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Five things every Virginia candidate (and voter!) should know about energy

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What lights up your life? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Running for office requires candidates to know about topics they might never have given much thought to. Most Virginia campaigns are won or lost on hot-button issues like taxes, education, reproductive rights, guns and gay marriage, so everyone who runs for office has a position on these questions. This holds true for candidates in this year’s high-stakes races for the state’s executive branch and all 100 House of Delegates seats. 

Inevitably, though, there are topics the average candidate doesn’t completely grasp. Some are narrow and – thankfully – nonpartisan. Where do you stand on Sunday hunting? Should I-81 have more lanes? How do you feel about skill games? Will you vote to save the menhaden, whatever a menhaden is? (It’s a fish, and I encourage you to say yes.)

Other topics affect the lives of every Virginian, but they are, frankly, complicated. One of these is energy. Not only is it hard to get up to speed on energy issues, but technology is changing so rapidly that keeping abreast of developments would be a full-time job. Who would spend that kind of time on such a dreary topic?

Uh, that would be me. 

So here we go: I’m going to cover five things political hopefuls need to know about energy in Virginia before you get to the General Assembly and start passing laws that affect your constituents’ wallets and futures. And for voters, these are things you should ask candidates about before they earn your vote. 

First up:

If you are going to talk about energy, you have to talk about data centers

By now you surely know that Virginia has embraced the most energy-intensive industry to come along since the steam engine launched the Industrial Revolution. Northern Virginia hosts the world’s largest concentration of data centers, which already consume an estimated 25% of the state’s electricity, with massively more development planned. The reason isn’t vacation photos or Instagram cat videos; it’s the competition to develop artificial intelligence (AI).  

After putting tax incentives in place to attract the industry 15 years ago, the General Assembly and the current governor have rejected all attempts to put guardrails on development or make data centers more energy efficient. The subsidies now cost taxpayers a billion dollars per year (and counting). Virginia asks for almost nothing in return. 

Under the best of circumstances, the skyrocketing demand for electricity would put upward pressure on energy prices. But our situation is even worse: Virginia already imports about half our electricity from other states, and the regional grid that we’re part of faces its own energy crunch. 

Grid manager PJM has been so slow to approve new generation that governors from member states, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, wrote a letter taking PJM to task and urging it to move faster. But the damage has been done. Supply is tight, electricity prices have risen, and prices will continue to rise unless and until supply catches up.

PJM has decided to fast-track new high-cost, gas-fired generating plants ahead of the cheaper renewable energy projects that make up 95% of the queue. It’s a much-criticized move and seems more likely to increase costs. Once built, fossil gas plants burn a fuel that has doubled in price just over the past year, threatening a repeat of the post-pandemic price surge that Virginia ratepayers are still paying for. And there is no relief in sight, with utilities now having to compete with a doubling of U.S. natural gas exports.

Short of unleashing all the renewable energy stuck in the queue, there is no easy way to protect Virginia residents from higher electricity costs. Dominion Energy, Appalachian Power, and at least one of the electric cooperatives have proposed special rate classes for large-load customers, but that would shield residents from only some of the costs of serving the data centers. 

Utility bills are going up. Dominion Energy is seeking hefty rate increases that would push up residential bills by an average of more than $10 per month in base rates plus almost $11 per month in fuel costs, primarily due to those higher natural gas prices. Coal-heavy APCo has seen even steeper rate increases in the past few years.

Virginia needs new legislation ensuring data centers bear the full expense and risks of serving Big Tech, and they should be required to source their own clean energy. Localities, meanwhile, must be required to evaluate the costs to all Virginians before they issue permits to data centers, including considerations like where the energy will come from, water impacts, and the siting of transmission lines.  

You can’t get from here to there without solar

Virginia wasn’t producing all of its own energy even before the data center rush, and PJM’s problems are now pushing us into a crisis. Our near-term options are limited; new data centers are breaking ground at a breathtaking rate, and only solar can be installed on the timeline needed to prevent an energy shortfall. Even if we were willing to pay for high-priced gas or nuclear plants, developers face a backlog of as long as seven years for gas turbines, and advanced nuclear is still not commercially viable. 

Fortunately, solar is not just the fastest energy source to deploy, it’s also the cheapest and cleanest. Though President Donald Trump blames rising electricity prices on renewable energy, that’s false, just one of many myths the fossil fuel industry has propagated against solar. Nor is solar unreliable, another myth. When solar is paired with battery storage, it can match the rise and fall of demand perfectly.

It’s true, however, that while the great majority of Virginians support solar energy, many rural residents oppose it on aesthetic grounds. Of course, they would also oppose nuclear reactors and gas fracking in their neighborhoods. Legislators should  be sensitive to their concerns – but having chosen to welcome data centers, Virginia leaders can’t just shrug off the need for energy.

We also have to recognize that many farmers need to lease their land for solar in order to keep the land in their family and generate stable income. This should be as important a consideration to lawmakers as the objections of people who aren’t paying the taxes on the farm. Preventing landowners from making profitable use of their land is more likely to lead to the land being sold for development than to it remaining agricultural. 

The good news is that solar panels are compatible with agricultural uses including livestock grazing, beekeeping, vineyards and some crops. Dominion Energy uses sheep instead of lawnmowers at several of its solar facilities in Virginia and plans to expand the practice. The combination is a beautiful synergy: sheep and native grasses improve the soil, and in 30 years when the solar panels are removed, the land has not been lost to development.

While there is no getting around the need for utility-scale solar projects, rooftop solar also has an important role to play. In addition to harnessing private dollars to increase electricity generation, distributed solar saves money for customers and makes communities more resilient in the face of extreme weather.

This year the governor vetoed a bill to expand the role of distributed solar in Virginia. The legislation had garnered strong bipartisan support, so it will likely pass again next year. However, lawmakers will need to go further to encourage customer investments in solar now that federal tax credits will be eliminated for residential consumers at the end of this year.  

Batteries: For all your reliability needs

The fastest-growing energy sector today is battery storage. Batteries allow utilities to meet peaks in demand without having to build gas combustion turbines that typically run less than 10% of the time. Batteries also pair perfectly with intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, storing their excess generation and then delivering electricity when these resources aren’t available.  

