Chris Cosby will become president and CEO of Glen Allen’s Old Dominion Electric Cooperative on Feb. 1, 2025.
Cosby succeeds John C. Lee, who has been ODEC’s president and CEO since Sept. 8, 2023, initially serving in an interim capacity. ODEC announced Lee’s retirement, effective Feb. 1, on Monday. He will serve as a senior adviser to the member-owned cooperative after his retirement.
Lee previously served as ODEC’s chairman of the board and also was president and CEO of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (an ODEC member) and of Mecklenburg’s Empower Broadband subsidiary.
“Chris Cosby will do an excellent job as ODEC’s next president and CEO, and he could not be better suited to lead this organization as our industry moves into unprecedented times,” Lee said in a statement.
Cosby is currently ODEC’s chief operating officer. Since joining ODEC in 2018, he has served as senior vice president of power supply, vice president of regulatory affairs and director of asset management.
“I am honored and thrilled to be selected as ODEC’s next president and CEO,” Cosby said in a statement. “ODEC’s operational excellence and unparalleled commitment to serving its members make ODEC one the nation’s most successful [generation and transmission cooperatives].”
Before joining ODEC, Cosby held varying positions at General Electric, Dominion Energy and Alstom Power. Prior to his career in the utility industry, Cosby served on active duty in the U.S. Navy as an officer and pilot, flying the P-3 Orion, for 10 years. Cosby deployed throughout Western Europe, South America, Iceland and Puerto Rico.
“I am honored and thrilled to be selected as ODEC’s next president and CEO,” Cosby said in a statement, citing “ODEC’s operational excellence and unparalleled commitment to serving its members.”
He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy.
ODEC is a not-for-profit, member-owned power supply cooperative. The cooperative has 11 member electric distribution cooperatives that supply electricity to 1.5 million people in 70 counties across Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
Appalachian Power, an electric utility subsidiary of American Electric Power which serves more than one million customers in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee, announced plans Thursday to bring a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) project to Campbell County.
The company, which has its headquarters in Charleston, West Virginia, has identified a potential site for the project on property it already owns in Joshua Falls near the James River and outside Lynchburg. A 765-kilovolt substation is already located at Joshua Falls and nearby roads are adequate to support moving equipment to the site, according to Appalachian Power.
“Advanced nuclear power is at the heart of Virginia’s All-American, All-of-the Above Energy Plan, a plan that prioritizes abundant, reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean power to fuel our thriving and growing economy,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin stated in an Appalachian Power news release. “I am grateful that Appalachian Power is taking this next step to support Virginia’s nuclear future.”
SMRs are designed to generate up to 300 megawatts per unit, about one-third the capacity of conventional nuclear reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Association. As of now, only two SMRs are in operation — one in Russia and the other in China.
In 2022, Youngkin announced Virginia would build a SMR within a decade. The next year, the governor and the General Assembly created the Virginia Power Innovation Fund, which provides $4 million for research and development of innovative energy technologies.
“Appalachian Power is committed to generating clean, always-on power to meet Virginia’s future demand,” Appalachian Power President and CEO Aaron Walker stated in a release. “We are grateful to the Virginia General Assembly and Gov. Youngkin for embracing SMR technology. This announcement would not have been possible without their forward-thinking support.”
The largest SMRs can produce enough energy for 250,000 to 500,000 homes, according to George Porter, a spokesperson for Appalachian Power. The SMR in Campbell County would generate power for Appalachian Power customers in Virginia, he stated.
In October, Amazon.com and Dominion Energy Virginia entered into an agreement to explore development of small modular nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Station in Louisa County.
Appalachian Power plans to file an application with the Virginia State Corporation Commission in spring 2025. The company intends to apply for the U.S. Department of Energy’s $900 million grant program that is designed to accelerate the deployment of SMRs.
The utility serves about 550,000 customers in an 11,000 square-mile territory in central and southwestern Virginia. It will hold a community open house to discuss the project on Dec. 5 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance.
The developer planning a natural gas power plant and data center campus on 2,233 acres in the Banister and Callands-Gretna districts of Pittsylvania County withdrew its rezoning application Monday, after facing vocal opposition from residents at public meetings held last week.
Instead, Herndon-based Balico, the development company behind the project, intends to file a rezoning application with Pittsylvania County by Nov. 19 pitching a scaled-down version on about 600 acres in the same area, according to Balico founder and CEO Irfan Ali.
Ali acknowledged the project has a “certain amount of a perception issue,” but insisted the controversies generated after the project’s first application wasn’t the main reason for Balico’s initial withdrawal.
“The reason we scaled it down is because, really, what my engineers and lawyers concluded is that we don’t want to trigger a traffic impact analysis study with [the Virginia Department of Transportation],” Ali said Wednesday, “so we’re staying under the threshold in this filing.”
However, Ali hopes the project will eventually be able to grow beyond 600 acres. “This is the first phase, and ultimately we will continue,” he says.
