Ivy Main

Northern Virginia hosts more data centers than any other location in the world, and the industry’s growth here is accelerating. Data centers use enormous amounts of energy, challenging our utilities’ ability to meet demand and comply with Virginia laws requiring a transition to zero-carbon energy. How can Virginia accommodate future data center growth? What are the responsibilities of lawmakers, utilities and the tech industry to ensure the energy serving data centers is clean, and that Virginia residents don’t bear the burden of this buildout? Ivy Main will walk us through the energy demand projections, Dominion Energy's plans, legislative solutions that have been proposed, and the response of the data center industry. 

Biography:

Ivy Main is a lawyer, policy consultant, and writer focusing on energy, climate and the environment. Her commentary appears regularly in the Virginia Mercury and other publications as well as her own Virginia energy blog, PowerforthePeopleVA.com.

Ivy serves as the volunteer Renewable Energy co-Chair for the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. She speaks frequently at energy conferences and public forums, lobbies the Virginia General Assembly on clean energy initiatives, and produces videos, papers and presentations on energy topics for activists and the public. Her advocacy has won her awards from the Maryland, DC and Virginia Solar Energy Industries Association, the Virginia Renewable Energy Alliance, and both the National and state Sierra Club.

Before becoming an environmental activist, Ivy worked as a lawyer in private practice and at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, lobbied for election reform and voting rights, and wrote a weekly humor column that appeared in newspapers around the D.C metro area.