Battery prices have tumbled to new lows, while the technology continues to improve. Most lithium-ion batteries provide 4 hours of storage, enough to meet evening peak demand with midday solar. When renewable energy becomes a larger part of Virginia’s energy supply (it’s less than 10% now) we will need longer term storage, such as the iron-air batteries that are part of a Dominion pilot program. This year the governor vetoed a bill that would have increased the amount of storage our utilities must invest in. Given the increasing importance of batteries to the grid, the legislation will likely be reintroduced next year.

Batteries installed at homes and businesses can also play a vital role in supporting the grid. Alone or combined with distributed solar, smart meters and electric vehicle charging, customer devices can be aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) to make more electricity available to the grid at peak demand times. Dominion will be developing a VPP pilot program under the terms of legislation passed this year. 

Advanced nuclear is still in Maybeland

The enormous expense of building large nuclear plants using conventional light-water technology has made development almost nonexistent in this century. Proponents believe new technology will succeed with scaled-down plants that can, in theory, be standardized and modularized to lower costs. Many political and tech leaders hope these small modular reactors (SMRs) will prove a carbon-free solution to the data center energy problem. 

It’s hard not to think they’re kidding themselves, or maybe us. Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power plan to develop one SMR each, with Dominion shooting to have one in service in 2035. Not only is this too late to meet today’s energy crunch, but a single SMR would add less energy to the supply side than new data centers add to the demand side each year. Virginia still needs near-term solutions, which means solar and batteries. 

Industry enthusiasts believe the 2035 timeline can be shortened, while critics say SMRs may never reach commercial viability. SMRs have to be able to compete on cost with much cheaper renewable energy, including wind, solar and emerging geothermal technologies, and cost parity is a long way off. The economic case for nuclear reactors also requires that they generate power all the time, including when the demand isn’t there, so SMRs need batteries almost as much as renewable energy does.

Finally, radioactive waste remains a challenging issue, as much (or more) for SMRs as for legacy nuclear plants. The U.S. has never resolved the problem of permanent storage, so nuclear waste is simply kept onsite at generating stations. The risk of accidents or sabotage makes it unlikely that communities will accept SMRs in their midst, especially if the idea is for SMRs to proliferate on the premises of privately-owned data centers near residential areas statewide.  

A nuclear technology with less of a waste problem is fusion energy. A fusion start-up plans to build its first power plant in Virginia in the “early 2030s,” if the demonstration plant it is building in Massachusetts proves successful. While fusion would be an energy game-changer, there are so many uncertainties around timeline and cost that only an inveterate gambler would bet on it helping us out of our predicament. 

Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t make it go away

We don’t have to talk about climate change to make the case for transitioning to carbon-free renewable energy, but global warming hovers in the background of any energy debate like an unwanted guest. If you need a primer or are even slightly tempted to say you “don’t know” whether human activity is responsible because you’re not a scientist, read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s summary for policymakers. The continued habitability of the planet is too important for ignorance to be an acceptable dodge – and of course you, as a respectable candidate, would never stoop to such a thing.

Virginia codified its own action plan in 2020 with two major laws. One provides for the commonwealth to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multistate compact that uses auctions of carbon emission allowances to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels and raise money for energy efficiency and climate adaptation. After taking office in 2022,  Youngkin removed Virginia from RGGI – illegally, as a court ruled. Virginia remains outside RGGI while the appeals process continues. 

The second law is the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which creates a pathway for Dominion and APCo to transition to carbon-free electricity by 2050. The VCEA includes provisions requiring Dominion and APCo to invest in renewable energy, storage and energy efficiency and make renewable energy an increasing portion of their electricity supply. 

The VCEA contains special provisions for offshore wind, which I haven’t addressed here because  Trump is determined not to allow projects to move forward while he is in office. This is a shame, as there is bipartisan support in Virginia for this industry and the huge economic development opportunities that come with it. Still, Virginia’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project is 60% complete and will start delivering power next year. Eventually, hopefully, it will be remembered as the first of many.

The VCEA also prohibited new investments in fossil fuel plants except under certain conditions. Dominion is currently seeking permission from the State Corporation Commission to build a $1.5 billion, fossil gas-fired peaker plant, citing data center demand and a need for reliability. Local residents, environmental organizations and ratepayer advocates oppose the plant and filed expert testimony showing that solar, storage and other less expensive technologies would better serve consumers.

In what passes for a bombshell in the energy space, Dominion was forced to admit last month that it had not obtained an independent review of the bid process before selecting its own gas plant over resources offered by third-party bidders.

“No regrets” solutions are progressive and conservative

As you’ve probably figured out by now, there is no perfect power source available today. And yet we would need new generation even if we stopped data center construction cold in its tracks – which isn’t in the plans. Solar is the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest source of generation, allowing us to preserve land – and keep options open – for the future. If the data center boom goes bust, having surplus clean energy on the grid will let us eliminate dirty sources faster, while saving money. 

Who would run against that?

First published in the Virginia Mercury on September 15, 2025.

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Is it too hot for common sense?

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smokestack
Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

Maybe it’s the heat. Heat-addled brains might explain the thinking of many Virginia lawmakers that what we need to do right now is burn more fossil fuels. 

Scientists have documented the way high temperatures affect the brain, impairing cognition and causing impulsivity and trouble concentrating. And this summer is already starting out hot, which is saying something given that 2024 was the hottest year on record, bumping 2023 off its baking pedestal. Scientists say this global fever is the natural result of burning fossil fuels and driving CO2 levels to their highest in millions of years.

Since burning more fossil fuels will drive more global warming, it’s exactly the reverse of what we should be doing.  Yes, but, these state leaders respond, how else are we going to power ever more data centers? 

Northern Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and data centers are notoriously power-hungry. Without them, Virginia electricity demand would be flat, and we could easily meet our electricity needs while gradually decarbonizing along the pathway laid out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).

Instead, Virginia taxpayers subsidize some of the richest corporations in America to the tune of almost a billion dollarsevery year to entice them to rip up land in Loudoun, Prince William and other Virginia counties instead of Atlanta or Dallas. In return, the tech companies keep construction workers busy, underwrite their host counties’ finances, make life miserable for nearby residents, raise everyone’s power bills, drain our rivers and aquifers and pollute our air with enough diesel generators to light up a major city.  

Virginia legislators obviously consider this a fair deal, because that’s what they keep voting for. Whether their constituents agree is another question; the evidence says they don’t.

For anyone just getting up to speed on data center issues, the Virginia Sierra Club’s new report, “Unconstrained Demand: Virginia’s Data Center Expansion and Its Impacts” (to which I contributed), covers the current state of data center development in Virginia and the problems that come with it. Fun fact: More than half of all the nation’s energy consumption attributed to data centers occurs in Virginia. 

