Governor's Stake Holder Energy Survey
- paulBVL
- Jun 15
- 2 min read
Our beloved Governor Spanberger is kindly asking every Virginian to fill out her “2026 Virginia Energy Plan Stakeholder Survey.” I only found out about this generous opportunity thanks to an email from the brand-new Rural Virginia Coalition—thanks to one of their young energetic leaders, Amy.
I just finished wading through the whole thing. You should too. After all, she’s definitely dying to hear from the rural landowners whose property is currently being lined up for eminent domain.
A few observations from my time in the survey:
When it asks about barriers to implementing energy solutions, you might want to think twice before checking “Local land-use or zoning issues.” That’s literally the last lever rural Virginians still have. Wouldn’t want to hand it over for free.
On the question about top energy opportunities for the next decade, feel free to write something like: “Require hyper-scale data centers to generate their own power on-site instead of expecting the rest of the state to subsidize them with new transmission lines and seized land.”
For the question about the most important energy challenges Virginia faces, my submission was short and sweet: “Stop using eminent domain to confiscate rural land so data centers in other counties can run.”
When it asks what risks or unintended consequences the state should watch for, a perfectly reasonable answer is: “Maybe figure out how these data centers are actually going to be powered before approving them, and stop pretending the power can magically appear from somewhere else.”
On the final question about your “context” for answering, I’m sure you’ll come up with something appropriate.
Have at it folks, click here to enlighten our Governor.
Side note: It's entirely appropriate that the background image on the survey site shows MASSIVE transmission towers.
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