Monthly Archives: March 2020

New laws clear away barriers to small solar projects

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Edward Hicks’ “Peaceable Kingdom,” Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not shown: the 50 guys with muskets making darn sure the lions don’t try anything.

Virginia General Assembly members have an expression for when opposing interests agree on a bill: they call it “peace in the valley.”

The phrase comes from a gospel song by Thomas A. Dorsey, written for Mahalia Jackson and then later sung by a bunch of white guys including Red Foley and Elvis Presley. The lyrics, written on the eve of World War II, speak of a longing for the peace of the afterlife, where “the bear will be gentle, the wolf will be tame, and the lion will lay down by the lamb.”

I’m not sure the General Assembly has ever inspired anything quite so wonderful as the song describes. More typically, a legislator uses the expression to indicate that a bunch of special interests, having duked it out amongst themselves, have now each gotten everything they thought they could get out of negotiations and so are offering up a compromise that legislators can adopt without having to trouble themselves too much with the details.

So, not exactly the peace of God, but still a pretty good state of affairs from the point of view of committee members who have thirty or forty other bills to deal with that day.

Peace rarely used to characterize bills supporting distributed solar generation. The lion had no reason to lie down by the lamb. Indeed, more typically the lamb was lunch.

But the November election shifted the balance of power in the General Assembly. At first it wasn’t clear how much power the lion and bear were going to have to cede. In fact, no one is quite sure even now where the balance of power lies, even after weeks of intense skirmishing finally produced the flawed but-still-transformational Clean Economy Act. The bill passed, and the parties all claimed victory, but anyone who thinks there might be peace in the energy valley is advised to stick around for next year.

The skirmishing over distributed solar was decidedly less intense. Advocates and utilities achieved peace on a number of provisions removing barriers to rooftop solar, dramatically increasing program caps for third-party power purchase agreements (PPAs), raising the net metering cap, establishing shared solar programs, and making it easier for customers in homeowner’s associations to install solar.

Much work remains. Removing barriers is a necessary first step, but now the challenge is to make small-scale solar a priority for Virginia. The Clean Economy Act focused on cheap utility-scale projects, but an economy that runs primarily on renewables needs solar on places other than farmland. Getting to 100 percent carbon-free energy means putting solar on as many sunny homes and businesses as possible—not to mention government buildings, warehouses, data centers, parking lots, highway rest areas, closed landfills, brownfields, former mining sites and vacant land around airports.

Solar Freedom and the Clean Economy Act

The final version of the Solar Freedom bill, HB572 (Keam) and SB710(McClellan), made eight changes affecting customers of investor-owned utilities. Customers of electric cooperatives are excluded; a law passed last year addressed many of these issues.

• It raises the cap on the total amount of net metered solar allowed from 1 percent currently to 6 percent (broken out as 1 percent for low and moderate income customers and 5 percent for everyone else). This means customers installing rooftop solar will continue getting credit for surplus energy at the retail rate. When net-metered projects reach 3 percent, or in 2024 for APCo or 2025 for Dominion, the State Corporation Commission will conduct a solar study to determine the appropriate rate structure for new net metering customers. Existing net metering customers will not be affected.

• It raises the program cap on third-party power purchase agreements (PPAs). PPAs are the financing mechanism that schools, local governments, universities and other customers have been using to install solar on-site with no money down. The original program cap of 50 MW in Dominion territory was reached this fall, halting projects across the state. In Dominion territory, the limit will now go to 500 MW for jurisdictional customers (that’s most people) and 500 MW for non-jurisdictional customers (including local governments and public schools). The new cap in Appalachian Power territory is 40 MW for all customers, and there will be no limit in Old Dominion Power (Kentucky Utilities) territory. In addition, the legislation broadens who can take advantage of this program to any tax-exempt customer, and all other customers with projects over 50 kW.

• It increases the allowable size of net-metered commercial projects from 1 MW today to 3 MW.

• It increases the allowable size of residential net-metered projects to 25 kW, from 20 kW today.

