Monthly Archives: June 2026

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Trump’s moves on energy are mostly signal, not substance — but they’re doing real harm

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smokestack
Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

If virtue signaling has a Trump-era corollary, we might call it vice signaling. That’s what President Donald Trump’s most recent package of subsidies for the coal industry looks like: it infuriates the environmentalists he despises and thereby delivers a little dopamine hit to the president’s base, while accomplishing nothing meaningful for the industry or the nation’s energy supply. 

On the other hand, the administration’s policy moves on energy are definitely hurting the clean technologies that Virginia needs to reach its zero-carbon electricity goals and lower rates for residents. 

Browbeating Republicans in Congress to terminate wind and solar tax credits caused many renewable energy projects to get canceled across the U.S., wiping out $16 billion of clean energy investments; other projects have been blocked or lost grant funding.

Unable to stop offshore wind by any other means, the administration has even resorted to paying developers to abandon leases, with payments totaling more than $2.5 billion.

This mischief is hurting American consumers, and nowhere is that clearer than in Virginia.  Our need for massively more power to feed the data center industry makes us especially vulnerable to the effects of Trump’s monkeying around with the energy markets. With less low-cost wind and solar available to buy, our utilities have to burn more high-cost coal. Our rates go up, and so does pollution. 

The irony is that even Virginia Republicans don’t champion coal anymore, having thrown it over for cheaper and cleaner-burning fracked gas. Four years ago, then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s energy plan touted what he called an all-of-the-above strategy that was mainly focused on fossil gas. About the only time the plan mentioned coal was to note that it had fallen to only 4% of Virginia’s electricity generation.  

Republicans here still rise to the defense of one coal plant, Dominion Energy’s Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center (VCHEC) in Wise County. But that’s in spite of the cost, not because of it.

Last time we looked, VCHEC was losing millions of dollars annually – money that comes out of customer pockets. Legislators defend it only because the jobs it provides and the local taxes it pays keep Wise County afloat. 

This importance to Southwest Virginia earned VCHEC special treatment in the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which aimed to slash both carbon and costs quickly by forcing the closure of Dominion’s other coal and oil-fired generation. Legally, VCHEC is allowed to stick around until 2045, though few people expected it would survive market realities that long.

In spite of its poor economics, however, coal use has surged in Virginia and nationwide as demand from data centers makes utilities scramble to produce every possible electron. If you don’t have enough cheap renewable energy, you have to use whatever you’ve got, never mind the cost. 

Five years ago, Dominion expected to run VCHEC only 15.5% of the time in 2024, less than 11% of the time in 2025, and only a little more than 6% by 2030. Instead, the plant is generating more this year than it has at any time this decade. 

The only other large-scale coal plant still operational in Virginia, the Clover coal plant co-owned by Dominion and Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, puts out well under half the electricity it did ten years ago, generating mainly during summer heatwaves and winter cold spells.  But it too runs more often now than it did in the first few years of this decade.  

Dominion also operates the Mount Storm coal plant in West Virginia. It serves Virginia customers, but its location outside Virginia means the VCEA didn’t require its closure.

Appalachian Power operates coal plants in West Virginia, too, producing power for its residents in that state as well as Southwest Virginia. 

The lousy economics of coal mean all these plants generate significantly less power than they used to – but, again, more than they did just three or four years ago, thanks to the demand pressure of data centers. (Well, that and a Trump-style insistence by West Virginia regulators that utilities run their coal plants most of the time, no matter how much it hurts consumers). 

A similar dynamic is playing out across the country. Coal use jumped in 2025 nationwide as data centers demanded more energy, adding to air pollution and killing more people.

The Trump administration is determined to make matters even worse. 

Since resuming office last year, Trump has ordered the Department of Defense to buy power from coal plants for its military installations. His Department of Energy has ordered units to keep operating at five coal plants that were about to close because they lose money. His Environmental Protection Agency is loosening pollution standards for coal plants to save them money. 

In February the Energy Department announced it would spend $175 million on six projects to extend the life of coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina and Kentucky. The federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority announced it would keep coal units open at two power plants that were previously slated for closure. 

Then, in June, the Energy Department announced another $500 million in coal spending, including $425 million for a bunch more plant upgrades and a $75 million subsidy for a coal export terminal. 

