On 18 September 2026 the Office of the Governor of Virginia released two documents together: Executive Order 22 (2026), "Establishing New Nation-Leading Standards and Initiatives to Implement the Virginia Data Center Accountability Framework and Responding to Unprecedented Risk from Artificial Intelligence," signed by Governor Abigail Spanberger and attested by Secretary of the Commonwealth Candi Mundon King; and the Virginia Data Center Accountability Framework, a policy document prepared and presented by the Governor's office. The two are not interchangeable. The order is a nine-page instrument that binds executive-branch agencies on signing; the Framework is a statement of policy whose most-reported items are proposals for the 2027 legislative session. For the order's place in the state regulatory record, see Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026) — data center accountability and AI task force.
The order: authority and structure
Executive Order 22 is issued under Article V of the Constitution of Virginia and §§ 2.2-103 and 2.2-110 of the Code of Virginia. It opens with an "Importance of the Issue" statement, sets out the five pillars of the Framework in the Governor's own summary — engage transparently with communities; protect our environment; improve affordability for Virginians; advance clean energy and grid reliability; deliver a better deal for our workforce — then a preamble on AI risk, then directives in two parts. It becomes effective upon signing and remains in force until amended or rescinded.
Part I — data center accountability
The Office of the Chief Energy Officer is designated primary implementation lead, with all secretariats and executive-branch agencies directed to support it on request.
| Directive | Body | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Data Center Planning and Community Engagement Toolkit — model questions, disclosure templates, guidance on electricity demand, water, wastewater, backup generation, emissions, noise, traffic and public services; model community-benefit agreements; design and buffering practices | Chief Energy Officer, with VEDP, Virginia Energy and DEQ | 120 days |
| Nondisclosure-agreement ban (below) | All executive-branch agencies | Effective on signing |
| Exclusion of new data center projects with anticipated peak electrical demand of 25 MW or greater from the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program, any expedited permitting program, or any similar discretionary state economic development, site-readiness or expedited-review program | VEDP | Effective on issuance |
| VA-LEAD — Virginia Local Energy and Accountable Data Centers — tiered designation criteria and implementation plan, modelled in the order's words on LEED and EnergyStar, scoring energy and infrastructure impacts, water and land use, noise, workforce development, clean-energy and resilience investment, local sustainable construction materials and community benefits | Chief Energy Officer | End of calendar year 2027 |
| Accelerated timeline, workplan and stakeholder-engagement plan for data center noise rulemaking | DEQ | 180 days |
| Cumulative-impact review of diesel and other backup generation, with findings on permitting, monitoring, reporting, enforcement, emissions controls and disclosure, and measures to promote retrofit of Tier II gen-sets to Tier IV or equivalent | DEQ, with the Department of Health and Virginia Energy | 180 days |
| Accelerated timeline, workplan and engagement plan for the cooling water scarcity area rule | DEQ | 180 days |
| Methane-emissions reduction recommendations for natural gas infrastructure | Chief Energy Officer, with DEQ and Virginia Energy | 180 days |
| Criteria for project-level workforce data collection — quality jobs, workforce needs, training programs, outcomes — to be incorporated into VA-LEAD | Virginia Works, with the Secretary of Labor | 180 days |
| Findings and recommended best practices on lower-impact siting: brownfields and adaptive reuse, edge and distributed models, regional diversification, waste-heat and reclaimed-water co-location, and scenic and historic landscape impacts | Virginia Energy, with eight named agencies and affected localities | 240 days |
Two provisions operate immediately rather than through a study. The nondisclosure-agreement ban (Part I.B.2) prohibits executive-branch agencies, departments, boards, commissions, authorities and employees under the Governor's supervision from entering into, enforcing or requiring an agreement that prevents public disclosure of material information concerning a proposed commercial data center development, its public incentives, anticipated resource demands or potential community impacts. Existing contractual commitments are to be honored, and the order excepts "extraordinary circumstances including matters related to national security." And the order itself designates the Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area a cooling water scarcity area (Part I.C.3), ahead of the DEQ rulemaking that will set the general criteria.