• It removes standby charges for residential customers with solar facilities of less than 15 kW in Dominion territory, and removes them entirely for customers of Appalachian Power and Old Dominion Power.

• It allows residents of apartment buildings and condominiums in Dominion Energy and Old Dominion Power territories to share the output of on-site solar facilities.

• In Dominion territory, it allows customers to install enough solar to meet 150 percent of their previous year’s demand, recognizing the needs of growing families and EV owners. In APCo territory the limit remains at 100 percent of previous demand.

• Finally, it allows Fairfax County to move forward on a 5 MW solar project on a closed landfill, with the electricity serving government facilities. This will be the first such project in the state.

Solar Freedom overlaps with the Clean Economy Act, HB1526 (Sullivan) and SB851 (McClellan), on several of these provisions, including the net metering cap and PPAs. The Clean Economy Act also creates a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) focused on utility-scale projects, but with a small carve-out for distributed “wind, solar and anaerobic digestion resources of one megawatt or less located in the Commonwealth.” The carve-out is limited to 1 percent of Dominion’s RPS targets. This level is so modest it probably won’t act as a market stimulus, especially for projects not owned by Dominion itself, and the addition of anaerobic digestion should give anyone pause. Also, there is no carve-out in APCo territory.

The failure of the Clean Economy Act to drive small-scale solar growth is a missed opportunity that will need to be addressed in the future if the General Assembly truly wants to achieve a clean energy economy. I recommend taking away the appalling subsidies for paper companies and letting those millions fund distributed solar.

Community solar

The provision in Solar Freedom that allows residents of multifamily buildings to share onsite solar arrays looks favorable to customers but requires an SCC proceeding this year to determine the bill credit rate for subscribers. The rate “shall be set such that the shared solar program results in robust project development and shared solar program access for all customer classes.” Further, “the Commission shall annually calculate the applicable bill credit rate as the effective retail rate of the customer’s rate class, which shall be inclusive of all supply charges, delivery charges, demand charges, fixed charge, and any applicable riders or other charges to the customer.”

While the Solar Freedom provision is restricted to multifamily residential buildings, the General Assembly also passed legislation more generally allowing for third-party owned community solar, rebranded as “shared solar.”

SB629 (Surovell) and HB1634 (Jones) instruct the SCC to set up a shared solar program for customers of Dominion and Old Dominion Power by Jan. 1, 2021. Shared solar projects must be no larger than 5 MW, can be owned by any for profit or nonprofit entity, and require at least three subscribers. The program is capped at a total of 150 MW, with an additional 50 MW possible if the utility demonstrates that 45 MW of shared solar has gone to low-income consumers.

The success of a shared solar program ultimately depends on whether project owners can make money and customers can save money. It remains to be seen whether that will happen. The provisions in these bills are less favorable to customers than the multifamily solar provisions of Solar Freedom. Customers will have to pay a minimum bill amount (waived for low-income customers), and there is no requirement that the bill credit rate be set at a rate than results in “robust project development.”

Finally, HB573 (Keam) requires that community solar projects owned by investor-owned utilities must include higher-cost facilities located in low-income areas.

Homeowner associations

Another successful piece of legislation is HB414 (Delaney) and SB504(Petersen), clarifying the respective rights of homeowners and HOAs when it comes to solar panels.

Since 2014, Virginia law has prohibited HOAs from banning solar panels unless the ban appears in the association’s recorded declaration. However, the law respects the right of HOAs to place “reasonable restrictions” on the size, place, and manner of placement of solar facilities on members’ property.

The fact that the law did not define “reasonable” turned out to be a problem. Some HOAs decided it was “reasonable” to insist solar panels be confined to the rear of a roof, whether there was sunshine back there or not. The result has been acrimony, added expense and blocked projects.

Aaron Sutch of Solar United Neighbors of Virginia estimates that since the 2014 legislation, HOAs have blocked over 300 Virginia installations with a value of over $6 million. Sutch negotiated with lobbyists for homeowners associations to achieve peace in this particular valley.

