**DATELINE RICHMOND, VA —** in a Move That Has Historians Gobsmacked and Energy Analysts Scrambling for Their History Books, **Dominion Energy** Has Just Announced a Plan to Decommission a Major Coal Plant and Convert It Into a Data Center Hub for AI—an Act One Historian Is Calling "The Digital Equivalent of the Romans Repurposing the Colosseum for IPhones."
DATELINE RICHMOND, VA — In a move that has historians gobsmacked and energy analysts scrambling for their history books, Dominion Energy has just announced a plan to decommission a major coal plant and convert it into a data center hub for AI—an act one historian is calling “the digital equivalent of the Romans repurposing the Colosseum for iPhones.”
According to internal documents obtained by The Grid, Dominion’s CEO cited the “unprecedented energy demands of the modern world” as the primary driver, a phrase eerily identical to the justification used by the British East India Company when it pivoted from spice monopolies to opium trafficking in the 1830s.
“This is the Tulip Mania of energy infrastructure,” said Dr. Helena Vance, a historian at the University of Virginia. “Everyone is looking at the petals—data, AI, electric vehicles—but no one is asking who owns the bulbs. Dominion is turning a physical asset (coal) into a metaphysical one (compute), just as the Dutch East India Company turned actual tulips into derivatives. The only difference is our crash will come in megawatts, not guilders.”
The twist? Dominion’s stock has already surged 12% on the news, mirroring the exact trajectory of the South Sea Company stock in 1720—right before it imploded.
Will history repeat itself? Or is Dominion the new Standard Oil for the Silicon Age?
#DigitalHistory #DominionEnergy #TulipMania #ViralNews
Breaking exclusively on The Grid — The energy story that’s too weird to be fiction, too real to be ignored.