The initial application for the project would have included up to 84 data center buildings and a 3,500-megawatt natural gas power plant in a rural area along Chalk Level Road. That development would have created 700 jobs and deliver a minimum of $120 million per year in tax revenue to Pittsylvania County once it was built out, Ali had said.
At last week’s public meetings, attendees sternly expressed concerns about the project, including worries about dropping property values, traffic and the impact on the area’s rural nature.
Last week, Robert Tucker, vice chair of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors, announced Balico didn’t have the votes to get the rezoning passed by the supervisors. When reached Friday, Tucker said he wouldn’t support a smaller proposal from Balico either.
“Based on everything that we’ve experienced with this particular investor and the community reaction, I don’t think that I’m going to support that,” he said. “I can’t speak for the other supervisors, but I don’t think the support is there.”
A scaled-down project would create between 300 and 400 jobs, according to Ali, who noted he’s heard of Pittsylvania residents traveling two hours to go to work. “This will create jobs right in their own backyard,” he said.
Balico has hired LINK Public Affairs, a Richmond communications firm, to rally local support for the project. “We’re building already quite a strong momentum among the business community,” said Ali.
Data centers require water for cooling servers. Initially, Ali hopes to tap into a source of nonpotable water in Chatham. Long term, Ali said, he’s talking with officials in Hurt about building a pipeline to carry water about 19 miles from a town water source to the data center campus. Town Mayor Gary Hodnett did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The pipeline, Ali said, would be able to deliver up to 18 million gallons of water a day. The data center campus will only require 2 million gallons a day, he noted, so the remaining water could be used by homes in that area that rely on individual wells.
Building the pipeline and a water treatment facility would cost about $17 million, Ali estimated. Before work begins on that, however, Ali said he will need to identify a user for the data center campus. “None of this can be financed if we don’t have a user at the back end,” he said.
Matt Rowe, director of economic development for Pittsylvania , receives multiple calls a week from data center developers looking at the county.
Rowe pointed out that the region isn’t subject to “hurricane impacts” and has low seismic activity. The soil in Pittsylvania is good for load-bearing capacity, he added.
“When you get closer along the coast there and certain places, [where] you’re dealing with more sand, and that just adds cost to construction,” Rowe said.
Location also works in favor of Pittsylvania, he noted.
“Almost all internet traffic is going through Ashburn, Virginia, or Marietta, Georgia, or the QTS facility in Sandston,” Rowe said.
Pittsylvania officials will need to consider what role they want data centers to play in the region’s economic future, Rowe maintained. The county’s comprehensive plan was adopted in 2010.
“What’s even more important to the county and for long term is looking at probably doing a total rewrite of its comprehensive plan because that’s really what guides … future growth.” Rowe said.
For decades, the promise of economic revitalization has tantalized Southwest Virginia. The sparsely populated region, once home to booming coal mining and tobacco industries, has had money and resources thrown at it by local, state and federal governments, but it’s still had a difficult time finding its footing.
As the region’s economy has declined, so too has its population, with the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service predicting Southwest Virginia’s headcount will have dropped by more than 10% between 2020 and 2030 and will decline more than 23% by 2050. What’s more, just over half of Southwest Virginians participate in the labor force — about 12% lower than the state average, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. That’s due to a variety of factors, including child care, transportation, housing and the opioids epidemic.
And that’s in normal times — not taking into account the impact from disasters such as Hurricane Helene, which damaged or destroyed more than 500 homes and 80 businesses across the region in September and shut down a l.5-mile segment of U.S. Route 58, a key regional artery for commerce and travel that stretches from far Southwest Virginia to Hampton Roads. The Virginia Cooperative Extension has estimated that agricultural damage in the region could surpass $125 million.
Despite Southwest Virginia’s challenges, billions of public dollars have been invested regionally during the past several years, including $3.8 billion in planned Interstate 81 improvements, $8.2 million in affordable housing support, and $1.48 billion in federal funds to expand broadband access. And that’s not to mention Highlands Community Services’ new mental health crisis center, which opened in Abingdon in May, or Emory & Henry University’s new state lab school, SWVA HEALS (Southwest Virginia Healthcare Excellence Academy Lab School), which launched in August and prepares regional high school students for careers in health care.
Plus, considering the region’s historic connection to the energy industry and its ample supply of vacant land, economic development officials have been marketing Southwest’s abandoned coal mining lands for renewable energy and data center projects. While industries like those could provide investments in jobs and capital the region needs, the situation won’t change overnight, experts caution.
“We hear all the time, ‘Oh, you guys have all this land. You can do solar everywhere. You can do projects everywhere,’” says Will Payne, director of InvestSWVA and managing partner of regional economic development consulting firm Coalfield Strategies. “And … if that was true, where are the projects right now?”
Payne is heavily plugged into Southwest Virginia politics and his work is focused on marketing the region for economic development projects.