On affordability, the Chief Energy Officer is directed to engage utilities, the State Corporation Commission and PJM Interconnection to assign costs of PJM's Reliability Backstop Procurement to the data center large loads causing them and to promote equitable allocation under PJM's Interim Resource Adequacy Service, and to pursue strategies directing data center investment into local energy projects with consumer protections and access for low- and moderate-income households. On reliability, the Chief Energy Officer is to work with the SCC and utilities on curtailment procedures for data centers that have not brought their own new capacity under IRAS, once approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with curtailment prioritizing reduced impact for operators bringing their own clean energy or peak-shaving; Virginia Energy is to evaluate ride-through and voltage protections against PJM and NERC practice.
Part II — the AI Task Force
The order establishes a rapid-response AI Task Force co-led by the Chief Transformation Officer, the Counsel to the Governor and the Secretary of Administration, supported by an AI Policy Planning Unit newly created inside the Office of the Chief Transformation Officer. Its directed actions are to address AI risks through executive and legislative action, naming workforce displacement and data privacy; to evaluate Virginia law and precedent for existing 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, federal and international leaders and philanthropy; to support secure and responsible state use of AI; to engage experts worldwide; and to "coordinate with all relevant artificial intelligence frontier developers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft." The Task Force is to coordinate with five named secretaries, the Joint Commission on Technology & Science, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, and Virginia's congressional delegation, and reports to the Governor continuously until terminated at the Governor's direction.
The order's AI preamble states that private companies have incorporated AI into consumer and business products "in a way that the people using those devices and services cannot control or avoid," 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." It records that "prominent industry leaders, companies, and employees are actively calling for consistent and reliable regulatory standards that would slow and derisk development" — the argument compared at Coordinated slowdown proposals compared — and concludes that in the absence of federal leadership "states must do more."
Rescissions
The order rescinds Governor Glenn Youngkin's Executive Order No. 30 of 18 January 2024 and Executive Directive No. 5 of 20 September 2023, while providing that policies, standards and guidelines published pursuant to Executive Order No. 30 remain in effect unless or until replaced by future executive or agency action.
The Framework: what the order does not contain
The Framework restates the five pillars and lists measures under each. Several of its measures are proposals for legislation rather than directives, and the Framework says so: "Heading into the 2027 legislative session, Governor Spanberger will work with the General Assembly to write these standards permanently into Virginia law and implement further guardrails outlined in this Framework."
Under transparency, the Framework proposes to ban nondisclosure agreements over potential or planned commercial data center development; to "eliminate by-right approval and strengthen local control by requiring local approval of any data center using more than 25 megawatts of power regardless of prior project approvals"; to require community benefits agreements as part of development deals; to end state subsidies for data centers in Virginia's site development programs; to remove future large data center projects from the fast-track permitting process; to support community negotiation through assistance and resources; to establish VA-LEAD designation standards; and to prioritize protection of historic and cultural resources alongside aesthetic design, landscaping and buffers.
Under environmental protection it adds water-use standards with stronger enforcement, expedited noise and cooling-water-scarcity regulations, cumulative impact analysis of diesel backup generators with a move to "Tier IV or better," scenic and historic landscape mitigation, water-positive development, water reuse and waste-heat recovery, brownfield and edge siting with minimized land disturbance and maximized tree cover, and proactive end-of-life decommissioning strategies.
Under energy costs it proposes requiring all utilities to allocate a more equitable share of transmission and generation costs to data centers and other large loads, "including by advocating for models like probability-of-dispatch in future SCC rate cases"; stronger upfront financial commitments from developers so speculative projects do not tie up land, resources and energy infrastructure; and advocacy with PJM alongside other PJM-territory states.
Under clean energy and grid reliability it proposes limiting on-site or behind-the-meter natural gas generation "to the maximum extent practicable" and closing loopholes that let those emissions bypass Virginia's clean-air standards and avoid paying into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative; prioritizing grid access for data centers that source clean energy five years faster than the Virginia Clean Economy Act, reduce backup-generator emissions by 60% and hold on-site gas to a de minimis allowance, with a doubled electricity consumption tax as the penalty for priority recipients that fail to comply; reforming utility charges that discourage clean-energy procurement; requiring standards that prevent sudden demand changes from destabilizing the grid; requiring flexibility support including local clean energy and battery projects; and a supply-chain methane strategy with verified low-emissions gas.