Most recently, the department issued plans to throw $350 million at four more coal projects, including restarting a closed plant in Maryland and subsidizing construction of two new plants, one at Mt. Storm. 

Some of this spending will keep old plants limping along; some of it smells of grift. One of the proposed new coal plants getting an $18 million contribution from federal taxpayers is the project of a MAGA activist with no energy industry experience. 

Indeed, the idea of propping up last century’s technology to build an inefficient industrial plant that won’t ever make money has a distinctly retro vibe, reminiscent of the Soviet Union in its heyday. The problem with Trump‘s vision is that since these money-losing plants couldn’t be completed before his term expires, no self-respecting capitalist will build them. 

Trump’s vice signaling is having its intended effect in one respect, though: environmentalists hate it. So, for that matter, do economists and grid experts. 

One grid expert I spoke with, Mike Jacobs, a senior manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted that “if the goal was to mine more coal and send more of it up a smokestack, it would make more sense to subsidize coal purchases directly.” Building a coal plant, he said, is “a vanity project.”

What Trump isn’t accomplishing for coal, however, Big Tech is. 

Data centers’ demand for power, coupled with Trump’s stifling of the renewable energy sector, keeps coal plants belching along and drives up electricity costs for everyone. That these companies have a long history of virtue signaling with sustainability promises they haven’t met is just its own kind of irony.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on June 24, 2026.

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Amid budget battle, legislators pass the buck on concrete data center reforms. Again.

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Monument in front of general Assembly Building in Richmond, VA.

Oh yay, another commission.

Leaders in the House of Delegates are continuing to tweak their version of a state budget, but they aren’t backing down from their fight with the Senate over data centers. What they are backing down from is their former insistence that data centers use clean energy. Instead, they propose to punt this and every other data center issue over to a commission. 

Is that supposed to resolve the budget impasse? Because if that’s the idea, it sure seems like an odd way to go about it.

Recall that Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, wants to terminate the sales tax exemption that data centers have exploited to the tune of $1.6 billion lost from state coffers. (The total subsidy rises to $1.9 if you include the exemption from local taxes, but what’s a few hundred million bucks among friends?) 

The tax isn’t something specific to data centers. It’s the same one all the rest of us pay. The argument that there are better ways to spend the money than to give it away to the world’s richest corporations has reaffirmed  Lucas as a bonafide social media star at age 82, and she is enjoying it very much.

In response to the new House budget proposal, Lucas tweeted out a tweak of her own: She now proposes to subject data centers to a nearly-equivalent fee that would generate $1.7 billion in revenue. Lucas and allies have launched a “listening tour” to build support for her approach. 

But the House budget does not eliminate the exemption, leaving the two sides at an impasse. 

The House is set to reconvene on June 18, and the Senate on June 22. The chambers will attempt to resolve their differences and adopt a budget before July 1 to avoid a government shutdown. 

House leaders argue that data center operators relied on this tax exemption when they chose to locate in Virginia. They signed memorandums of understanding agreeing to a few minor conditions, and in return they were promised they wouldn’t have to pay sales tax on computer chips and other equipment until 2035. (In the case of Amazon and any other corporation that sinks $50 billion into data centers in Virginia, the date has been extended out to 2045.)

But the House budget proposal originally incorporated provisions drawn from legislation introduced by Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, requiring data centers that take advantage of the tax exemption to buy increasing percentages of renewable energy, refrain from using onsite fossil fuels as their primary energy source, and begin phasing out the backup diesel generators that threaten air quality. The bill passed the House but died in the Senate around the same time Lucas decided there shouldn’t be a tax exemption at all. 

The disagreement left Virginia without a budget for the new year. Now suddenly the House has issued a new proposal that has the support of Gov. Abigail Spanberger. Instead of resolving the impasse, though, it actually goes backwards on regulating data centers.

 It still leaves the tax exemption intact, but now “includes explicit direction for the establishment of a Commission to thoroughly evaluate the direct and indirect costs and benefits of the data center industry.” The commission is to issue a report and recommendations for legislative and budgetary changes, which the General Assembly will then consider next year. 

Are you feeling a little prickle of déjà vu? That’s because we have seen this before, and not very long ago. In December 2023, the General Assembly headed off action for all of 2024 by directing the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) to assess the impact of the industry on energy demand, state revenue, natural resources – essentially, the same things this year’s commission is supposed to look at all over again. 