The new legislation provides that a restriction is not reasonable if it increases the cost of installation of the solar panels by 5 percent over the projected cost of the initially proposed installation, or reduces the energy production by 10 percent below the projected production. The owner must provide documentation prepared by an independent solar panel design specialist to show that the restriction is not reasonable by these criteria.

Other legislation

A few other bills should help customers finance solar panels.

B654 (Guy) authorizes DMME to sponsor a statewide financing program for commercial solar, energy efficiency and stormwater investments. The effect will be to boost the availability of low-interest financing through Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) in areas of the state where the locality has not developed a program of its own.

B754 (Marsden) authorizes (though it does not require) electric cooperatives to establish on-bill financing of energy efficiency and renewable energy. The program allows for the costs to be paid for out of the savings these improvements deliver. The coops asked for this authority, so presumably at least one plans to follow through.

Finally, B542 (Edwards) repeals the sunset date on crowdfunding provisions and provides fixes for obstacles to a financing approach that, to my knowledge, has been used only once for solar projects in Virginia.

This article appeared first in the Virginia Mercury on March 18,2020. 

It was a messy, chaotic General Assembly Session. It also worked out pretty well.

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Solar arrays on Richmond Public Schools were some of the last projects to go forward before a statutory limit on PPAs halted similar projects across the state. Legislation this year raises the cap on PPAs. Photo credit Secure Futures.

This time last year, I didn’t have much good to say about the General Assembly session that had just concluded. This year, try as I might to be cynical and gloomy (and I do make a good effort), I see mostly blue skies. Or at worst, light gray. What follows is a brief run-down of the bills that passed.

Bills that were still alive at the time of my halftime report but that don’t appear in today’s roundup are dead for the year.

Most of these bills don’t yet have the Governor’s signature. Virginia allows the Governor to propose amendments, so what you see here may not be the final word. Bills that do get signed take effect July 1.

Energy Transition

HB1526/SB851, the Clean Economy Act, is an omnibus energy bill that contains a two-year moratorium on new fossil fuel plants, mandatory carbon reductions, mandatory energy efficiency savings, mandatory construction of wind, solar and offshore wind, mandatory energy storage acquisition targets, mandatory closures of some coal and biomass plants, and a mandatory renewable portfolio standard, along with cost recovery provisions, a new program to limit utility bills of low-income earners, and some loosening of restrictions on net metering and third-party power purchase agreements.

The bill is not perfect, and the clean energy transformation it strives for is incomplete. Its provisions mostly don’t apply to electric cooperatives, and while it forces the eventual closure of Dominion’s biomass plants, it actually requires utility customers to subsidize biomass use by paper companies. Dominion is given too free a rein on spending, the energy efficiency targets are weak, and the bill focuses on utility-scale projects to the almost total exclusion of customer-sited projects.

For all that, the legislation is groundbreaking and transformational. Advocates will be back next year with refinements to the bill and proposals to fill the gaps, but putting this necessary framework in place is a huge achievement for Virginia.

SB94 (Favola) and HB714 (Reid) rewrites the Commonwealth Energy Policy to bring it in line with Virginia’s commitment to dealing with climate change, and even to challenge leaders to do more. The bill sets a target for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy wide by 2045, and in the electric sector by 2040. These targets are more ambitious than what is in the Clean Economy Act; not only is the electric sector decarbonization deadline earlier (and inclusive of the coops), this is the first legislation to set a target for the economy as a whole. The Commonwealth Energy Policy is advisory and tends to be ignored in practice; however, the bill also requires that the Virginia Energy Plan, developed every four years in the first year of a new governor’s term, include actions to achieve a net-zero economy by 2045 for all sectors.

HB672 (Willett) establishes a policy “to prevent and minimize actions that contribute to the detrimental effects of anthropogenic climate change in the Commonwealth.” State agencies are directed to consider climate change in any actions involving state regulation or spending. Local and regional planning commissions are required to consider impacts from and causes of climate change in adapting comprehensive plans.

