Jane Edwards
Amazon Web Services has made data center-related investments valued at approximately $35 billion in Northern Virginia since 2011 driven by the growing demand for cloud services in public and commercial sectors and Shannon Kellogg, vice president of public policy at Amazon, said AWS will continue to invest in those facilities in the region, the Washington Business Journal reported Monday.
“I would say that Northern Virginia, and Virginia overall, continues to be a very attractive place to invest and build data centers,” said Kellogg. “In 2020, we paid $220 million in local property taxes across [Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William] counties. So, we’ve got multiple data centers across the region, we’re paying substantial property tax, but there’s still room to grow in Northern Virginia.”
Virginia’s tax incentives, access to talent and production capabilities, power and fiber connectivity are some of the reasons that make the state an attractive place for tech companies’ data center development initiatives.
Kellogg said AWS has existing clusters in California, Ohio and Oregon and is always on the lookout for potential locations to expand.
“We’re always considering — again, with multiple factors including latency — we’re always looking at various locations around the world as we consider expansion,” he said. “It’s an evolving process for us. Think about where the industry is today with that type of tax incentive structure versus where it was just 10 years ago. The U.S. has a lot to offer across multiple locations.”