Fighting against time
Completely revitalizing a region’s economy takes time. Energy projects are complex and can take years to get off the ground, considering the due diligence involved.
“There are no quick wins in energy generation projects,” Payne says. “There are no quick wins in data center projects.”
Even developing a solar farm can take four years to complete, and that’s “probably really aggressive,” says Will Clear, managing partner of Bristol-based consultancy Virginia Energy Strategies and a former chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Energy.
Clear and Payne are advisers for Energy DELTA Lab, a regional nonprofit collaborative initiative to market more than 65,000 acres of previously mined land in the region to develop into renewable energy projects, such as solar, wind or hydrogen, and data centers. Partners in the initiative include energy companies, InvestSWVA, the Southwest Virginia Energy Research and Development Authority, and the Virginia Department of Energy.
“The idea of using mine lands — it makes a lot of sense … using brownfield sites, but the real issue is not that simple,” Clear says. “There’s a lot of complexities associated with land that has been previously mined and currently mined [and] potentially under permit. There’s a lot of things you have to tackle.”
In November 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced an agreement between Wise County, the Energy DELTA Lab and Dallas-based Fortune 100 energy company Energy Transfer to aid in developing a variety of energy projects that would attract private investment and fit Youngkin’s all-of-the-above strategy for fulfilling the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s renewable power mandates.
Youngkin also announced a new initiative this year, Accelerate Southwest. Aimed at improving the region’s economic development, infrastructure, housing and cost of living, the initiative focuses on existing programs like improvements to I-81 and the DELTA Lab.
On the economic development front, although it requires a great deal of time and investment to bring data centers and renewable energy projects to fruition, next year could be a turning point for such developments in the region, Clear and Payne say.
“I think that in 2025, it’d be fair to say that we’re going to see real movement here based on a lot of due diligence that’s been going on for the last three years,” Payne says.
Data center storage rack manufacturer Tate is investing $15 million in a new manufacturing facility in St. Paul, with plans to add 170 jobs over four years, says Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority’s Jonathan Belcher. Photo by Tim Cox
From mining to manufacturing
Energy and data center projects are eyed as key remedies for the economically ailing region, which has seen its coal production fall off dramatically during the past three decades. The region’s coal production, which occurs mostly in Buchanan, Dickenson and Wise counties, fell from 46.6 million tons in 1990 to fewer than 10 million tons in 2020, according to the Virginia Department of Energy.
“Coal’s not dying. We’re producing more coal than we’ve ever produced. It’s just with fewer people,” Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, said during the Southwest Virginia Economic Forum at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise in May.
“If you look back at that 20-year period, there were definitely highs and lows for that industry, [but] it’s continued to be a significant part of the economy,” says Randall Rose, associate vice chancellor for community and economic development at U.Va. Wise. “However, there also has been a very strategic effort looking at diversifying the region so that if there is a decline in the coal industry, it doesn’t make such a major impact on the economy and the lives of individuals.”
At U.Va. Wise, Rose is responsible for fostering the symbiotic relationship between the university’s pool of student talent and the region’s employers, as well as assisting in larger economic development and entrepreneurship-focused goals for the region.
U.Va. Wise is also part of Opportunity Southwest, a regional collaborative initiative for promoting entrepreneurship. It was formed in 2012 to create the Blueprint for Entrepreneurial Growth & Economic Prosperity in Southwest Virginia, a strategic planning document for developing a regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“That blueprint really set the stage for not only local economic developers and small business developers, but also regional and statewide and even federal partners to see what that future could look like and where the areas of focus would be for the Southwest region,” Rose explains.
Additionally, U.Va. Wise has been working with localities and economic development officials to research the feasibility of renewable energy and data center projects at specific sites in the region.
“We want to support in any way possible the economic developers in the region [and] the private sector,” Rose says.
Another focus of economic development efforts in Southwest Virginia has been manufacturing.
“A lot of that goes back to the blue-collar heritage of the region with the coal mining history. That workforce adapts very well to manufacturing positions, so we focus very heavily on that,” says Jonathan S. Belcher, executive director and general counsel for the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority (VCEDA). Established by the General Assembly in 1988 to enhance and diversify Southwest Virginia’s economy, VCEDA works closely with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and local economic development officials to secure new projects for the region.
Most of the manufacturing companies VCEDA seeks to recruit are advanced manufacturers using specialized equipment that requires specific training and experience. “They’re not just basic assembly positions or something that would be a lower skill level or lower-paying position,” Belcher says.
One such project was announced in November 2023, when data center storage rack manufacturer Tate announced it would establish a new 270,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in St. Paul, along the Russell and Wise counties border. The nearly $15 million project is expected to create 170 full-time jobs over the next four years, Belcher says.
The region’s manufacturing industry has started paying off — literally. Since early 2022, average annual wages in Southwest Virginia have been growing at a higher rate than the rest of the commonwealth, according to data from Chmura Economics & Analytics.