RGGI

The Democratic takeover of the General Assembly means Virginia will finally join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). HB981 (Herring) and SB1027 (Lewis), the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act, directs DEQ to enter the RGGI auction market. Auction allowances are directed to funds for flood preparedness, energy efficiency and climate change planning and mitigation. As with the Clean Economy Act, votes for the RGGI fell along partisan lines but for one Republican senator, Jill Vogel, who voted for both.

RPS

The Clean Economy Act contains a mandatory renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requiring utilities to include in their electricity mix a percentage of renewable energy that ratchets up over time. It’s weak, especially for distributed solar, and it allows paper company biomass to qualify—an inexcusable corporate welfare provision for politically powerful WestRock and International Paper.

Customer-sited solar/net metering

Watch this space for a post dedicated to net metering, PPAs and community solar bills. Meanwhile, here’s the short version:

Solar Freedom SB710 (McClellan), HB572 (Keam) and HB1184 (Lopez) lift barriers to customer-sited renewable energy such as rooftop solar. HB1647 (Jones) contains some of the elements of Solar Freedom, but a few provisions are in conflict. Advocates have asked the Governor to sign the first three bills but not the fourth. Some Solar Freedom provisions are also in the Clean Economy Act. The new provisions lift the net metering cap to 6% for IOUs; raise the PPA cap to 1,000 MW in Dominion territory and 40 MW in APCo territory; remove standby charges below 15 kW in Dominion territory and completely for APCo; raise the residential size cap to 25 kW and the commercial project size cap to 3 MW; allow Dominion customers to install enough solar to meet 150% of the previous year’s demand (APCo stays at 100%); allow shared solar on multifamily buildings; and enable a 5 MW landfill solar project in Fairfax County to move forward. The provisions do not apply to electric cooperatives.

HOAs HB414 (Delaney) and SB504 (Petersen) clarifies the respective rights of homeowners associations (HOAs) and residents who want to install solar. The law allows HOAs to impose “reasonable restrictions,” a term some HOAs have used to restrict solar to rear-facing roofs regardless of whether these get sunshine. The bill clarifies that HOA restrictions may not increase the cost of the solar facility by more than 5%, or decrease the expected output by more than 10%.

Community solar

SB629 (Surovell) and HB1634 (Jones) creates a program for shared-solar that allows customers to purchase subscriptions in a solar facility no greater than 5 MW.

HB573 (Keam) requires that an investor-owned utility that offers a so-called “community solar” program as authorized by 2017 legislation must include facilities in low-income communities “of which the pilot program costs equal or exceed the pilot program costs of the eligible generating facility that is located outside a low-income community.”

Offshore wind

The Clean Economy Act contains detailed provisions for the buildout and acquisition of offshore wind. SB998 (Lucas), SB860 (Mason) and HB1664 (Hayes) puts the construction or purchase of at least 5,200 MW of offshore wind in the public interest and governs cost recovery for the wind farms under development by Dominion. The bills appear to have the same language that is in the Clean Economy Act.

HB234 (Mugler) establishes a Division of Offshore Wind within the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. Its role is to help facilitate the Hampton Roads region as a wind industry hub, coordinate the word of state agencies, develop a stakeholder engagement strategy, and basically make sure this industry gets underway.

Nuclear

SB828 (Lewis) defines “clean” and “carbon-free” energy to include nuclear energy for purposes of the Code. SB817 (Lewis) declares that nuclear energy is considered a clean energy source for purposes of the Commonwealth Energy Policy.

HB1303 (Hurst) and SB549 (Newman) direct DMME to develop a strategic plan for the role of nuclear energy in moving toward renewable and carbon-free energy.

Energy Efficiency

HB1526/SB851, the Clean Economy Act, contains a mandatory energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) and other provisions for spending on low-income EE programs. HB1450 (Sullivan) appears to be the same as the efficiency provisions of the Clean Economy Act. A sentence added late in the process provides that the bill won’t take effect until passed again in 2021. Presumably the passage of the Clean Economy Act makes this bill moot.

HB981 (the RGGI bill) specifies that a portion of the funds raised by auctioning carbon allowances will fund efficiency programs.