You remember the JLARC report. It sounded a dire warning against the consequences of “unconstrained” data center demand. The report made a stir in December of 2024 when it was issued. Statements were released, proposals were floated. 

And thus warned, the General Assembly went into the 2025 session and did . . . nothing.

Doing nothing pretty much described 2026 legislative action on data centers as well. Among the few reforms House and Senate Democrats seemed to agree on were that data centers needed to buy renewable energy and storage to limit the increase in Virginia’s carbon emissions and to decrease the pollution from diesel generators. The House did this by way of Sullivan’s bill; the Senate supported a different approach. Each chamber killed the other’s bill. 

That left the House budget as the only vehicle for progress this year on one of the central problems of the data center buildout. By backtracking now, House leaders and the governor show they are willing to capitulate entirely to the data center industry and its labor allies.

To be sure, a budget amendment this year that puts conditions on tax exemptions in future years would need to be followed with new legislation to lock in the requirements. And for that purpose, House and Senate members should definitely work together this summer to align their proposals, ensuring both chambers agree on the terms of the legislation before it is introduced. 

A commission with that task could be useful. After all, the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, now rebranded as the Energy Commission of Virginia, succeeded in bringing together House and Senate members around a striking number of good energy bills this year. 

But a commission that is thrown together suddenly and instructed to retrace the steps of a report issued barely 18 months ago seems suspiciously like a substitute for action. 

This is all too familiar. When it comes to data centers, inaction seems to be the point.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on June 16, 2026.

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Merging with NextEra may be good for Dominion, but what about for us?

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Data center between housing community and a bike path
It’s all about the data centers. Photo by Hugh Kenny, Piedmont Environmental Council.

Man, even the Pope doesn’t like data centers.

In his new encyclical on artificial intelligence, Pope Leo XIV laid out the dangers of the mad rush to replace humans with AI. In among the concerns for the dignity and future of humanity, he took a moment to mention the environmental damage involved:

Current AI systems require enormous amounts of energy and water, significantly influencing carbon dioxide emissions, and place heavy demands on natural resources. As their complexity increases, especially in the case of large language models, the need for computing power and storage capacity grows too, which requires an extensive network of machines, cables, data centers and energy-intensive infrastructure. 

Judging from public polling, most Americans share the Pope’s concerns. But guess who does like data centers? Big energy companies. And unlike the Pope, these corporations are not troubled by the moral implications of their activities. The fact that AI systems require enormous amounts of energy is not a problem, but an opportunity. 

Data centers are why utility giant NextEra wants to buy Dominion Energy. Northern Virginia is home to the largest concentration of data centers on the planet, and most of it is in an area where Dominion holds a monopoly on providing power. 

NextEra is already the largest utility in the U.S. by market capitalization. Acquiring Dominion would make it the third-largest U.S. energy company overall, behind only Exxon and Chevron. The two companies apparently think this level of scale confers an advantage when dealing with equally large and powerful tech companies. NextEra’s CEO, John Ketchum, reportedly told stock analysts that the combined company “can become the go-to partner for large load customers.”

Set aside for a moment the fact that most corporate mergers fail to achieve their objectives. That’s (mostly) their problem, not ours. The question for us is whether anyone other than tech companies – like, you know, us humans – would benefit. 

In announcing the merger deal, the companies stressed the advantages for Virginia ratepayers, which would include $2.25 billion in bill credits over the first two years. Although that sounds promising, recall that Dominion recently filed to recover from its customers over a billion dollars in excess fuel costs, which would cut into any windfall from the merger. Beyond that, whether Virginia customers would see lower bills over the longer term remains to be seen. 

It’s also worth noting that this could be just the start of industry consolidation in Virginia driven by data center demand. As recently as November, Dominion was in talks to buy the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC), the utility serving the second-most number of data centers in the state. There’s been no further news about the deal since last fall, perhaps indicating when Dominion’s conversation with NextEra began. But a deal with NOVEC may still happen once the NextEra merger is resolved. 

