Virginia Regulators Weigh Expanded Use of Data Center’s Polluting Generators

Virginia Regulators Weigh Expanded Use of Data Center’s Polluting Generators

The state’s Department of Environmental Quality would expand permissible uses during emergencies to include “planned outages” by grid operators, presumably for power line upgrades. Environmentalists say that with expanded use of diesel generators comes more harmful air pollutants and more greenhouse gases.By Charles PaullinThis past summer, a fire at an electrical substation forced data centers in Loudoun County to rely on backup diesel generato…