HB1576 (Kilgore) makes it harder for large customers to avoid paying for utility efficiency programs. In the past, customers with over 500 kW of demand were exempt; this bill allows only customers with more than 1 MW of demand to opt out, and only if the customer demonstrates that it has implemented its own energy efficiency measures.

HB575 (Keam) beefs up the stakeholder process that Dominion and APCo engage in for the development of energy efficiency programs.

SB963 (Surovell) establishes the Commonwealth Efficient and Resilient Buildings Board to advise the Governor and state agencies about ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase resiliency. Every agency is required to designate and energy manager responsible for improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

SB628 (Surovell) requires the residential property disclosure statement provided by the Real Estate Board on its website to include advice that purchasers should obtain a residential building energy analysis as well as a home inspection prior to settlement.

Energy storage

The Clean Economy Act requires that by 2035, Appalachian Power will construct 400 MW of energy storage and Dominion 2,700 MW. None of the projects can exceed 500 MW, except for one project of up to 800 MW for Dominion (a possible reference to the pumped storage project Dominion is reportedly considering). Projects must meet competitive procurement requirements, and at least 35% of projects must be developed by third-party developers.

SB632 (Surovell) has a fair amount of overlap with the Clean Economy Act, but the details are different, and it will be interesting to see what the Governor does about that. SB632 makes it in the public interest to develop 2,700 MW of energy storage located in Virginia by 2030. At least 65% must take the form of a “purchase by a public utility of energy storage facilities owned by persons other than a public utility or the capacity from such facilities.” Up to 25% of facilities do not have to satisfy price competitiveness criteria “if the selection of the energy storage facilities materially advances non-price criteria, including favoring geographic distribution of generating facilities, areas of higher employment, or regional economic development.” Utility Integrated Resource Plans must include the use of energy storage and must include “a long-term plan to integrate new energy storage facilities into existing generation and distribution assets to assist with grid transformation.”

SB632 also fixes a problem introduced a couple of years ago, when the ownership or operation of storage facilities was added to the definition of a utility in one chapter of the Code (§56.265.1), though not in others. With the fix, a public utility may own or operate storage, but so can third parties without them thereby becoming utilities.

HB1183 (Lopez) requires the SCC to establish a task force on bulk energy storage resources.

Siting, permitting, and other issues with utility-scale renewable energy 

HB1327 (Austin) allows localities to impose property taxes on generating equipment of electric suppliers utilizing wind turbines at a rate that exceeds the locality’s real estate tax rate by up to $0.20 per $100 of assessed value. Under current law, the tax may exceed the real estate rate but cannot exceed the general personal property tax rate in the locality.

HB656 (Heretick) and SB875 (Marsden) allow (but do not require) local governments to incorporate into their zoning ordinances national best practices standards for solar PV and batteries.

HB1131 (Jones) and SB762 (Barker) authorize localities to assess a revenue share of up to $1,400 per megawatt on solar PV projects, in exchange for which an existing tax exemption is expanded.

HB657 (Heretick) exempts solar facilities of 150 MW or less from the requirement that they be reviewed for substantial accord with local comprehensive plans, if the locality waives the requirement.

HB1434 (Jones) and SB763 (Barker) provides a step-down of the existing 80% machinery and tools tax exemption for large solar projects, and eliminates it after 2030 for projects over 5 MW.

SB870 (Marsden) authorizes local planning commissions to grant special exceptions for solar PV projects in their zoning ordinances and include certain regulations and provisions for conditional zoning for solar projects.

HB1675 (Hodges) requires anyone wanting to locate a renewable energy or storage facility in an opportunity zone to execute a siting agreement with the locality.

Grants, tax deductions, tax credits and other financing

HB654 (Guy) authorizes DMME to sponsor a statewide financing program for commercial solar, energy efficiency and stormwater investments. The effect would be to boost the availability of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) in areas of the state where the locality has not developed a program of its own.

SB754 (Marsden) authorizes electric cooperatives to establish on-bill financing programs for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

HB1656 (O’Quinn) authorizes Dominion and APCo to design incentives for low-income people, the elderly, and disable persons to install energy efficiency and renewable energy, to be paid for by a rate adjustment clause.

