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August 22, 2024 @ 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm
In partnership with the George Mason Center for Energy Science & Policy, and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
Northern Virginia has the greatest concentration of data centers and in the world and data center development is further expanding to Richmond and Southside and other areas in Virginia. With new data center needs including from artificial intelligence applications, projections are for increases in the number of Virginia data centers and associated power consumption from 2.67 gigawatts in 2022 to 10 gigawatts in 2035 (Dominion 2023).
There is potential energy and data center legislation and regulation at the local level including with zoning, land use and building permits; Commonwealth of Virginia level related to energy efficiency and taxation and authorized study by a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission; and national level with grid and transmission regulation. Energy industry development, technology innovation and industry evolution uncertainty in combination with regulatory uncertainty poses challenges for energy industry participants, regulators and citizens.
Other industries including energy, fintech and insurance are also characterized by rapidly changing technologies, uncertain future industry and development scenarios and potential for innovation in business models, policy and regulation. Countries and states have experimented with regulatory sandboxes as a means to undertake short term trials and experiments with regulation and business models as a means to ascertain innovations that might work well in these industries.
Regulatory sandboxes have increasing traction internationally and in the U.S. with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) in the U.K. and also Singapore, Switzerland, Italy and Spain; many U.S. states including Utah which has a general (industry agnostic) regulatory sandbox; and the Consumer Finance Trade Commission.
The objective for the workshop is to explore motivations for regulatory sandboxes in general and for energy in particular; discuss international experiences; understand current status of U.S. state regulatory sandboxes, legal foundations and trends; discuss specific project experiences; categorize and explore regulatory sandbox design considerations (such as project initiators, regulatory derogations and timeframes, administration); consider the potential of regulatory sandboxes for energy innovation and competitiveness and regulatory learning / insight; and review regulatory sandbox effectiveness, risks and concerns.