Under workforce it proposes prioritizing local hiring with locality-set goals, prioritizing Virginia businesses in procurement and contracting, responsible contractor standards and apprenticeship programs, and support for project labor agreements "where possible."
The Framework's closing section lists measures already taken: a statewide energy consumption tax on data centers the Framework calls the nation's first; SCC action requiring data centers to pay for transmission infrastructure built exclusively for their operations and a new rate structure for large energy users; and the Governor's direction to DEQ to set and enforce a statewide noise standard and establish cooling water scarcity areas. It lists nine categories of signed legislation, including locality impact-assessment tools, stricter backup-generator emissions standards, water-use transparency, cooperative-territory substation cost assignment, more accurate utility load forecasting, pre-development site assessments covering noise, water, land and community impacts with local review of farmland, park and historic-site effects, and removal of barriers to data center self-funding of zero-carbon energy.
How the signed texts differ from accounts of them
The release was reported on 18 September 2026 through The Verge and the Governor's news release, and folded into the wiki from that coverage before either document was held.
- "By-right approval" is a Framework proposal, not an order provision. The order's nearest operative clause is Part I.B.4, an exclusion from discretionary state programs at a 25 MW threshold, which is not the same thing as ending by-right local land-use approval. The Framework carries the by-right and state-subsidy language, as proposals for 2027.
- The nondisclosure ban is narrower than "bars officials from signing NDAs for data center projects." It reaches agreements preventing disclosure of material information about a proposed commercial data center development, preserves existing contracts, and excepts national-security circumstances.
- The rescission of Youngkin's EO 30 and ED 5 appears in no account of the release.
- The Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area designation is made by the order itself, ahead of the rulemaking.
- The named developers — Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft — are named in the order's own text.
- The deadlines (120, 180 and 240 days, and end of 2027 for VA-LEAD) are not carried in the coverage.
Provenance
Both documents were captured on 19 September 2026 from the Governor of Virginia's own domain. The order came from the executive-order PDF directory as a nine-page application/pdf; its face carries "Commonwealth of Virginia — Office of the Governor," the order number, the authority clause, the date "this 18th day of September 2026," the Governor's signature block and the Secretary of the Commonwealth's attestation, and The Verge's report of the same date matches the operative text on the nondisclosure ban, noise rulemaking, backup-generation review and task force. The Framework was reached by resolving the Constant Contact redirect used in the Governor's 18 September news release, which returns the PDF at a canonical governor.virginia.gov path; the release's own summary of the Framework's priorities matches the document. Seal and signature graphics in both PDFs extract as garbled strings ("VERGINIA", "DIC SEMPI TRE ARMIS", "Amjai D. Spanberger"); none is text of either document and all are omitted from the captures. The Framework PDF repeats some section headings by design; the duplicates are retained as extracted.
Relationships
- supports: Virginia Executive Order 22 (2026) — data center accountability and AI task force — the primary texts underlying that page.
- supersedes: the coverage-derived account of the release folded from
New Developments Log/2026-09-18-2205-ai-developments.md. - related: Virginia HB 2094 (High-Risk AI Developer and Deployer Act, vetoed) — Virginia's earlier high-risk AI measure.
- related: Data Center Siting / AI Power Politics, AI Data Centers, AI Environmental Impact — the subject matter of Part I and the Framework.
- instance-of: State-Level AI Regulation — state executive action in the absence of federal legislation.
- related: Techno-Federalism — the order's express framing of state action against federal inaction.
- related: Coordinated slowdown proposals compared — the pacing argument the AI preamble invokes.
- related: California Executive Order N-9-26 (independent verification and frontier AI safety), California Executive Order N-9-26 — signed text — a second state executive order issued the same day on frontier AI oversight.
- deployed-by: Energy and Electric Power Sector — the grid, cost-allocation and generation provisions.