HB1707 (Aird) makes changes to the Clean Energy Advisory Board, which is (already) authorized to administer public grant funding.

SB1039 (Vogel) allows a real property tax exemption for solar energy equipment to be applied retroactively if the taxpayer gets DEQ certification within a year.

SB542 (Edwards) repeals the sunset date on crowdfunding provisions and provides fixes for certain existing obstacles to this financing approach.

Customer rights to shop for renewable energy

HB868 (Bourne) allows customers to buy 100% renewable energy from any licensed supplier, regardless of whether their own utility has its own approved tariff. The Senate killed a companion bill, and Commerce and Labor passed HB868 only with an amendment that requires the bill to be reenacted in 2021. (Credit Edwards, Deeds, Ebbin and Bell for not going along with the amendment.) After Senate passage the bill went to conference, and the House conferees caved. So technically the bill passed, but it has no effect. Interesting note: 41 House Republicans still voted against it in the end.

HB 889 (Mullin) was originally broader than HB868, but after the Senate got through with it, the bill is now a pilot program for the benefit of just those large corporations that, as of February 25, 2019, had filed applications seeking to aggregate their load in order to leave Dominion and buy renewable energy elsewhere. The pilot program is capped at 200 MW, and the SCC will review it in 2022.

Other utility regulation

HB528 (Subramanyam) requires the SCC to determine the amortization period for recovery of costs due to the early retirement of generating facilities owned or operated by investor-owned utilities. In the absence of this legislation, Dominion would have been allowed to use excess earnings for immediate payoffs of the costs of early fossil fuel plant closures; this puts the SCC back in charge of the schedule. The fact that this bill passed is nothing short of miraculous. House Republicans voted against it en masse, and it made it through Senate Commerce and Labor over the objections of Dominion’s best friends from both parties (though most came around for the floor vote when it was clear it would pass).

SB731 (McClellan) affects a utility’s rate of return. The SCC determines this rate by looking first at the average returns of peer group utilities, and then often going higher. The bill lowers the maximum level that the SCC can set above the peer group average. Note that although this bill is recorded as having passed both chambers, it looks like there were amendments that do not appear on the Legislative Information Service website.

HB167 (Ware) requires an electric utility that wants to charge customers for the cost of using a new gas pipeline to prove it can’t meet its needs otherwise, and that the new pipeline provides the lowest-cost option available to it. (Note that this cost recovery review typically happens after the fact, i.e., once a pipeline has been built and placed into service.) Ware acceded to some amendments that Dominion wanted, and eventually Dominion told legislators the company was not opposed to the bill. Hence it passed both chambers unanimously. Notwithstanding Dominion’s happy talk, this bill makes cost recovery for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline much, much more difficult, one more indication that Dominion may be preparing to fold up shop on this project.

[Updated March 17 to correct an error–I had included a bill as having passed that in fact died in the House. Bummer.]

The Wise County coal plant should never have been built. Why fight to keep it open?

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smokestack

Just blowing smoke. Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

The Virginia Clean Economy Act continues to bump along towards the finish line, losing pieces of itself but picking up new and different features as it makes its tortuous way.

Most recently, and disconcertingly, Republicans representing southwest Virginia persuaded the Senate to remove a key provision requiring the closure of the Virginia City coal plant in Wise County by 2030, unless it reduces its carbon emissions by 83% through the carbon capture technology it was designed for. The change would undermine the carefully-negotiated pathway to a zero-carbon electric sector.

On Tuesday the House rejected the Senate version of the bill that would have allowed the plant to continue operating until 2050. The Senate will have the final say, but it can only save the coal plant by killing the legislation altogether.

It’s understandable that senators want to please everyone, or at least everyone with a lobbying presence at the General Assembly building. Yet the case for keeping the coal plant running is built on a lie — indeed, on a history of lies.

