Inside massive data centers as debate over power, water use grows
FOX Business correspondent Connor Hanson reports on the infrastructure and resource usage of data centers in Northern Virginia ahead of the midterm elections. Hansen tours a facility to detail server cooling systems, water conservation metrics and corporate agreements regarding President Donald Trump’s ratepayer protection pledge.
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Michael Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee and the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, holds between $246,000 and $690,000 in energy investments with companies fueling the data center growth in the Tar Heel State, according to his federal reporting.
Those holdings raise questions about whether Whatley stands to benefit from his support of data center expansion, an issue that has drawn national attention over community zoning, energy use and state growth.
Most of his reported holdings are with four companies.
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Now-former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley is interviewed by Fox News Digital at the RNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., on July 14, 2025 (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News)
Whatley and his family have holdings between $149,000 and $410,000 in Duke Energy, between $1,000 and $15,000 in Arista Networks, from $80,000 to $200,000 with Dominion Energy, and between $16,000 and $65,000 in GE Vernova.
While most of those, like Duke and Vernova, don’t directly build data centers themselves, they offer services or products used by them. Duke is a major utility provider in North Carolina, and Vernova produces on-site gas turbines used by data center facilities operated by companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
In addition to those investments, Whatley reported $361,000 from CAPCVentures LLC, a D.C. for consulting services in 2025, according to his financial disclosure. That firm lists GE Vernova— a major supplier of turbines and grid equipment used to power data centers — as a client, along with Centrus Energy and the Renewable Fuels Association.
Earlier coverage put his pay from the same shop at about $755,000 between 2022 and 2025.
When asked about his holdings and whether he saw them as a potential conflict of interest, Whatley’s campaign noted that he supports restrictions on stock trading for members of Congress.
“Whatley supports the Stop Insider Trading Act and urges the U.S. Senate to pass the commonsense legislation, and supports commonsense reforms requiring elected officials to place their assets in qualified blind trusts, ensuring they have no control over how those assets are invested,” DJ Griffin, a campaign spokesperson, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
The campaign also said that Whatley would support letting local communities decide for themselves what kinds of data center projects to accept and which ones to rule out.
“Michael Whatley’s standard is simple: data centers pay their own way, families pay nothing and communities decide. That means Big Tech builds or buys every megawatt it needs and covers every dime of the grid upgrades to deliver it, with zero costs shifted onto residential ratepayers. It means no special subsidies and no sweetheart deals cut over the heads of taxpayers,” Griffin continued.
“And it means the people of North Carolina’s counties and towns, not bureaucrats in Raleigh or Washington, decide what gets built in their communities. North Carolina should win the AI economy, and it should win it on terms that protect the families who live here.”
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Michael Whatley, former chair of the Republican National Committee and Republican U.S. Senate candidate for North Carolina, arrives at the Grace Chapel Fire Department polling location during the North Carolina primary election in Granite Falls, N.C., on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Senate candidates Roy Cooper and Michael Whatley will look for momentum from the primary vote in what looks to be one of the most expensive races of the 2026 midterms. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Whatley’s campaign also turned the spotlight on his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, the former governor of North Carolina.
“Roy Cooper is the only candidate in this race who has used the powers of his elected office to recruit data centers to NC and to have them subsidized by NC Taxpayers,” Griffin added, noting that Cooper also has supported restrictions on congressional stock trading.
Notably, the bulk of North Carolina’s tax breaks already existed by the time Cooper became governor in 2017.
The year before, in 2016, the state had implemented statute G.S.105-164.13. Under that provision, lawmakers had expanded data center tax exemptions on sales, servers, storage and networking for companies investing at least $75 million in projects over five years.
The state did, however, approve several major grants to companies like Apple and Corvid Technologies under Cooper’s watch through “Job Development Investment Grants” (JDIGs). Those aimed to further job development in the state, dovetailing with existing development efforts. Among the more high-profile JDIGs, Apple entered into a $845 million grant over a period of 39 years alongside another $112.4 million that would go to an industrial development fund to build out rural infrastructure. The agreement is contingent on Apple creating a certain number of jobs, but the company has yet to meet the JDIG’s projected goals since its implementation.
For his own part, Cooper’s campaign bashed Whatley for, in their view, not being sensitive enough to local resistance to data center expansion.
“Longtime utility company lobbyist Michael Whatley believes people’s concerns about data centers are fake as he continues to shill for his billionaire buddies in the utility industry instead of standing up against rate hikes that are crushing hardworking families,” a spokesperson for the Cooper campaign said in a statement.
Cooper has taken a more critical approach to their expansion, arguing that they are forcing local communities into higher and higher utility bills.
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Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley are the top candidates in North Carolina’s Senate race. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Like many Democrats on the topic, Cooper has framed his stance in the broader context of championing affordability policies.
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“[Cooper] believes local communities must have the final say on new projects coming to their area, which includes local moratoriums, and data centers must pay for all of the energy they use without passing on any of their costs to consumers,” Cooper’s campaign said.
Having cleared their respective primaries, Cooper and Whatley will face off in North Carolina’s general election on Nov. 3.