Growing tourism, small business
While Southwest Virginia continues to struggle with challenges such as its low workforce participation rate and obstacles to economic development, the region still attracts tourists to its large swaths of unspoiled, natural beauty. For that reason, tourism has continued to grow in Southwest Virginia during the past couple of decades, Belcher says. Much of the tourism in the region is centered on outdoor recreation such as hiking, ATVs and horseback riding — but it’s also home to The Crooked Road Heritage Music Trail. The scenic, 330-mile driving route connects a variety of music venues and festivals including the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol and the Floyd Country Store, which features live Appalachian music and a weekly Friday Night Jamboree.
“There’s also a lot of historical attractions in the area going back to the Colonial time period,” Belcher says. And much of Southwest’s tourism development has been “building upon those assets … building small businesses that support that.” As a result, more colleges in the area have also started to implement hospitality management and outdoor recreation management programs.
Some of these small businesses and economic stimulation comes from Airbnbs, campgrounds, restaurants and food trucks, he says. Many restaurants, coffee shops and other small retailers have emerged from seed capital programming and regional Small Business Development Centers. One such small business that’s found success is a drone photography business run by Dickenson County native Brad Deel. He received a $10,000 grant from VCEDA, and now his photography is used to market the region and promote tourism.
“We really feel like small business development is a key part of the economic development strategy as well,” Belcher says. “Relying just on larger industrial recruitment projects is a really misplaced strategy to rely solely on. The activity [we’re seeing is] really helping with the stability of the economy.”
Southwest Virginia at a glance
Known for its rural, mountainous landscapes and as the birthplace of American country and bluegrass music, Southwest Virginia includes Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington and Wythe counties, as well as the cities of Bristol, Galax and Norton. Formerly known mostly for coal mining, the region is turning its efforts toward attracting ecotourism, alternative energy projects and data centers. The University ofVirginia’s College at Wise, Emory & Henry University and Mountain Empire, Wytheville and Southwest Virginia community colleges are also located in the region.
Population
335,847
Top employers
Walmart
CGI
Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell and Wise county school systems
Tempur-Sealy
Coronado Coal
Notable hotels
The Bristol Hotel (Bristol) 65 rooms, 3,800 square feet of event space
The Inn at Wise (Wise) 49 rooms, 5,000 square feet of event space
The Martha Washington Inn
& Spa (Abingdon) 63 rooms, 3,200 square feet of event space
The Primland Resort (Meadows of Dan) 53 rooms, 12,149 square feet of event space
The Sessions Hotel (Bristol) 70 rooms, 2,311 square feet of event space
Western Front Hotel (St. Paul) 30 rooms, 2,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space
One of the premier attractions of Southwest Virginia is the Appalachian Trail, which runs through 14 states and through the heart of the region. SWVA is also home to the 300-mile gospel, blues and bluegrass music heritage trail The Crooked Road and Bristol’s Birthplace of Country Music Museum. In Damascus, up to 20,000 people attend the Appalachian Trail Days Festival each year. On Nov. 14, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol is set to host a grand opening of its $515 million permanent facility, including the Hard Rock Live entertainment venue. For live stage performances, visit The Barter Theatre in Abingdon, the nation’s longest-running Actors’ Equity theater.
With power consumption by data centers and AI projected to more than quadruple in Virginia in the next 15 years, Amazon.com and Dominion Energy Virginia have entered into an agreement to explore potential development of small modular nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, the two companies announced during an Oct. 16 event at Amazon’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington County.
Dominion and Amazon’s memorandum of understanding means the companies will “jointly explore innovative ways to advance SMR development and financing while also mitigating potential cost and development risks for customers and capital providers,” according to Dominion’s announcement.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Dominion Energy Virginia President Ed Baine were at the event, among other state and national dignitaries.
“Nuclear is a safe source of carbon-free energy that can help power our operations and meet the growing demands of our customers, while helping us progress toward our Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon across our operation by 2040,” Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said in a statement.
Only two SMRs are in operation worldwide — one in Russia and the other in China — and Virginia likely won’t have its own SMR before the mid-2030s.
Over the past couple of years, SMRs have been a big part of Virginia’s energy conversation, especially as data center growth has put more demands on the state’s power grid. In a May earnings call, Dominion Energy CEO Bob Blue said that the utility is receiving more requests to power larger data center campuses with increased energy demands of 60 to 90 megawatts per building, or several gigawatts for multibuilding campuses.
“There are a number of things that are driving energy demand within Virginia,”Baine says. “Data centers [are] absolutely one of the big ones, but there’s also manufacturer electrification that is also increasing demand.”
Dominion announced in July that it had issued a request for proposals to evaluate the feasibility for a small nuclear reactor to be developed at its North Anna power plant, where it has two conventional, large nuclear reactors.
