Loudoun County is home to more data centers than anywhere else in the world. For years, some residents have wondered whether data center emissions affect air quality.
Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) now is testing the air to gather data.
At times, data centers use their diesel-powered backup generators as part of testing that happens monthly or sometimes more often. The testing causes dark exhaust to spew from the rooftops, a sight that causes some Loudoun residents to wonder and worry.
Those residents include Greg Pirio, who lives just down the street from a data center that also is powered with natural gas turbines.
“I, personally, on days that the diesel generators are working, these are backup diesel generators … I feel irritation in my throat and in my lungs on those days, clearly,” he said.
Now Virginia’s DEQ has launched a data center air monitoring project, Sensors have placed to test the air in seven locations, all within the so-called “data center alley” area. They’ll be moved at least twice to sample other areas.
Loudoun County’s supervisors and county staff just now are learning about the DEQ project.
But Supervisor Mike Turner welcomes the effort.
“When you have 250+ data centers in a 30-square mile area that are doing their testing every month, yeah, I would suspect, and that’s a circumstantial guess, that there is some impact on our air quality,” Turner said. “What that is and how much that is, I don’t know, and I would like to know how much that is.”
Pirio says he also welcomes the data too but takes a more skeptical outlook.
“It sounds like a step in a good direction,” he said. “Hopefully they are feeling the pressure, or maybe it’s from the corporations saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got to convince the public that we’re not dangerous to them.'”
While the sensors are starting out in Loudoun County, they later will be moved to Prince William County, another area with a high concentration of data centers.
The DEQ began publishing its first results Monday, reporting levels of particulate matter, nitrogen oxide (NOX) and carbon monoxide. We contacted the DEQ to get their take on what the data shows and whether any of it is cause for concern. We’re awaiting their answers.
“To have an intelligent conversation about data centers and power, you have to deal in facts,” Turner said. “You can’t deal in histrionics and you can’t deal in subjective opinion.”
Turner says what’s learned through the monitoring could help shape county decisions moving forward and could influence data centers to update to equipment with lower emissions.
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