RESON, VA – The state government in Virginia is leaning towards the use of artificial intelligence to reduce workforce development and regulations. This is an energy-intensive movement that further perpetuates the need for data centers and exacerbates climate change.
On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced his partnership with Google. There, the search giant will donate 10,000 scholarships to certify their job, including what is needed to process artificial intelligence data. The effort comes after the term governor and Trump’s allies announced last week that they have already achieved it across Virginia’s institutions, including those that use AI to cut Virginia’s regulations and support stormwater management.
This effort appears to be the first kind in the US. The state government has approved AI-assisted computer processing to carry out the functions of vocational training and regulatory review. According to a national conference of state lawmakers, governors of more than 10 states have issued executive orders to find out how AI can be used in government functions.
At the federal level, the Trump administration announced awards of up to $200 million on Tuesday to Humanity, Google, Openai and Xai each.
Speaking at a press conference in Google’s Virginia office, Youngkin said he believes that almost all of the employment opportunities available on the state’s website have AI components. “Is that a marketing challenge? We’re actually using AI capabilities to customize our marketing messaging as quickly as possible,” he said.
“Or if it’s in a customer service relationship, then all of a sudden, simple customer service stuff is filmed by AI and it comes to people who know how hard stuff resonates with people who really need help.”
Virginia was the number one state for doing business in CNBC’s number one state for workforce talent pipelines, but last week lost its rankings with a new scoring system that incorporates the impact of changing federal workforce. The state is at the forefront of the Trump administration’s wholesale federal layoffs, with many government officials living and working in the state. Youngkin promoted the job website on private company job listings as a way to help what he calls “job dislocation.” The page on that site is where Google offers access to certification courses and offers with the University of Virginia.
Mike Wooten, vice-president of the state board that oversees Virginia’s community college system, supported the idea in the announcement, saying that as AI use and qualification programs multiply, “universities, schools, are no longer the only fountain of knowledge.”
Lauren Bacon Smith, Chief Human Resources Officer at Inladed Intelligence, announced that her Virginia-based company is hiring people to rely on AI to be accurate, focusing on hiring people with the nervous system, including people on the autism spectrum and those who focus on pattern and pattern recognition skills. The company is competing for a Project Maven contract with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to incorporate AI into its defense operations. This will allow her company to expand from 30 employees to 120.
“That’s exactly one of those deals,” Bacon Smith told Inside Climate News. “We’re looking to expand into the commercial sector, so there are other government contracts as well. There’s definitely a fair amount of opportunity for us.”
Bronagh Friel, head of partnership with Grows With Google, said the company has “long-known that Virginia is a major force in this rapidly evolving technological economy.” “Virginia has been trying to call homes for over 15 years. Our offices are located here in Reston and in the data center, in Loudoun and Prince William Counties, Friel said.
Google has invested in Commonwealth Fusion Systems. It proposes a fusion power plant in Virginia, providing reliable carbon-free electricity with less fuel and waste concerns than traditional modular reactors. However, these Google data centers, Friel said, are one of more than 390 million square feet of data centers under proposal, construction or construction in the state, according to a new Sierra Club report on Virginia’s “unconstrained” data center development.
In Fairfax County, just outside the country’s capital, 55% of facilities report being within 200 feet of a home, and 70% reporting being within 500 feet of a home. The report says one large data center can “consumes 5 million gallons of water per day, sufficient to supply 50,000 people.”
“Some of Virginia’s largest data center companies have recently acknowledged that the impact of AI undermines emission reduction targets and that the climate commitment of high-tech companies creates a “real risk” of taking the backseat to AI aspirations,” the report said.
Youngkin, a solid supporter of the state’s data center development, did not make it available for questions after the announcement. Nicole Overley, commissioner of Virginia Works, the state workforce development agency, told Inside Climate News that protecting the data center’s environmental “is not my expertise.” A Google spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
This use of AI for workforce development comes after Youngkin announced that he had cut Virginia-wide regulations by 25% in response to an executive order issued shortly after Virginia took office. On Friday, Youngkin announced its AI initiative, with the aim of further reductions of 10%.
The first regulatory cuts announced at the 84 lumber warehouse, supported by the Virginia Association of Home Builders, came after a few months of process that included discussions on reducing the certification requirements for wetland close equipment. These experts will identify where swamps are in periods of moisture and drought to avoid building homes where structures get wet and moldy.
There was also discussion about reducing the accreditation of geologists and the integration of guidance handbooks and regulations for stormwater conservation to reduce harm to drinking water and wildlife habitats.
The regulatory cuts began under Andrew Wheeler, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator during President Donald Trump’s first term, and became Virginia’s secretary of natural and historical resources before Legislative Democrats blocked his appointment. Youngkin then appointed him and led the four-person office of regulatory control. Wheeler left the Youngkin administration and joined the law and lobbying company in Washington, DC, but resurfaced at the pinnacle of Youngkin’s regulatory cuts.
“We’re lucky to have a governor here in Virginia. It’s cost-effective, we don’t curb the business and we’ve got the best regulations that allowed people to raise, work and build families here in Virginia,” Wheeler said.
Michael Lolband, director of the Environmental Quality Bureau, who oversaw the reduction in stormwater regulations, is seeking greater transparency in penalties for permits and enforcement.
The handbook also includes the Chesapeake Bay program, but includes the best approved management practices to block contamination, such as planting buffers along the stream, but there is a concern among some environmentalists about including other best management practices. According to researchers at North Carolina State University, one of the concerns is the provisions of regenerative stormwater that can be improved, which involves entering the channel to restore it after the damage has already been done.
Although the handbook has been previously referenced for use in regulations, it also raises questions about environmentalists changing the guidance of the handbook skirt regulatory process and reducing the specificity of the regulations and questioning whether they rely on the handbook.
“We understand that the goal of the Handbook is to update standards and specifications more frequently, but the unintended consequence is that this state of permanent flux creates confusion, uncertainty and ambiguity in the lives of (best management practices) and there is no permanent, archived document of previous standards.”
In response, he said that Lollband has been accompanied by a committee of stakeholders of engineers, developers and environmental groups, with the integration of multiple decades-old handbooks on stormwater guidance being redundant and separate from the efforts brought by the legislative mission in 2016.
“We have a standing committee we meet,” Lolband said of the changes to the handbook. “If someone has a comment or a problem, it’s basically online and you just have to make a comment or a thought or a suggestion and the committee will consider it.”
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Charles Pauline is a Richmond, Virginia-based reporter focusing on energy and environmental issues. He has won several awards for local news in the Shenandoah Valley in Northern Virginia for his previous work covering state policies with Virginia’s mercury and local news. His first reporting gig was with the New Britain Herald in Connecticut a few years after attending Hartford University.