The case for NextEra

Supporters of the deal include Jigar Shah, a solar energy entrepreneur and former U.S. Energy Department official in the Biden administration who remains a hero to many in the clean energy world. In a LinkedIn post, Shah said Dominion “may be the worst-run utility in America,” one that “has been a fixer-upper for years.” He added, “Virginia’s legislature got so fed up waiting for [Dominion Energy CEO] Bob Blue to modernize the grid that it stepped in and mandated it — grid utilization, batteries, VPPs.”

In Shah’s view, NextEra brings “competence,” plus a heck of a lot of battery storage to power data centers quickly. And of course, Dominion brings the data centers.

While Shah is most impressed with the company’s batteries, other observers have pointed out that NextEra, through its subsidiary NextEra Energy Resources, is the nation’s largest owner of solar and wind projects. As of June 2025, solar and (onshore) wind made up 28 GW of a 40 GW portfolio, with another 29 GW of renewables in “backlog.” 

It also appears to be a true believer in the economic case for renewable energy. In March of 2025, NextEra executives told attendees at a Houston conference, “Renewables can provide the generation needed to meet demand at the lowest cost possible now, making them an essential near-term solution for avoiding a power affordability crisis across the U.S.” But, they also added, “Meeting near- and long-term demand and capacity needs at the lowest cost possible will require ‘all of the above’ energy solutions that include renewables, battery energy storage, natural gas and nuclear energy.”

Even this year, most of the company’s planned projects are renewable. NextEra’s Q1 shareholder call detailed 4 GW worth of contracts signed that quarter, including 2.2 GW of solar, 1.3 GW of battery storage and .5 GW of wind generation. 

Not so fast? 

The impressive clean energy portfolio notwithstanding, a NewEra takeover doesn’t portend an end to Dominion’s infatuation with fossil gas. On the same Q1 shareholder call, executives bragged that “the U.S. Department of Commerce selected Energy Resources to build 9.5 gigawatts of new gas-fired generation to serve large load” in Texas and Pennsylvania. 

Moreover, the company’s 2035 goal is to reach 30 GW by 2035, including a plan to restart a mothballed nuclear plant in Iowa and the potential for as much as 6 GW of small modular reactors, assuming “the right commercial terms and conditions with appropriate risk sharing mechanisms that limit our ultimate exposure.” Beyond that, 50% of the planned generation buildout is planned to come from gas-fired generation.

The fossil fuel investments don’t stop there. NextEra has another subsidiary that owns over 1,000 miles of gas pipelines. The company also owns gas supply companies, “making us one of the largest and most active gas suppliers serving wholesale, retail and industrial customers nationwide.” This stands in contrast to Dominion, which got out of the gas transmission and supply business several years ago when the company seemed to be pivoting to embrace the transition to zero-carbon energy. 

NextEra is also no friend to rooftop solar. Its regulated utility, Florida Power and Light, wrote and lobbied for legislation to gut net metering in the state. That doesn’t make it worse than Dominion, which has repeatedly tried to hamstring third-party solar investments in Virginia, but it does mean that solar customers can’t expect a friendlier reception if the merger goes through.

Finally, it’s not clear what will happen to Virginia’s offshore wind ambitions. Dominion is completing construction of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project this year, and has – or had – ambitions to build out additional lease areas. The company also invested in the first purpose-built offshore wind installation vessel in the U.S., part of a plan to make itself a major player in an emerging east coast industry. 

All that, of course, happened before rising interest rates led to the cancellation of offshore wind projects in several northeastern states, followed by Trump bringing the industry to a screeching halt through executive orders and a campaign of harassment. 

Nonetheless, Virginia has a history of supporting offshore wind development through both Republican and Democratic administrations. Nor is it giving up now, as shown by the General Assembly’s bipartisan passage this year of legislationfurthering the development of an offshore wind workforce. 

NextEra has a reputation for offshore wind skepticism, raising suspicions that the other lease areas Dominion bought won’t get developed if the merger goes through. 

Are we ready for this? 

The merger plan has other detractors. The Energy and Policy Institute, a frequent critic of energy companies, cautionedthat “A megamonopoly of this size, with the kind of money to buy political influence that NextEra will have, will be nearly impossible to regulate.” 

Clean Virginia, an organization formed to counter the influence of Dominion, also warned that handing monopoly power to NextEra is risky for Virginians, given the Florida company’s record of corporate malfeasance. 