In October’s agreement, Amazon has agreed to explore the development of an SMR project near North Anna, bringing “at least 300 megawatts of power to the Virginia region, where Dominion projects that power demands will increase by 85% over the next 15 years.”
Two energy storage projects proposed for Southern Virginia would help augment the area’s power capacity, diversify the region’s tax base and boost the regional economy, industry representatives say.
Dominion Energy Virginia wants to build a liquified natural gas storage facility on more than 20 acres that the Richmond-based Fortune 500 utility owns next to its Greensville County natural gas power plant, straddling the line with Brunswick County, according to a June filing with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. The $548 million facility, which would open in late 2027, would employ 400 construction-related workers and culminate in six full-time jobs, bringing $17.5 million to the local economy, and boosting combined county tax revenues by $35.5 million over 25 years, according to Dominion.
The storage facility would provide backup fuel supply for Dominion’s Greensville and Brunswick power stations during periods of extreme weather or peak demand, enough to power 700,000 homes in the region for up to four days, says Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton. He points to Winter Storm Elliot, which in December 2022 knocked out power for millions of electricity customers along the Eastern Seaboard, as well an early 2021 deep freeze in Texas that led to hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in economic losses.
“We see those types of incidents happening, and we know that we can’t allow that to happen for our customers,” Slayton says.
Separately, in July, North Carolina-based Strata Clean Energy received approval from the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Authority to lease 85 acres at the 3,528-acre Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill to build a lithium-ion battery storage facility on an up-to-4-acre pad that would connect to an Appalachian Power substation.
Strata Director of Development Adam Thompson says the project, which would employ only a handful of workers, is in a “holding pattern” while economic development officials work to attract other customers to Berry Hill, but construction could start in 2026.
Although both projects won’t create many permanent jobs, those positions will likely be well-paying for the region, says Bryan David, program director for the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Localities in Southern Virginia are working “as hard as [they] can to transform the economy” by diversifying their tax bases, he says, and “these types of investments are incrementally one more step toward that goal.”
Dominion Energy has completed its $2.6 billion sale of a 50% noncontrolling stake in its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project to investor Stonepeak, the Fortune 500 utility announced Tuesday.
This transaction and several other recent sales reduce Dominion’s debt by approximately $21 billion, meeting a goal the utility set in a recent business review, according to its news release Wednesday.
The Stonepeak deal was announced in February and was estimated at nearly $3 billion, a number that went down to $2.6 billion at closing. Dominion will retain full operational control of construction and operations of the $9.8 billion CVOW project, under construction 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. As of August, the 50th monopile foundation for CVOW’s 174 turbines was installed, and Dominion officials said in October the project, set to be complete in 2026, is on time and on budget.
Dominion’s deal with Stonepeak improves its estimated 2024 consolidated FFO-to-debt by approximately 1%, as well as lowering risks and reducing its overall financing needs during the wind farm’s construction.
Dominion has announced several acquisitions and sales over the past year:
In July, a Dominion subsidiary announced its plan to purchase the 40,000-acre Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease from Avangrid for $160 million.
In August, the utility won a 176,505-acre lease about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for a $17.65 million bid in a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction.
Last year, Dominion sold its remaining interest in the Cove Point natural gas liquefaction facility in Maryland to Berkshire Hathaway Energy for $3.5 billion.
In March, the utility completed its sale of East Ohio Gas to Canadian pipeline and energy company Enbridge for $6.6 billion.
In June, Dominion sold subsidiaries Questar Gas and Wexpro to Enbridge for $4.3 billion.
Earlier this month, Dominion closed on its $3.2 billion sale of the Gastonia, North Carolina, natural gas utility Public Service Co. of North Carolina to Enbridge.
“We are pleased to partner with Stonepeak on CVOW, which continues to proceed on-time and on-budget, consistent with our previously communicated timing and cost expectations,” Dominion Chair, President and CEO Bob Blue said in a statement. “Stonepeak is one of the world’s largest infrastructure investors in large energy projects such as offshore wind, and its financial participation in CVOW will benefit both the project and the people who will rely on electricity from CVOW to keep the lights on and fuel economic growth in the commonwealth.”
Stonepeak, headquartered in New York, will fund 50% of remaining project costs, according to the statement.
With power consumption by data centers and AI projected to more than quadruple in Virginia in the next 15 years, Amazon.com and Dominion Energy Virginia have entered into an agreement to explore potential development of small modular nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Plant in Louisa County, the two companies announced at an event Wednesday at Amazon’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington County.
Dominion and Amazon’s memorandum of understanding means the companies will “jointly explore innovative ways to advance SMR development and financing while also mitigating potential cost and development risks for customers and capital providers,” according to Dominion’s announcement.
“This is a milestone along the path,” Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said at Wednesday’s event. “There’s a ton that we need to do between here and there, and there’s a lot of work that needs to go into this, but this is a really important milestone that we’re celebrating today.”
