A community proposal for Botetourt County, Virginia
The proposed Google data center at Greenfield will produce more than computing power. With intentional planning, its recoverable heat, fiber, and infrastructure can anchor America's first AI Resource Campus — attracting new industries, supporting research, and creating hundreds of lasting jobs around the servers themselves.
This proposal is not an attempt to stop or delay the Google campus. It is an economic development strategy designed to maximize the long-term value the project creates for the region.
From data to development
"Google builds a data center."
"Google anchors America's first AI Resource Campus."
The premise is simple. Data centers require major investments in utilities and infrastructure. They produce recoverable low-grade heat. They attract fiber, power, and engineering talent. Those resources should be intentionally leveraged to attract additional businesses.
The objective is to transform Greenfield into a nationally recognized model for next-generation industrial development — without changing Google's business.
Power the cloud. Grow the community.
Every hour of computing releases warmth that is normally vented into the sky. Recovered and piped next door, that same warmth becomes one of the cheapest inputs a greenhouse or a fish farm can buy — and the value it creates flows back into the region.
Guiding principles
Compute more. Waste less.
Design the campus so recoverable waste heat can be exported in the future: recovery headers, heat exchangers, pump stations, thermal metering, utility easements, and reserved expansion space.
$10–30M additional investment — a small percentage of a multi-billion-dollar campus.
Rather than selling surrounding parcels, Google retains ownership and leases land to complementary industries — curating compatible tenants while earning recurring lease revenue on 30–99 year ground leases.
Tenants get existing utilities, fiber, reliable power, and potential access to recoverable heat.
Smart metering, AI leak detection, reclaimed water, irrigation optimization, watershed analytics, drought forecasting, and infrastructure monitoring.
Potential partners: Google, Western Virginia Water Authority, Botetourt County, Virginia Tech, and private engineering firms.
Long-term expansion carries recovered warmth beyond the campus: schools, recreation centers, public pools, government facilities, mixed-use developments, and future commercial users.
Digital infrastructure becomes community infrastructure.
The Innovation Resource District
Commercial greenhouses, hydroponics, aquaponics, seedling production, plant nurseries, vertical farming, and mushroom cultivation — all hungry for steady, low-cost warmth.
A modern land-based facility raising tilapia, barramundi, catfish, freshwater prawns, ornamental fish, or hatchery stock. Waste heat directly reduces the industry's largest operating expense: keeping water at a stable temperature. Coupled with greenhouses, fish production feeds aquaponic crop production.
Google simply leases land and provides infrastructure access where practical. Private companies own and operate the facilities.
Produce packaging, food dehydration, controlled storage, and agricultural logistics — closing the distance between harvest and shelf.
Virginia Tech, community colleges, agricultural technology companies, water technology research, and AI sustainability research.
Industries that need warm process water or low-grade heat gain a structural cost advantage by locating inside the loop.
The 10-year outlook
These values are conceptual planning targets drawn from the initiative's concept study — illustrative, not guaranteed forecasts.
Planning ranges by source, in millions of dollars.
Mature-state impact also includes tens of millions in payroll, additional business activity, expanded property values, and an increased commercial tax base.
Digital infrastructure. Community infrastructure.
Immediate next steps
Add your name
To the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors and the Greenfield project team: we, the undersigned, welcome the data center investment — and we ask that the campus be planned as a Heat-Ready Campus from day one, so its recoverable warmth, fiber, and infrastructure can grow new industries, research, and lasting jobs for our region.
You have signed the Greenfield Resource Loop petition. If you asked for updates, you will hear from us when there is real news about the initiative — and only then.
Know a neighbor who would sign? Send them this page: greenfield.clearframeworks.org
Add your nameThe Greenfield campus represents more than a data center. Planned intentionally, it becomes an ecosystem where digital infrastructure attracts new industries, supports research, modernizes utilities, creates jobs, and generates long-term economic value far beyond the servers themselves.
Organizations and potential partners can start the conversation here.