That puts a special burden of leadership on our lawmakers. If we allow data centers to undermine our sustainability efforts here, we can only expect a race to the bottom in other states. As Virginia goes, so goes the nation. 

And yet we haven’t heard much outcry from Virginia leaders against the plans of our largest utility to build new generating plants powered by fracked gas. Dominion Energy laid out its plans in its 2024 integrated resource plan as well as a proposal for a 944 megawatts of gas combustion turbines in Chesterfield now pending before the State Corporation Commission. 

Dominion and its allies say more gas is needed for reliability, which could make it allowable under the VCEA. Indeed, “reliability” is a word that fossil fuel advocates frequently toss down like a trump card (in the unpresidential sense but with the same lack of thoughtful analysis). The claim is suspect. Fussing about reliability when your state ranks 24th in the nation for renewable energy is like worrying about the taxes you’ll owe if you win the lottery: we should be so lucky. 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Republican legislators are explicit in wanting to see the VCEA repealed and more gas plants built. Democrats defend the VCEA’s goals, but worry about the challenges of implementation and the effect on electricity rates. They all cite data center demand as the reason they contemplate backsliding on clean energy.

I wish I could say that our rich and powerful tech companies were aggressively championing carbon-free energy for their data centers in Virginia, but they are not. I attended a meeting of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation where legislators were hashing out the problems of too much demand and too little supply. Representatives from the Data Center Coalition stood in the back of the room, observing but refusing to engage. Out of sight, they successfully lobbied against any bills that would slow the data center boom, force them to absorb more of its costs, or require them to source their own clean energy. 

Publicly, many tech companies tout their commitments to decarbonization. Amazon says it even met its goal to run its operations entirely on renewable energy. Yes, and I’m the Queen of Sheba. In fact, these companies are in a fierce competition to develop artificial intelligence as fast as possible. They’d like carbon-free power, but really, they’ll take whatever energy they can get wherever they can get it, and even among the industry’s best actors, climate now takes a back seat. 

Yet the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos would not be significantly worse off if forced to meet their climate commitments. Virginia leaders know – or at any rate, they have been exposed to the information, which I realize is not the same thing – that building new fossil gas generating plants is not just bad for the planet but more expensive than pursuing carbon-free alternatives.

Oh, I know, Congress just yanked back the federal tax incentives that helped make wind and solar as cheap as it is, one of the myriad ill-considered elements of the big beautiful debt bomb Republicans adopted against everyone’s better judgment. (Apparently heat affects spines as well as brains.) With passage of that bill, developers will need to have begun construction on new facilities by this time next year in order to qualify for the existing tax credits. 

There will be a mad rush to get construction underway immediately for facilities in the development pipeline. Thereafter, projects on the margin won’t get built. But others will, because even the loss of federal subsidies won’t destroy solar’s competitive edge against most new-build gas. 

Even so, utilities and their customers will pay higher prices for unsubsidized new renewable energy – as well as for existing fossil fuel generation that will command higher prices in the coming supply crunch. The Clean Energy Buyers Association estimates that commercial electricity costs in Virginia will be about 10% higher after the phase-out of federal incentives. 

A years-long backlog for orders of gas turbines will further squeeze energy supply and drive up prices for fossil power. On the plus side, the lack of available turbines will make fast-to-deploy solar not just the better option, but sometimes the only option.

I’ve never understood the conservative love affair with fossil fuels, when today’s clean technology is cleaner, cheaper and quicker to deploy. Trump would like to crush wind and solar altogether, which would eliminate 90% of the power capacity waiting to be connected to the grid and catapult the U.S into a serious energy crisis. In addition to much higher power prices, observers warn we would likely see a loss of data centers and other energy-intensive industries to parts of the world that are not on a mission to kill low-cost clean energy. 

Well, that would be one way to rid Virginia of the data center scourge.

Fortunately, the worst attacks on solar in Trump’s budget bomb did not survive, but the bill should nonetheless serve as a wake-up call for Virginia leaders. With little time left to secure federal clean energy incentives, our utilities need to acquire all the solar and storage they can right now. With or without data centers, locking in as much fuel-free generation as possible while it’s available at a discount is a prudent move to avoid the coming shortages and escalating costs of energy.

As for the tech companies, lawmakers should embrace the simplest approach to this problem, which happens also to be the one that spares ordinary Virginians from bearing the costs of the data center buildout: shifting responsibility for sourcing electricity onto the companies themselves, and requiring that they live up to their climate claims by making the power they buy carbon-free. 

It’s an approach other states can follow, holding Big Tech to the same responsibility no matter where they put their data centers. Certainly the tech titans can afford it; they just won big with massive tax cuts that our poorest residents will pay for. 

No doubt they will complain. Everyone would like somebody else to pay for what benefits them. But Virginians can’t afford to subsidize Big Tech, and we don’t want to. 

As for those legislators who think we should continue to do it anyway – well, all I can think is, it’s got to be the heat.

This article was originally published on July 8, 2025. On July 7, President Trump signed an executive order directing cabinet members to find more ways to hobble wind and solar energy, including directing the Secretary of the Treasury to interpret “beginning of construction” in a way that requires “a substantial portion” of a facility to have been built in order to qualify for tax incentives, counter to current regulation.

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The war on woke…energy?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately, and the strange way words that used to mean good things are now attacked as bad, and vice-versa. Diversity, equity and inclusion are radioactive. Mentioning environmental justice or climate change will get your federal program canceled. Coal is clean, even beautiful, and pointing out the connection to global warming makes you an alarmist, because speaking up when your government steers you towards disaster is now a bad thing to do. 

Recently I received an email excoriating “woke” energy policy, which seemed especially curious. I can see how awareness of historic racial injustice against Black people might nudge policy makers into greater support for renewable energy, given that pollution from fossil fuels tends to have a disparate impact on communities of color. But judging from the hostile tone of the email, I believe we may have different understandings of wokeness.  

Sometimes, though, words mean different things to different people without anyone realizing they aren’t using the same definition. That may be the case when Virginia leaders talk about the reliability of the electricity supply. Everyone agrees reliability is critical – but they may not be talking about the same thing.