At Wednesday morning’s event, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Dominion Energy Virginia President Ed Baine were on hand, among other state and national dignitaries.
“I am thrilled that Virginia is among the first states to take this big step,” Youngkin said. “Just two-and-a-half years ago, Virginia was literally accelerating on what has been an uninterrupted renaissance in growth, job growth and investment by companies who’ve committed $83 billion to expand or come to Virginia, and hire more people than we’ve ever had working before in the history of the commonwealth.”
He noted that the state is “poised to take this giant step with our partners,” as home to the nuclear Navy, multiple research universities and Dominion.
In his comments, Kaine also mentioned Lynchburg-based nuclear fuel producer BWX Technologies and Framatome Inc., the North American subsidiary of the French nuclear equipment, services and fuel producer, as other significant players in Virginia’s nuclear energy sector. “Amazon is the largest power user in the United States,” Kaine said. “That AWS is here, and that AWS is endeavoring to help us advance our innovation together with these other innovators in Virginia makes perfect sense.”
As of now, only two SMRs are in operation — one in Russia and the other in China — and Virginia likely won’t have its own SMR before the mid-2030s.
Warner, who chairs the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, said Wednesday that energy innovation is important also as a matter of national security, particularly as the U.S. races to catch up with China’s innovations. “National security is not simply the nation state that has the most tanks and guns and ships and planes, but increasingly, it’s going to be who can win the battle in technology competition.” China, he added, is constructing “30 nuclear plants even as we speak. They have a goal of adding 150 more by 2035.”
However, he said, Virginia is “the nuclear capital for the country,” with 100,000 people already working in the nuclear sector in the commonwealth, including sailors, university researchers and employees at BWXT, Framatome, Huntington Ingalls Industries and other companies.
Ambitious plans
Amazon’s agreement with Dominion was just part of its news Wednesday, as the global e-tail giant announced it has signed three agreements to support development of small modular reactors, or SMRs, including one in the state of Washington with Energy Northwest, to develop four advanced SMRs. According to Amazon’s announcement, the four reactors would generate roughly 960 megawatts of electricity at full operation, beginning in the early 2030s. Amazon, which in March acquired a nuclear-powered data center campus in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy, also has committed to invest in SMR developer X-energy, whose reactor design will be used in the Energy Northwest project.
“Nuclear is a safe source of carbon-free energy that can help power our operations and meet the growing demands of our customers, while helping us progress toward our Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon across our operation by 2040,” Garman said in a statement released Wednesday morning.
Dominion previously announced in July that it had issued a request for proposals to evaluate the feasibility for a small nuclear reactor to be developed at its North Anna power plant, where it has two conventional, large nuclear reactors. Nuclear technology companies received the RFP, which was not a guarantee to build an SMR but would be the first step in exploring whether such a step was feasible, the Fortune 500 utility said in July.
On Wednesday, Dominion Energy Virginia’s Baine said that the “site is well on its way to be able to be developed,” and that he expects Dominion to make a decision on the winning proposal before the end of the year. He also said that X-energy is among the companies that have submitted a proposal.
The RFP, Baine added, will “inform us how we want to move forward with companies for additional small modular reactors as well.”
Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick said Wednesday that she expects Youngkin to soon issue an executive order about accelerating permitting for nuclear sites, and the state has invited X-energy to come to Virginia for manufacturing.
Competitor Google preempted Amazon’s announcement by a day, announcing on Tuesday that the tech company had reached an agreement with Kairos Power to develop and purchase 500 megawatts of power from six to seven SMRs, planned to come online between 2030 and 2035. And in September, Microsoft forged a deal with Constellation Energy to offset power consumption by its data centers by reviving a portion of the Three Mile Island power plant, the Pennsylvania facility that in 1979 experienced a partial nuclear meltdown, the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history.
Moving toward nuclear in Va.
Over the past couple of years, SMRs have been a big part of Virginia’s energy conversation, especially as data center growth has put more demands on the state’s power grid.
According to Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan, filed Tuesday with the Virginia State Corporation Commission and the North Carolina Utilities Commission, power demand in Dominion’s coverage area in Virginia and North Carolina is expected to grow 5.5% annually over the next decade and double by 2039. Dominion has previously predicted that the data center industry in the state will demand 13 gigawatts of electricity by 2038, nearly five times the 2.8 gigawatts it used in 2023.
In Virginia, Amazon has agreed to explore the development of an SMR project near North Anna, bringing “at least 300 megawatts of power to the Virginia region, where Dominion projects that power demands will increase by 85% over the next 15 years,” according to Amazon’s news release. Additionally, Amazon signed an agreement to place a new data center next to a nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, a carbon-free energy source to power the data center.
