The Same Pattern, Different Resource: West Virginia's Data Center Boom and the Coal Playbook
There is a pattern in West Virginia's economic history that has held for a hundred and fifty years, and it is in the process of repeating. The actors and the resource have changed; the structure has not.
The coal industry was built on four legs: outside capital, marginalized local voice, natural resource extraction, and an equity-of-opportunity gap that left native West Virginians on the wrong side of the wealth their land produced. House Bill 2014 — signed by Governor Patrick Morrisey in late April 2025 and effective July 11, 2025 (WV Legislature, HB 2014 Enrolled; Observer WV) — set those same four legs under West Virginia's emerging artificial intelligence and data center industry. The resource being extracted has changed from anthracite to electricity, water, land, and grid capacity. The pattern has not.
This post is Big Nerd Idea's reading of that pattern. It is an editorial position, not a research paper — but the structural claims below are sourced, and the speculative ones are labeled [HYPOTHESIS] per our standing Epistemic Honesty directive.