Virginia’s need for power is growing at a terrific pace. Data centers consume so much electricity that our utilities can’t keep up, causing them to increase imports from out of state. That’s okay for now; West Virginia is not a hostile foreign nation. Also, Virginia is a member of a larger grid, the 13-state (plus D.C.) PJM Interconnection, which manages thousands of generating facilities to ensure output matches demand across the region. But even across this wider area, demand is increasing faster than supply, pushing up prices and threatening a shortfall. Unless we tell data centers to go elsewhere, we need more generation, and fast.

Democrats and Republicans are divided over how to increase the power supply. Democrats remain committed to the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires Virginia’s electricity to decarbonize by 2050. Meeting the VCEA’s milestones requires investments in renewable energy and storage, both to address climate change and to save ratepayers from the high costs of coal and fracked gas. 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin and members of his party counter that fossil fuels are tried-and-true, baseload sources of energy. They advocate abandoning the VCEA and building more gas plants, arguing that renewable energy just isn’t reliable. 

Note that these Republicans are not alarmists, so they ignore climate change. If they were the proverbial frog in a pot of water on the stove, they would consider it a point of pride that they boiled to death without acknowledging the reason.

Youngkin takes every chance he gets to slam the VCEA. As I’ve previously described, the governor sought to amend various energy-related legislation to become VCEA repeal bills, regardless of the original subject matter or how much good it could do.

Last month, Youngkin’s Director of the Department of Energy sent a report on performance-based utility regulation to the State Corporation Commission. With it was a cover letter that had nothing to say about performance-based regulation, but a lot to say about the big, bad VCEA. The letter insists that “By all models, VCEA is unable to meet Virginia’s growing energy demand” and urges the SCC to “prioritize ratepayer affordability and grid reliability over long-term VCEA compliance.” 

Unfortunately for the Youngkin administration, affordability hasn’t been an argument in favor of fossil fuels for many years now. A new solar farm generates a megawatt of electricity more cheaply than a new fossil gas plant, and that will still be true even if Congress revokes renewable energy subsidies – though doing so will make electricity less affordable. 

The argument from fossil fuel defenders then becomes that the cheapest megawatt is not a reliable megawatt. And that’s where meaning matters.

Reliability is so important that even the decarbonization mandate of the VCEA contains an important exception: a utility can build fossil fuel generation under certain circumstances, if it is the only way to keep the lights on. 

Dominion Energy is relying on this escape clause as it seeks regulatory approval to build new fossil gas combustion turbines on the site of an old coal plant in Chesterfield. The move is opposed by local residents, environmental justice advocates and climate activists. (No word on whether they are alarmists or simply alarmed.) They argue Dominion hasn’t met the conditions set out in the VCEA to trigger the escape clause, including achieving energy efficiency targets and proving it can’t meet its needs with renewable energy, energy storage and demand response programs.

Virginia Republicans not only side with Dominion on this, they increasingly favor building gas plants over renewables as a general matter, urging the reliability point. It’s an argument that never made much sense for me, given that renewables make up only 5% of PJM’s electricity. That’s way less than the national average of over 21%, and other grids aren’t crashing right and left. 

The light bulb went off for me while I was watching the May meeting of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation. A PJM representative showed a chart of how the grid operator assigns numbers to different resources according to how they contribute to the electricity supply. Nuclear plants get the highest score because they run constantly, intermittent wind and solar sources get lower scores, with fossil fuel plants in the middle. PJM calls that a reliability score.

For some Republicans, that’s a slam-dunk: the chart proves renewable energy is unreliable. But in spite of its label, the chart doesn’t actually measure reliability; it gives points for availability, which is not the same thing. 

As I once heard a solar installer testify, few things are as reliable as the sun rising every morning (or rather, the earth rotating). With modern weather forecasting, grid operators can predict with great precision how much electricity from solar they can count on at any given time from solar facilities arrayed across the region. Solar energy is highly reliable, even though it is not always available. Add storage, and the availability issue is also resolved.

Obviously, the grid would not be reliable if solar were the only resource operators had to work with. But it isn’t. PJM calls on a mix of different sources, plus storage facilities and demand response, to ensure generation precisely matches the peaks and valleys of demand. Reliability is a matter of keeping resources in sync and ensuring a robust transmission and distribution system.

The threat to reliability today comes from the mad rush to connect new data centers. PJM has been roundly criticized for not approving new generating and storage facilities’ connection to the grid at a fast enough pace to keep up with the increase in demand and retirements of old, money-losing fossil fuel plants. Scrambling to recover, recently it decided to prioritize a smaller number of big, new gas plants over the thousands of megawatts of renewable energy and storage still languishing on its waiting list. 

Meanwhile, PJM wants utilities to keep operating coal plants even though it will make electricity less affordable and violate state climate laws. In this it is joined by the Trump administration, which wants to require utilities to keep running coal plants explicitly to support the coal industry. 

Analysts say this is the wrong way to achieve reliability. A recent report from the consulting firm Synapse estimates that PJM’s approach will raise residential electricity bills by 60% by 2036-2040. By contrast, reforming its interconnection process and enabling more renewable energy and storage to come online would lower bills by 7%. By Synapse’s calculation, Virginia would see the most savings of any state. 

In other words, Virginia Republicans are pursuing reliability the wrong way. Instead of pressuring Democrats to back away from the VCEA, they ought to be pressuring PJM to reform its approach. Reliable power doesn’t have to be expensive, if you take the politics out of it.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on June 3, 2025.

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Under pressure from the SCC, Dominion reveals the true cost of data centers

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New filing shows electricity demand would be flat without the industry

Data center between housing community and a bike path
A data center in Ashburn, Virginia. Photo by Hugh Kenny, Piedmont Environmental Council.

Ever since data centers started spreading across the Virginia landscape like an invasive pest, one important question has remained unanswered: How much does the industry’s insatiable demand for energy impact other utility customers? Under pressure from the SCC, this month Dominion Energy Virginia finally provided the answer we feared: Ordinary Virginia customers are subsidizing Big Tech with both their money and their health.

Dominion previously hid data centers among the rest of its customer base, making it impossible to figure out if residents were paying more than their fair share of the costs of building new generation and transmission lines. Worse, if data centers are the reason for burning more fossil fuels, then they are also responsible for residents being subjected to pollution that is supposed to be eliminated under the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The VCEA calls for most coal plants in the state to be closed by the end of this year – which is not happening – and sets rigorous conditions before utilities can build any new fossil fuel plants. 

Dominion’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), filed a year and a half ago, projected steep increases in energy demand and the cost of electricity. The utility asserted that for reliability purposes it needed to keep coal plants operating, build new methane gas generating units without meeting the VCEA’s conditions, and add small nuclear reactors beginning in 2034.

