Virginia’s coal country is pitching reclaimed mine land as solar-powered AI data center sites, with Energy DELTA Lab planning a 450-acre “Data Center Ridge” that taps cheap, clean mine water for power and cooling.
Local governments are sweetening the deal with favorable tax treatment for data center equipment, trying to pull AI workloads and GPU farms into a region gutted by coal’s collapse.
Early proof points include Mineral Gap Data Center and several mine-to-solar projects, but these are still small-scale relative to hyperscale AI demand and the capital intensity of $500M–$2B per facility.
Environmental groups flag the tension between AI-driven power demand, water use, and grid strain, arguing data center siting should pass a public-interest test, even when paired with renewables.
Job creation is heavily front-loaded in construction, with modest long-term operations headcount, raising questions about how much these AI builds really replace lost mining employment.
At the same time, federal policy is sending mixed signals by funding modernization of coal plants to power AI, while local actors push renewables plus data centers as the new economic base.
For AI infra watchers, this is a live test of whether stranded fossil assets and legacy communities can be converted into credible, affordable, and socially accepted capacity for the next wave of workloads, making the full piece worth a read.
Source: Where coal once reigned, Virginia eyes data centres | Context by TRF