Indeed, NextEra’s brand of hard-ball politics makes Dominion’s power plays look tame. NextEra has starred in a number of corruption scandals, including allegations of spying on journalists, offering jobs to public officials as a way to buy influence, and funding so-called ghost candidates to run as spoilers in hopes of defeating political candidates the utility saw as unfriendly to its interests. 

According to Clean Virginia, NextEra even filed a defamation suit against a woman for posting a video that changed the company’s name to “NextError” and “NextTerror.” 

(Okay, that was a rookie mistake on the woman’s part: she should have chosen one or the other and then plastered it everywhere. Had she done her research on effective parody, she might have found the work of Blue Virginia’s Lowell Feld, who altered Dominion’s logo to include a smokestack and added the tagline, “Global Warming Starts Here.” Dominion had the good sense not to make an issue of it in public, though I’m sure that if you went through their files you would find a memo from a top executive demanding a lawsuit and a response from a company lawyer patiently explaining the First Amendment.)

Here in Virginia, Dominion’s outsized role in policy making has been made possible by its ability to rain cash on lawmakers. In Florida, NextEra has been at least somewhat constrained by state campaign finance laws, which cap contributions at $3,000 per candidate. 

The company will absolutely love Virginia’s laws allowing unlimited corporate campaign contributions. According to the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), Dominion made over $28 million in campaign contributions in 2025 alone. What might Virginia candidates be able to collect from a company three times Dominion’s size?

Virginia also permits its lawmakers to hold a financial interest in the companies they govern, and several legislators do own shares in Dominion. The current leader is Republican senator Bill DeSteph, whose latest conflict of interest disclosure shows he owns at least $250,000 in Dominion stock (the top reporting category). NextEra’s purchase of Dominion comes with a bonus in stock value for Dominion shareholders. 

Decisions, decisions

So is this a company we want throwing its weight around in Richmond? 

Fortunately, NextEra and Dominion aren’t the only ones who get a say. The merger will have to be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (easy-peasy in this administration), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (ditto) and regulators in the affected states, including Virginia’s State Corporation Commission. 

Virginia’s Attorney General, Jay Jones, will represent the interests of ratepayers in the SCC proceedings. Jones refused to accept campaign donations from Dominion in last year’s election, so he carries some credibility as an unbiased advocate. So far, Jones has promised to “scrutinize” the deal, but hasn’t said whether he supports or opposes it. 

Complicating matters, one of the SCC’s three commissioners, Kelsey Bagot, formerly worked for NextEra. When Bagot was appointed in 2024, it was with the understanding that she would recuse herself from matters involving NextEra. Given how much of the SCC’s work involves Dominion, the merger with NextEra would make Bagot’s recusal promise hard to live up to.

Although the governor and General Assembly don’t have a formal role here, it will be hard for the merger to go through if serious opposition arises from these quarters. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, confirmed to me in a text that the General Assembly’s Energy Commission (formerly known as the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation) will hold hearings in June.  

Is this merger good or bad for residential customers?

One thing is abundantly clear: NextEra and Dominion are focused on data centers, not residential ratepayers. We are little insects under the feet of hyenas stalking wildebeest. NextEra makes the right noises about embracing large-load tariffs to ensure data centers “pay their fair share,” because that’s what political leaders want to hear. But what they care about is all those gigawatts of power they will build and make money from. 

Being ignored can sometimes be a good thing. Better yet would be a result where residents are treated as part of the solution to the energy crunch. That’s the direction Virginia’s General Assembly is trying to go with many of the bills passed this year that expand opportunities for residents and businesses to invest in solar and storage, buy the output of shared solar projects and participate in virtual power plants. 

It would also be nice if the energy giants committed to doing their part to further Virginia’s carbon-cutting mandate. We’ve seen nothing so far to reassure us on this point. As far as I can tell, NextEra’s record of building renewable energy and storage didn’t result from any moral commitment to confront the climate crisis, but from a judgment about how to build the most gigawatts fastest and at least cost, in order to make the highest profits. 

We’ve seen nothing so far to reassure us that the energy giants are committed to doing their part to further Virginia’s carbon-cutting mandate. Regulated utilities enjoy monopolies, after all. In return, they are expected to serve the public good. 

That’s a point Dominion often misses. The question on the minds of Virginians now is whether we can expect better from NextEra.