Dominion’s failure to file a plan that complied with the VCEA led to an unusual stalemate at the SCC, with the IRP neither approved nor rejected. Ignoring the foul-weather warning, Dominion filed a similarly-flawed 2024 IRP in October.  None of the modeled scenarios showed coal plants closing, none met the energy efficiency requirements set by law, and all proposed building new gas and nuclear reactors, with the first small nuclear plant now pushed off to 2035.

Neither of the two filings separated out the role of data centers in driving the changes. 

Even before the 2024 IRP was filed, though, the SCC directed the utility to file a supplement. It was obvious the IRP would project higher costs and increased use of fossil fuels. How much of that, the SCC demanded to know, is attributable to data centers? 

A lot, as it turns out. Though Dominion continues to obfuscate key facts, the document it filed on November 15 shows future data center growth will drive up utility spending by about 20%. Dominion did not take the analysis further to show the effect on residential rates.  

The filing also shows that but for new data centers, peak demand would actually decrease slightly over the next few years, from 17,353 MW this year to 17,280 MW in 2027, before beginning a gentle rise to 17,818 MW in 2034 and 18,608 MW in 2039. 

In other words, without data centers, electricity use in Dominion territory would scarcely budge over the next decade. Indeed, the slight decrease over the next three years is especially interesting because near-term numbers tend to be the most reliable, with projections getting more speculative the further out you look.  

Surprised? You’re not alone. We’ve heard for years that electric vehicles and building electrification will drive large increases in energy demand. When Dominion talks about the challenges of load growth, it cites these factors along with data centers, suggesting that ordinary people are part of the problem. We’re not. 

Decreasing demand is a testament to the profound effect of energy efficiency, as advances in things like lighting, heat pumps and other appliances allow consumers to do more with less. Presumably, the electrification of transportation and buildings will eventually outpace gains in efficiency – no doubt reflected in the projections for slightly increasing demand over the 2030s – but the effect is still modest. Electrification is not to blame for demand growth; data centers are.

In a future without new data centers, there should be no reason for Virginia’s energy transition to get off track. Solar, offshore wind and battery storage could increasingly displace fossil fuels, clean our air and bring down greenhouse gas emissions at an orderly pace. 

At least, that’s the intuitive result, though Dominion fights hard to counter it. The new filing is supposed to show what a VCEA-compliant plan would look like without data centers, but it retains assumptions from its IRPs that skew the results in favor of fossil fuels. These include limiting energy efficiency and artificially capping the amounts of solar and storage that its computer model could select. Obviously, if you won’t invest in low-cost energy efficiency and solar, you need more of something else. 

Dominion’s computer model also doesn’t choose offshore wind in spite of the fact that the 2,600-MW Virginia Coastal Offshore Wind project is under construction. No doubt the higher cost of offshore wind is responsible for this counter-factual omission, but again, leaving it out requires that something else be selected. Nuclear similarly doesn’t make the cut due to cost. 

By limiting or eliminating all zero-carbon options, Dominion would like you to conclude that, with or without data centers, it “needs” more gas plants.

There are other reasons to be skeptical of this manufactured result. As with the 2024 IRP itself, Dominion does not appear to have incorporated the social cost of carbon in its supposedly-VCEA-compliant plan, a mandatory consideration for any new fossil fuel generation. It’s also worth noting that Dominion will once again have to buy carbon emission allowances to run its coal and gas plants now that a court has nullified Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s illegal withdrawal of Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). (Youngkin has vowed to appeal.) 

On the other hand, President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress seem likely to overturn new EPA regulations tightening pollution standards for fossil fuel plants. That would make fossil fuels appear cheaper by shifting costs onto residents in the form of worse health outcomes and climate-related weather disasters. 

In addition to showing what the energy mix might look like without data centers, the SCC directed Dominion to identify which of its approximately 200 planned transmission projects were needed solely because of data centers. The 4-page table in Dominion’s supplemental filing reveals that about half of the projects are solely data center-driven, with two or three dozen more serving a mix of customers that includes data centers. I tried to add up the numbers but lost track at a billion dollars’ worth of projects needed solely for data centers – and I was still on the second page. 

There is one more caveat to keep in mind. Since the SCC’s order applied only to future growth, Dominion’s new numbers don’t show the cost and energy impact of data centers in operation today. Data centers already make up a quarter of Dominion’s sales, and that growth was the main reason the utility pivoted back to fossil fuels in its 2023 IRP. 

Still, most of the data center growth lies ahead of us, as does Dominion’s plans for new fossil fuel and nuclear generation. With state leaders avidly chasing more data centers in the name of economic development, ordinary Virginians are left to watch the assault on their energy supply, their water, and their environment and wonder: Is anyone going to fix this?

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on November 26, 2024.

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The clean energy revolution will continue

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Photo credit iid.com

Eight years ago last week, I wrote a column titled, “Why Trump won’t stop the clean energy revolution.” Calling global warming a hoax, businessman and reality TV star Donald J. Trump had just been elected with a promise to save coal jobs and pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. 

Climate activists were deeply distraught then, as now. I wrote in 2016, “Reading the news Wednesday morning was like waking up from a nightmare to discover that there really is a guy coming after you with a meat cleaver.”

But as I also wrote, there is only so much damage a president can do when technology, popular opinion and – especially – economics don’t support his agenda. Trump couldn’t save the coal industry (though he tried). Instead, his administration oversaw a 24% decline in coal employment. And where coal supplied 30% of U.S. electricity in 2016, by the time Trump left office it had fallen to 20%. 

In the intervening years, Trump seems to have lost interest in coal mining, even as he continues to embrace fossil gas production. His enthusiasm for gas fracking fits with his drill-baby-drill approach to energy, but it was also intended to win over voters in Pennsylvania, a major producer of shale gas. Ironically, the gas industry insists on calling methane “clean” precisely because burning it emits less CO2 than coal. 

While coal was dying, wind and solar were well on their upswing when Trump took office in 2017, and they continued to advance through his first administration. By 2020, wind and solar had become the cheapest forms of new electric generation. Today, renewable energy supplies more than 21% of the nation’s electricity, while coal’s share has dropped further, to just 16%. Trump or no Trump, technological advances and a thirst for cleaner energy continue to drive new wind and solar generation.

