Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026), titled "Establishing New Nation-Leading Standards and Initiatives to Implement the Virginia Data Center Accountability Framework and Responding to Unprecedented Risk from Artificial Intelligence," was signed by Governor Abigail D. Spanberger on September 18, 2026 and took effect on signing. It joins two subjects in one instrument: a set of conditions on data center development, which the order describes as having reached a scale and pace that Virginia's existing regulatory frameworks lack "the precision" to govern, and a rapid-response AI Task Force directed at workforce displacement, data privacy and AI-agent cybersecurity risk. It was issued the same day as California Executive Order N-9-26, and shares its stated premise that the federal government has not acted Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026) and the Data Center Accountability Framework — signed texts.
Full text: signed PDF on governor.virginia.gov.
The Data Center Accountability Framework
The order states five pillars that "data center developers and operators must meet to do business in the Commonwealth": engaging transparently with communities; protecting the environment; improving affordability for Virginians; advancing clean energy and grid reliability; and delivering a better deal for the workforce. The Office of the Chief Energy Officer is designated the primary implementation lead, with all secretariats and executive-branch agencies directed to support it on request.
The Framework document and its legislative proposals
The Framework itself is a separate document the Governor's office released the same day, which states that many of its directives move through Executive Order 22 and that the rest are to be written into law with the General Assembly in the 2027 session. Among the measures that require legislation it proposes to eliminate by-right approval by requiring local approval of any data center using more than 25 megawatts "regardless of prior project approvals"; to require community benefits agreements; to end state subsidies for data centers in Virginia's site development programs and remove future large projects from fast-track permitting; to set standards for energy efficiency, water use, land impacts and backup generation, and require existing and future facilities to move to Tier IV or cleaner backup power; to require utilities to allocate a larger share of transmission and generation costs to data centers and other large loads, and stronger upfront financial commitments from developers; and to limit on-site or behind-the-meter natural-gas generation and close loopholes that let such emissions avoid the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The Framework describes the AI Task Force as developing policy and legislative proposals on workforce displacement, data privacy and cybersecurity Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026) and the Data Center Accountability Framework — signed texts. The by-right and subsidy proposals that coverage attributed to the order are therefore in the Framework, while the order's own measure is the narrower 25 MW exclusion from state assistance programs described below.
Reaction from environmental groups was largely supportive; the Governor's release carried statements from the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club's Virginia chapter, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and from former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, which has advocated a moratorium on new development, said the package "largely addresses standards on new data centers and does not deal with what's already built and in the pipeline, along with the ongoing impacts piling up in communities now" (Source: governor.virginia.gov; theverge.com). The Verge placed the order alongside executive action on data centers by New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Texas Governor Greg Abbott and California's order of the same day (Source: theverge.com).
Transparency and nondisclosure agreements
Executive-branch agencies, departments, boards, commissions and authorities are barred from entering into — and from enforcing or requiring — any nondisclosure agreement that prevents public disclosure of material information about a proposed commercial data center development, its public incentives, its anticipated resource demands, or its potential community impacts. Existing contractual commitments are to be honored, and the order excepts "extraordinary circumstances including matters related to national security." Within 120 days the Chief Energy Officer must publish a Data Center Planning and Community Engagement Toolkit for local governments, containing model disclosure templates and information requests, guidance for evaluating electricity demand, water use, wastewater, backup generation, air emissions, noise and traffic, and model approaches to community-benefit agreements.
VA-LEAD and the state-program exclusion
The order directs creation of a Virginia Local Energy and Accountable Data Centers (VA-LEAD) designation, a "standardized, tiered scoring system" the order says is modelled on LEED and EnergyStar, scoring facilities on energy and infrastructure impacts, water and land use, noise, workforce development, clean-energy and resilience investment, local sustainable construction materials, and community benefits. Once established, VA-LEAD is to become "the baseline for how executive branch agencies align incentives and administrative services." Criteria and an implementation plan are due to the Governor by the end of calendar year 2027.
Effective on issuance, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership may not assist a new data center project with anticipated peak electrical demand of 25 MW or greater through the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program, any expedited permitting program, or any similar discretionary state economic development, site-readiness or expedited-review program. The threshold and the program list are the order's own; coverage of the order described the Framework as proposing an end to by-right approval and removal of some state subsidies, terms that do not appear in the text (Source: theverge.com).
