitute properly seconded. All in favor? Any opposed substitutes before us? Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, HB 658 addresses some of the small gap that was sort of left unattended as a result of the SEC ruling last November. One of the things we've talked quite a bit about is the fact that 85% of the sort of transmission and other costs are covered in the bills under that ruling. However, what is not covered is is transmission projects designed primarily to serve data centers, particularly supplemental transmission projects. And those are sort of improperly shared across all customers, unlike the other…

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