Indeed, the offshore wind industry – famously reviled by Trump – wasted no time last week in congratulating its erstwhile foe on his victory and insisting, hilariously, that his election is a big win for the industry. The first Trump administration, they noted hopefully, “laid out the fundamental framework for our modern offshore wind industry.”

Well, okay. From their lips to Trump’s ears. Trump is hardly known for consistency, and it is not impossible to imagine him softening his position on an industry that is creating well-paying jobs for the blue-collar workers who make up a portion of his base. His Virginia acolyte, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, boasts of overseeing the building of the nation’s largest offshore wind farm. Why shouldn’t Trump pivot? 

Early in the Republican primaries, one candidate opined that all the solar panels and batteries sold in the U.S. are made in China. That wasn’t actually true. For years one U.S. company, First Solar, has ranked among the world’s top ten solar panel manufacturers. Among the domestic manufacturers of both EVs and batteries, one of the largest is Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk is now a Trump darling. It is going to be fascinating to find out whether Musk uses his influence to benefit the clean energy transition generally, or only himself. 

Yet the notion that China dominates solar and battery production is also not wrong. China is eating our lunch on clean energy. Chinese companies produce 80% of the world’s solar panels and more than half of its electric vehicles. Sadly, perhaps, these are not cheap imitations of superior American products. They are world-leading technology. 

Chinese dominance of the world market was a major reason that President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), put so much emphasis on supporting domestic manufacturing. Tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump’s preferred approach, help U.S. companies compete for American consumers, but they don’t support an export market when other countries produce better goods for less money. Even at home, critics note, tariffs mostly just raise prices.

Yet Trump has vowed to repeal the IRA, and given that Congress passed it without Republican support, there is certainly a danger that a Republican Congress will comply. On the other hand, observers note that 80% of the manufacturing tax credits have gone to red states, and this August, 18 House Republicans signed a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson asking to keep the credits. 

I don’t want to sound too optimistic. Wait, let me rephrase that: I don’t feel optimistic at all. We are facing headwinds today that weren’t around in 2016. At that time, gains in energy efficiency meant electricity demand was not increasing, in spite of a growing population. With wind and solar displacing coal, there was a clear pathway for CO2 emissions from the electric sector to continue falling. 

Today, however, the skyrocketing demand for electricity from data centers threatens the progress we’ve made on clean energy. It remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence will unleash efficiency gains and novel technologies that can put carbon reductions back on track. Right now, though, tech companies are so desperate for power that they will take it from wherever they can get it, and regardless of carbon content.  (I notice, though, that they still want it to be cheap and are happy to greenwash it to meet their sustainability goals). 

Perhaps the biggest change from eight years ago is simply that we are that much closer to reaching catastrophic climate tipping points. 2023 was the warmest year on record, and 2024 is on track to surpass it. The effects are evident in the number and costliness of severe weather and wildfires made worse by global warming. (Just ask insurance companies.) It is frustrating, to say the least, to contemplate losing the next four years to an administration that thinks climate change wouldn’t be an issue if we would just stop talking about it.  

Yet Americans of all political stripes continue to support renewable energy by wide margins. And apart from a small minority of vocal climate deniers, most Americans want the U.S. to take stronger action on climate. 

This election revealed deep fault lines among the American public, but one thing we all have in common is the faith that our ability to solve intractable problems is stronger even than our tendency to wish the problems away. 

That’s why, even in the face of such serious headwinds, the clean energy revolution will continue. 

This column was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on November 12, 2024.

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The strange obsession with low birth rates

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The human population of the Earth passed 8 billion in 2022, up from 7 billion in 2011 and less than 2 billion just a century ago. The United Nations projects that by 2050, the world will hit 9.7 billion people and continue rising to 10.9 billion in 2100. The average number of children women have in their lifetimes remains above the replacement rate of 2.1. 

So why is there so much hand-wringing about a population bust? 

It is true that population trends are uneven across the world, and some European and East Asian countries are struggling to address a decline in numbers. This is not the case in the U.S., however. Although our birth rate has been below the replacement rate for years, the Census projects our population increasing by another 33 million before it peaks in 2080. By 2100, the Census expects there will still be almost 10% more people in the U.S. than there are today. 

Frankly, it’s more than a little odd to worry about something that won’t happen for at least three-quarters of a century, while ignoring that in the meantime, an ever-growing population using too many resources is pushing the planet to the brink of ecological collapse. You would think we could worry about that now, and save the hysterics over population decline for the next century. 

Yet conservatives see the sky falling. The fear is most palpable among white supremacists spouting replacement theory, the notion that pale-skinned people, who are having fewer children, will be swamped by brown people, who are having more. They are pretty sure this is, in fact, a nefarious plan concocted by Jewish people, who apparently don’t count as white, with a goal of destroying Western civilization and all the great things that America stands for — by which they definitely do not mean democracy and civil rights. 

Even some liberal Americans say they’re worried about the birth rate, and argue we need child tax credits, mandatory parental leave and publicly-subsidized daycare to reverse the decline. Of course, progressives support these policies anyway, so it’s hard to know how sincere their concern over birth rates really is. 

I’m not sure about the sincerity on the right, either. Most of the people who express alarm about a declining birth rate are red-state Republicans who celebrate rural living and the small-town lifestyle. They hate traffic and the plethora of rules necessary to make life tolerable in crowded communities. 

Meanwhile, I guarantee you no one in New York or LA looks around and says, “You know what would make this place better? More people!”  

Of course, the pro-population-growth crowd absolutely rejects the one sure way to increase the US population: allowing more immigrants in. 

They say it’s not racism. Theirs is just a preference for people who look like them, sound like them and do things the way they do them. 

Yet immigration does all the things that the population alarmists say we need. It fills schools with children, bolsters the workforce, and keeps contributions flowing to Social Security and Medicare, extending the solvency of these programs. 

Vastly more would-be immigrants are knocking at our doors than we are willing to allow in, and the numbers will only increase as climate change and the collapse of ecosystems spark further conflict and make it harder to eke out a living in more parts of the world. Countries that are able and willing to absorb the outflow of migrants from devastated areas will not be challenged by depopulation. 

The U.S. is home to more migrants than any other country. Clearly many Americans, themselves descended from immigrants, are ready to shut the door behind them, but economists agree immigration is the secret sauce of our economic strength. That doesn’t mean the doors need to be wide open, with no one managing the flow, or that we shouldn’t try to help solve the crises that drive people to leave their home countries in the first place. And we still urgently need to work on transforming our consumption-based economy into a sustainable one.