Environment, energy and workforce directives
The Department of Environmental Quality is directed to expedite data center noise regulations and to deliver an accelerated timeline, workplan and stakeholder-engagement plan within 180 days; to conduct a cumulative-impact review of diesel and other backup generation associated with data centers, considering generator count, capacity, fuel type, operating hours and geographic concentration, and measures including retrofit of Tier II gen-sets to Tier IV controls, battery storage, fuel cells and clean firm generation; and to expedite regulations establishing criteria for designating cooling water scarcity areas. The order designates the Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area as a cooling water scarcity area on its own terms, ahead of that rulemaking.
On affordability and reliability, the Chief Energy Officer is to advocate before the State Corporation Commission, PJM and utilities for assigning the costs of PJM's Reliability Backstop Procurement to the data center large loads that cause them, and for equitable cost allocation under PJM's Interim Resource Adequacy Service program; and to work toward emergency curtailment procedures for data centers that have not brought their own new capacity under that program, with reduced impact prioritized for those that bring their own clean energy or peak-shaving adjustments. Virginia Energy is to evaluate operational best practices for grid reliability, including ride-through and voltage protections, in coordination with PJM and NERC, and within 240 days to recommend siting approaches covering brownfield redevelopment, edge and distributed models, regional diversification, waste-heat and reclaimed-water co-location, and transmission impacts on scenic and historic landscapes.
Within 180 days Virginia Works must develop criteria for project-level workforce data collection covering job quality, workforce needs, training programs and outcomes, to be folded into VA-LEAD.
The rapid-response AI Task Force
Part II establishes a Task Force co-led by the Chief Transformation Officer, Counsel to the Governor, and Secretary of Administration, supported by a newly created AI Policy Planning Unit inside the Office of the Chief Transformation Officer. Its directed actions are to address workforce-displacement and data-privacy risk through executive and legislative action; to identify existing Virginia enforcement and regulatory options; to assess cybersecurity risk to state systems and critical infrastructure "from AI agents, bots, and other developments"; to partner with other governors and with federal, international and philanthropic actors; to support secure and responsible state use of AI; to coordinate with named frontier developers — Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft — on risks, mitigations and "people-first design requirements"; and to engage international experts. The Task Force reports to the Governor continuously until terminated at her direction, and coordinates with five secretariats, the Joint Commission on Technology & Science, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, and Virginia's congressional delegation.
The order's stated occasion for Part II is that "certain AI technology companies have revealed instances where they had to address terroristic uses like foreign actors seeking to build biological weapons or execute cyber-espionage against critical infrastructure," and that companies "have also identified how new AI models have escaped the companies' control, broken laws, and caused damage to other businesses." As in the California order of the same date, the recitals treat industry calls for regulation as a reason for state action: "When companies are asking for federal regulation because they understand the potential threat their products can create, the federal government must act."
Rescissions
The order rescinds Governor Glenn Youngkin's Executive Order No. 30 (January 18, 2024) and Executive Directive No. 5 (September 20, 2023). Policies, standards and guidelines published under Executive Order 30 remain in effect until replaced by future executive or agency action Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026) and the Data Center Accountability Framework — signed texts.
Open questions
- What the 25 MW exclusion reaches in practice, given that most new Virginia hyperscale campuses are announced well above that figure and that the excluded programs are discretionary state assistance rather than permits.
- Whether the noise, backup-generation and cooling-water rulemakings proceed within DEQ's existing statutory authority, which the order expressly limits them to, or require legislation.
- How the VA-LEAD tiers interact with the local land-use approvals that govern siting, which the order does not reach.
- Whether the AI Task Force's coordination with named frontier developers produces any published output, and what the AI Policy Planning Unit's staffing is.
Relationships
- depends-on: Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026) and the Data Center Accountability Framework — signed texts — the signed order and the companion Framework.
- related: Abigail Spanberger — issuing governor
- instance-of: State-Level AI Regulation — state executive action on AI in the absence of federal legislation.
- related: California Executive Order N-9-26 (independent verification and frontier AI safety) — issued the same day, on the same stated premise of federal inaction, but directed at frontier-model verification rather than data center siting.
- related: Virginia HB 2094 (High-Risk AI Developer and Deployer Act, vetoed) — Virginia's earlier high-risk AI developer and deployer bill.
- related: Data Center Siting / AI Power Politics — the pillars, VA-LEAD and the siting directive are siting policy.
- related: AI Data Centers — the buildout the order responds to.
- related: AI Environmental Impact — noise, backup-generation emissions and cooling water.
- deploys-in: Energy and Electric Power Sector — PJM cost allocation, IRAS curtailment and grid-reliability directives.
- related: Techno-Federalism — the order's express reliance on state authority where federal authority has been "ceded."