In Loudoun County’s Ashburn area, where more than 70% of the world’s internet traffic courses through a corridor known as Data Center Alley, Amazon Web Services is the biggest fish in a gigantic pool. From 2011 to 2021, AWS invested more than $51.9 billion in Virginia, including building data centers. In January 2023, the company had at least 65 data centers in Loudoun in operation or under development, out of more than 200 data centers in the county, and AWS announced it planned to invest $35 billion by 2040 to build more data center campuses across the state.
Nationally, it’s anticipated that data centers will account for 17% of energy usage nationwide by 2030, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence report. That’s up from 4% in 2022 and 6% in 2026, according to data and projections from the International Energy Agency.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, speaking at Wednesday’s event, called Virginia “the go-to place for the concentration of data centers,” and noted that AWS is the latest company to do “BYOP,” or “bring your own power” for data centers. “And this is the important piece I mentioned, that the technology companies know that in order for these data centers to achieve great community buy-in, bringing their own power with them is an important piece of that, so the rates are not raised on everyday citizens.”
She added that the Department of Energy is announcing $900 million in funding “for those who want to deploy even more … small modular reactors,” referring to applications opening for a program to support the first commercial-use SMR in the United States.
In the past couple of years, as artificial intelligence usage and overall digital use has grown, so has demand on Virginia’s power supply. In a May earnings call, Dominion Energy CEO Bob Blue said that the utility is receiving more requests to power larger data center campuses with larger energy demands of 60 to 90 megawatts per building, or several gigawatts for multibuilding campuses.
Baine said in an interview Wednesday that “there are a number of things that are driving energy demand within Virginia. Data centers [are] absolutely one of the big ones, but there’s also manufacturer electrification that is also increasing demand.”
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) is conducting a study on data centers as some state legislators are pushing for high-volume power users to cover infrastructure costs to keep the state’s power grid reliable. The Virginia General Assembly forwarded all data center-related bills to 2025’s session so lawmakers could take JLARC’s study — expected to be released in November — into consideration.
Virginia Business Editor Richard Foster and Deputy Editor Kate Andrews contributed to this story.
Dominion Energy Virginia filed its 2024 Integrated Resource Plan on Tuesday with the Virginia State Corporation Commission and the North Carolina Utilities Commission, setting out its long-term plans for energy generation over the next 15 years. The report calls for more offshore wind and solar energy development, as well as small modular nuclear reactors starting in the mid-2030s, according to Dominion’s news release.
More battery storage facilities are also part of the plan. Natural gas will produce about 20% of all power generated for its service area in the future, and the remaining 80% is expected to be carbon-free energy, the Fortune 500 utility said in its statement. Dominion notes, however, that the IRP is an estimate for the next 15 years.
“Given uncertainty in technological development and changing laws over an extended 15-year period, the company’s path forward is likely a combination of these portfolios as well as incorporation of new technologies as they become commercially available,” the plan says.
In broad terms, Dominion’s plans include:
Approximately 3,400 megawatts of new offshore wind in addition to the 2,600-megawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project currently under development off the coast of Virginia Beach
About 12,000 megawatts of new solar energy, a more than 150% increase to solar energy Dominion currently has in operation or under development
About 4,500 megawatts of new battery storage
Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) beginning in the mid-2030s
Natural gas will be used as backup power “to ensure the lights stay on when the company’s growing wind and solar fleet are not producing electricity.”
Dominion’s investment in wind and nuclear energy, as well as increasing electricity demands related to data center growth, have been in the headlines recently.
Power demand is expected to grow 5.5% annually over the next decade in Dominion’s service areas in Virginia and North Carolina and double by 2039, according to a forecast by PJM, the regional transmission organization that runs the electrical grid in 12 states and Washington, D.C., including Virginia.
“We are experiencing the largest growth in power demand since the years following World War II,” Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia, said in a statement. “No single energy source, grid solution or energy efficiency program will reliably serve the growing needs of our customers. We need an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach, and we are developing innovative solutions to ensure we deliver for our customers. I am proud of the affordability we deliver, with residential rates 14% below the national average, and as shown in the plan we intend to continue that focus. Our comprehensive plan ensures we can always deliver reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy — day or night, rain or shine, winter or summer.”
The “all-of-the-above” plan echoes one voiced by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has pushed development of small nuclear reactors throughout his term as governor. Under the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act, Dominion is required to shift to carbon-free, renewable energy sources for electricity generation by 2045.
In July, Dominion officials said they were issuing a request for proposals to potentially develop an SMR from nuclear technology companies, stressing that it was not a commitment to build an SMR at the North Anna nuclear power plant in Louisa County, but the first step in evaluating the feasibility of doing so. In August, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved 20-year extensions for North Anna’s two nuclear reactors, allowing them to operate through 2058 and 2060.
Meanwhile, Dominion has moved forward on its $9.8 billion CVOW project and made other moves to increase wind energy production in the future. By the end of the month, the utility expects to have about half of the monopile foundations installed for 174 turbines, with the 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind farm’s completion set for 2026. In Tuesday’s announcement, Dominion says the project is on time and on budget.