But it does mean we needn’t fear a population bust in our lifetimes. While other advanced countries are figuring out how to retool their economies for a shrinking population, we will always have the numbers we desire, so long as we remain a society committed to equal opportunity, democracy and the striving for justice.    

Obviously, this is not what the nativist right wants. But what they want — more American-born babies and limitless population growth, achieved by controlling women’s bodies rather than by strengthening the welfare state — is a fantasy served up with a helping of bad policy. 

This article was previously published in the Virginia Mercury on August 20, 2024.

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Amazon claims to power all its operations with renewable energy. Yes, and I’m the Queen of Sheba.

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Greenpeace protesters at the site of Amazon’s HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, in 2019 called out the company for failing to make progress towards its commitment to power the cloud with renewable energy. Since then, the company has actually increased its carbon emissions. Photo courtesy of Greenpeace.

When Amazon announced this month that it had achieved 100% renewable energy seven years ahead of schedule, that sounded like really good news for Virginia. Amazon owns more data centers here than anyone else, and data center energy demand is driving Dominion Energy Virginia’s plan to renege on its climate commitments, keep dirty coal plants online and build expensive new gas plants and transmission lines.  

Unfortunately, Amazon’s announcement is so full of asterisks it looks like a starry night. 

Let’s start with the good news. Amazon’s claim that it has purchased enough renewable energy to “match” its energy use is likely true, though its sustainability report doesn’t reveal essential details like how much energy the company uses. Amazon also says it is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world, an impressive achievement. 

Some of that renewable energy is in Virginia, so it is reasonable to say it serves the company’s data centers here. A map on Amazon’s website shows the company has invested in 19 solar farms in Virginia, with a capacity that totals around 1,386 MW  – about a quarter of all solar installed in Virginiato date. That’s terrific. If every company operating in Virginia did as much, we’d be rolling in solar, figuratively speaking. 

So what am I complaining about? 

One problem is that the energy appetite of Amazon’s data centers in Virginia far outstrips the output of all of its solar farms here. The other problem is that producing renewable energy in the middle of the day can only very loosely be said to “match” energy used at other times of the day and night. Meeting energy demand on a 24/7 basis is harder, and Amazon isn’t even trying. 

Let’s start with the numbers. Because the sun doesn’t shine all the time, a large solar array produces, on average, 22-25% of what it produces on a cloudless day at noon. (That percentage is known as the facility’s capacity factor.) At a 25% capacity factor, Amazon’s 1,386 MW worth of solar panels produce enough electricity to “match” about 347 MW of demand. 

Amazon keeps its energy demand in Virginia a secret, but we can be pretty sure its 110 data centers here use way more than that. A 2019 Greenpeace report estimated Amazon’s Virginia data center demand at 1,700 MW in operation or under construction, an amount that would call for 6,800 MW of solar. Amazon rejected Greenpeace’s estimate at the time, but it didn’t supply a better one. More recent estimates suggest Amazon’s energy appetite in Virginia is on its way to 2,700 MW, enough to require the output of around 11,000 MW of solar. 

Luckily for us, Virginia is part of PJM, a regional transmission grid that covers all or parts of 13 states plus Washington, D.C. Generation sources located anywhere in the region can serve a Virginia customer, and Amazon’s map shows it has utility solar and wind projects in several PJM states. By my count, these add up to as much as 4,000 MW of additional renewable energy that could be allocated to Virginia data centers, if Amazon had no other operations in those states that it wanted to power. (Which, however, it does.) 

Adding together its solar in Virginia and elsewhere in PJM still leaves Amazon short of what it likely needs. So, if the company is correct that it has secured enough renewable energy to match all of its demand, a lot of those facilities must be in other regions or other countries. Yet the climate benefit of Amazon’s solar farms in (for example) Spain, which gets more than 50% of its electricity from renewable energy, is significantly less than the climate benefit of solar in PJM, where the percentage of wind and solar combined still hangs in the single digits. 

I will – almost – give Amazon a pass on this point. PJM has been so appallingly slow to approve new generation that Amazon could well have as many projects in the “queue” as online. PJM claims it will catch up in the next year and a half, and when that happens, perhaps Amazon won’t feel the need to obfuscate.

Even if Amazon were “matching” all its energy needs with wind and solar in PJM, though, it’s the second problem that troubles me more. Building solar and wind is cheap; Amazon very likely makes a profit on it. Actually ensuring renewable energy provides all the juice for the company’s operations every hour of every day, on the other hand, would require a heck of a lot of expensive energy storage. And Amazon is not doing that.

Without energy storage, solar delivers electricity only while the sun is shining. The rest of the time, Amazon’s data centers run on whatever resource mix the local utility uses. In both Virginia and PJM’s territory, fossil fuels make up the great majority of the mix. Building more Amazon data centers in Virginia increases the burning of fossil fuels, causing more pollution and raising costs that are borne by the rest of us. 

The self-styled climate hero turns out to be a climate parasite, harming people to make itself look good.

Combining renewable energy with storage to achieve true carbon neutrality isn’t prohibitively expensive. Other leading tech companies seem to be making that extra effort, with Google notable for its commitment to meeting its energy demand with renewable energy and storage on a 24/7 basis.

Amazon’s failure to rise to this challenge explains why, in spite of its massive investments in wind and solar, the company’s carbon footprint actually rose by 34% since the launch of its Climate Pledge in 2019, when it set a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2040. 

That explains why, a year ago, the Science Based Targets initiative, a U.N.-backed organization that monitors corporate net-zero plans, removed Amazon from a list of companies taking action on climate goals. According to press reports, Amazon failed “to implement its commitment to set a credible target for reducing carbon emissions.”  

Among those least impressed with the company’s efforts are its own workers. Last year, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice accused the company of failing in its climate commitments, and the group released its own report this month alleging multiple climate failures, including using “creative accounting” to inflate its achievements.

If Virginia is serious about meeting the climate challenge, we can’t blindly accept rosy claims from corporations whose central goal is not sustainability, but growth. Data centers whose energy demand isn’t met on a 24/7 basis from zero-carbon sources located on the same grid are not part of the climate solution, they are part of the problem. And currently, Amazon’s data centers are making the problem worse.

This article was first published in the Virginia Mercury on July 24, 2024.

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Data centers be damned, Virginia can still meet its climate goals

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Virginia's capitol building in Richmond.

Following the General Assembly’s failure either to rein in the explosive growth of power-hungry data centers or to remove obstacles to increasing the supply of renewable energy in Virginia, a lot of people are wondering where we go from here.  