Coal champions call the Wise County facility “the cleanest coal plant in the country,” a claim that, at best, misses the devastating environmental and human impacts of coal mining itself. More to the point right now, the claim ignores the fact that the facility emits millions of tons of CO2 every year, the very reason it needs to be retired by 2030 in order for the Clean Economy Act to deliver on its carbon-cutting mission.

And while coalfield Republicans emphasize the coal plant’s economic benefits to the region, the fact is that the plant never made sense economically and should never have been built. Trying to keep it running will simply burden ratepayers further.

In 2007, when it sought permission from the State Corporation Commission to build the plant, Dominion projected the cost of the electricity it would generate at $93 per megawatt-hour. Yes, that’s high. Even 13 years later, wind, solar and combined cycle gas still come in at under $40.

Worse, Dominion based its cost on a projection that the plant would run at 90 percent of its full capacity. It never did. The plant is running at only 24 percent today. If Dominion had accurately represented that the capacity percentage would not exceed the mid-60s and would plummet into the 20s a mere seven years after it entered service, the cost projection would have been a good deal higher.

The SCC only granted Dominion permission to build the plant for a reason that will sound familiar to anyone following the debate over the Clean Economy Act: The General Assembly passed a law proclaiming construction of a coal plant in southwest Virginia “in the public interest,” removing the SCC’s authority to make that determination.

Yes, the General Assembly’s habit of bossing the SCC around with these magic words goes back quite a ways.

Legislators weren’t the only ones championing the coal plant back in 2007. In her book Climate of Capitulation, retired University of Virginia professor and former State Air Pollution Control Board member Vivian Thomson describes how then-Gov. Tim Kaine put enormous pressure on the Air Board to approve the air permit for the facility. Not incidentally, Dominion’s chief lobbyist, Bill Murray, worked for Kaine during these years, before he made his way through the revolving door.

Dominion has sometimes suggested that it pursued the coal plant only as a favor to legislators. I asked Thomson about that in a phone call. She responded that on the contrary, the plant is a prime example of how Virginia Democrats and Republicans alike have capitulated to Dominion’s interests over the years.

Perhaps Dominion was angling for some pot-sweetening through a show of reluctance. The General Assembly obliged, of course, promising Dominion a higher rate of return than usual. And indeed, the SCC eventually granted Dominion an enhanced rate of return of 12.12%.

The SCC’s approval of the plant outraged consumers and environmentalists alike. Attorney Cale Jaffe, who represented environmental groups in the SCC proceeding, says it was a bad decision even in the years before Virginia committed to reduce climate pollution.

“All of the concerns and risks associated with the project in 2006-2007 were fully debated and apparent to everyone,” he told me. “The fact that we would be moving to a low-carbon economy made building a coal plant and locking yourself in for decades a risky strategy. The carbon emissions should have led people to look at other options for generating electricity that don’t emit 5.3 million tons of carbon every year.”

It’s remarkable that even today, with coal plants closing across the country and mining companies going bankrupt, legislators from southwest Virginia still can’t bring themselves to break with the industry that has polluted their land and water and shattered their communities. The Sierra Club and its allies tried for years to persuade the General Assembly to redirect millions of dollars annually in coal subsidies, urging that the money could have underwritten thousands of new jobs in a more diverse economy. Legislators kept throwing taxpayer money at coal companies anyway, always with the full support of Dominion.

Now, when it comes to the Clean Economy Act, Dominion wants to have it both ways. During negotiations, the company agreed to the coal plant closures as part of a deal that gave it cost recovery for offshore wind, energy efficiency targets significantly lower than what advocates originally sought, and numerous other concessions. But it turns out company lobbyists were simultaneously working to undermine the compromise bill by encouraging southwest Virginia legislators to push for coal industry protections.

Senators should have none of it. They’ve promised Virginians a bill that responds to the climate crisis by putting the commonwealth on its way to a clean energy future. Today, it’s time to deliver.

 

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on March 5, 2020. 

Update: on March 5, the House passed the Clean Economy Act; on March 6, the Senate did also, sending the bill to the Governor’s desk. The final version of the bill does not require closure of the Wise County coal plant until 2045.