Also, in July, a Dominion subsidiary agreed to purchase the Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease from Avangrid for $160 million. The 40,000-acre lease will be renamed CVOW-South and will be capable of 800 megawatts of offshore wind generation in the 2030s, enough to serve 200,000 customers. In August, Dominion won a 176,505-acre lease about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for a $17.65 million bid in a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction. That area could support between 2.1 gigawatts and 4.0 gigawatts of electricity, in addition to other wind energy generated at CVOW.
According to the IRP, in 2023, the utility delivered 36% of all power to customers via natural gas, 29.2% by nuclear, 22.7% by third-party power purchases, and 5% by coal. Renewable energy produced by Dominion or purchased from third-party solar and energy storage resources represents 5% of all power delivered to customers last year.
The plan also notes that Dominion has completed more than 90 miles of new and rebuilt transmission lines and 13 new substations in the first half of 2024, projects that improve electric grid infrastructure.
Siemens Energy pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $104 million this week to settle a federal criminal investigation into stealing trade secrets in order to undercut competitors’ bids in 2019 to build a Dominion Energy gas turbine “peaker” power plant in the Richmond metropolitan area.
The settlement comes after three former Siemens employees and a former Dominion employee pleaded guilty to various charges, including conspiracy to convert trade secrets and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as part of a scheme to help Siemens prevail over two competitors — General Electric and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. — in winning the contract to build the plant, a deal valued upwards of $500 million. Peaker plants are backup facilities that provide extra electricity when there is a high grid load.
Siemens Energy is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 5. Along with the financial penalty, the U.S.-based subsidiary of German global manufacturing conglomerate Siemens Energy AG has agreed to a three-year term of organizational probation, according to a U.S. Department of Justice announcement released Monday.
“Corporate accountability remains a top priority for the Department of Justice,” Jessica D. Aber, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement. “The actions of these defendants undermined the integrity of the competitive marketplace, harming both competitors and consumers. The department has established whistleblower programs to encourage corporations and individuals to come forward with timely information regarding misconduct and criminal behavior. Failing to do so invites prosecution and serious consequences.”
Siemens Energy issued the following statement: “The agreement between Siemens Energy Inc. (SEI) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) conclusively resolves a matter related to the misconduct of former employees which took place more than five years ago. The company proactively discovered the conduct in 2020 and voluntarily disclosed it to its customer and two affected competitors whose claims it subsequently settled.
“SEI also investigated the matter extensively with the assistance of a prominent law firm and has cooperated fully with the U.S. government investigation. It took disciplinary action against several individuals, including separation, and has further enhanced the company’s already-strong compliance program.
“SEI is committed to the highest standards of integrity and compliance and the aberrant conduct that occurred in this case does not reflect who we are as a company.”
According to the DOJ, GE and Mitsubishi submitted closed bids for the project to Dominion in May 2019, and a Siemens account manager, Michael P. Hillen, “coordinated with a Dominion insider,” Theodore S. “Ted” Fasca, then director of generation system planning, “who used his sensitive position to improperly obtain GE and MHI confidential information.”
Using private and work email accounts, Hillen “then disseminated the confidential information to Siemens Account Manager Mehran Sharifi, who analyzed the confidential bid information with other employees. Realizing that Siemens had a less competitive bid than GE by some metrics, Sharifi recommended to Siemens Executive Vice President and Head of Sales for North America John Gibson that Siemens resubmit a lowered bid to undercut GE’s bid price.”
Gibson passed along the other companies’ bid details to other Siemens senior executives, the DOJ said, and submitted a lower bid for the Dominion project, “undercutting GE’s bid” and winning the Dominion project. “Even after submitting the lowered bid, Siemens continued misappropriating GE and MHI confidential information on numerous occasions throughout June 2019,” according to the DOJ. Dominion was not accused of wrongdoing.
Gibson and Sharifi both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to convert trade secrets, with Gibson receiving a sentence of three years and seven months in prison. Sharifi faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 11. Hillen and Fasca both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and were sentenced to three years and one month in prison.
“The FBI will work to hold those accountable who steal confidential information to obtain a competitive advantage, whether they be agents, employees, executives, or corporations themselves,” said Stanley M. Meador, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Richmond Field Office. “We will rigorously investigate those who criminally conspire to defraud companies for their personal gain.”
The natural gas plant was canceled in 2020, but Dominion has plans to build a similar combustion turbine plant in Chesterfield County. Known as the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, the gas plant would be on the retired Chesterfield Power Station site northwest of Dutch Gap Conservation Center, Dominion announced in September, with General Electric having won the bid to manufacture its turbines.
The plant was intended to be built elsewhere in Chesterfield, but some residents opposed the project and fought county rezoning to allow the new plant to be built at the James River Industrial Park. In the new location, the plant is allowed at the former power station site under a 2010 conditional use permit, Chesterfield officials have said.
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