Dominion Energy Virginia’s answer, as described in its 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), is “build more fossil fuels.” The utility is pushing forward plans to build new methane gas generating units in Chesterfield. Dominion argues that although its IRP calls for dramatically increased carbon emissions, it sort of complies with the Virginia Clean Economy Act anyway because the VCEA has an escape clause when reliability is at risk. 

Dominion does not acknowledge that its own actions contribute to the problem. To be fair, though, it’s a huge problem, and even if our utilities were on board with the VCEA’s carbon-cutting agenda, we would need stronger legislative policy than we have now. Rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is an important priority that Democrats are rightly pursuing, but the need for action goes much further. 

Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, convened meetings the week before last to hear from utilities, industry members, environmental groups and others to get suggestions on ways to reform the VCEA. The interest groups met separately, and members of one group were not allowed to attend other group sessions to hear what those stakeholders had to say. The meetings were closed-door and confidential, with the express purpose of preventing a nosy public from learning anything through Freedom of Information Act requests. 

That secrecy makes me queasy, so I declined the invitation to attend the environmentalists’ session. I’d have cheerfully jettisoned my scruples, though, if I could have been in the utility session to hear what Dominion’s lobbyists were whispering in the senator’s ear. Alas, that was not on offer. 

But Marsden is asking the right questions, and of course, I always have answers, even when no one is asking. In my view, Virginia can stay on track to carbon neutrality by adopting four basic principles: data centers must pay their own way, both literally and carbon-wise; solar must be easy to build and interconnect; utilities must not build new fossil generation for “reliability” before exhausting non-carbon solutions; and efficient buildings must be added to the strategy.

Let’s start with the elephant outgrowing the room.

Data centers are sucking up all the energy

Without action, data centers will soon overtake residential customers to become Dominion’s largest category of customer. Already, they are driving the utility’s decision-making, as we saw from Dominion’s IRP. This year, the General Assembly deferred action to address the energy crisis until it sees the results of a study being undertaken by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). 

It now appears that study won’t be published before the 2025 session convenes, and in fact there does not appear to be a deadline of any kind. Yet we already know enough about data center energy demand and its consequences for everyone else that legislators will be derelict in their duty if they put off all action until 2026.

The General Assembly must choose from three options if it still cares about the energy transition: stop the growth of the data center industry in Virginia, put the onus on data centers to source their own clean energy from the grid, or dramatically increase renewable energy generation and power line construction.  

Lawmakers show no desire to stop all data center growth, but as I’ve urged before, they can and should establish a joint state-local task force to choose appropriate sites for growth based on energy and transmission availability, water resource adequacy and good-neighbor factors, like distance from residential communities and parkland. 

Legislators should also require data centers to meet industry-best standards for energy efficiency, use alternatives to diesel generators for backup power and source carbon-free energy from facilities located on the grid that serves Virginia. They could buy this power either on their own or through a specially-designed utility tariff, as long as it meets all of their needs on a 24/7, hourly basis. In no case should other customers see higher electricity bills for infrastructure that’s only needed because of data centers.

These measures will take time to put in place, yet data center development is proceeding apace while the General Assembly takes its nap. There is no avoiding Virginia’s need for a lot more carbon-free generation, pretty much right away. A couple of small modular nuclear reactors ten years from now aren’t a solution.

Don’t expect climate leadership from Dominion

Dominion’s fossil-heavy IRP marked a sharp break away from the climate report that the company released just months before, which projected solar dominating the grid by 2040. Whether the IRP should be dismissed as political pandering to a conservative governor, or taken in earnest to mean the utility has thrown in the towel on renewable energy, is something of a Rorschach test for Virginia leaders. 

When Dominion releases its 2024 IRP this fall, we may get more clarity about what the company really thinks. More likely, we will still be left guessing. Dominion has a long history of playing to both sides to get what it wants, and what it wants is profit.   

There’s nothing wrong with a company making a profit, of course, as long as the company isn’t also allowed to make the rules it plays by. Asking Dominion’s lobbyists to help make energy policy is like recruiting burglars for a task force on crime prevention. 

Make it easier to build solar

While Virginia counties vie with each other to attract data centers, some are notably less keen on solar farms. Sprawling developments of windowless warehouses that suck power? Yes, they say. Grassy fields lined with rows of solar panels that produce power? No. Such is the horror with which some people view solar that localities have adopted moratoriums, acreage caps and other limits designed to keep projects at bay. The result is that an already-slow process for siting solar projects is getting even slower, more unpredictable and more expensive. 

Lawmakers rejected legislation this year that would have allowed the State Corporation Commission to overrule local permit denials. Yet it seems doubtful whether, in a Dillon Rule state like ours, local governments actually have the authority to enact blanket prohibitions and caps on specific kinds of land use. Legislators may want to ask the attorney general to clarify this point rather than waiting for landowners to challenge in court a locality’s refusal to let them put solar panels on their property. 

If the AG (or a court) rules these barriers illegal, localities would have to go back to evaluating the merits of project applications on a case-by-case basis — hardly a bad result. But it would be wiser and more orderly to pass legislation spelling out under what circumstances a local government may reject a solar project, and what the landowner’s recourse should be. 

New gas plants are the wrong solution for reliability

Though Dominion’s 2023 IRP didn’t win approval from the SCC, Dominion is going ahead with plans to build new methane gas combustion turbines in Chesterfield. Given that these “peaker” plants generate dirty power at a high price, Dominion should not be permitted to build gas combustion turbines if other alternatives are available. 

Which they are. Demand-response programs, advanced grid technologies and batteries charged by renewable energy are superior to gas peakers for reasons of cost, air quality and climate impact. 

Dominion is building some large batteries and testing long-duration battery storage technologies (and of course, Virginia already has the largest pumped storage facility in the world), but our utilities have not even begun to tap the potential of batteries in homes and businesses. Subsidizing the purchase of batteries by homeowners and businesses in exchange for the ability to draw on the batteries for peaking power, as some utilities do, would also build resilience into the grid and address power outages more cheaply than burying lines.

Imagine: If data centers had installed batteries instead of the 11 gigawatts of diesel generators at Loudoun and Fairfax County data centers, Virginia would already have more battery storage capacity than any country in the world.

Let everyone build solar 

The VCEA calls for 35% of its solar target to be satisfied by third-party developers. The purpose of this set-aside is two-fold: to attract more private capital, and to use competition to keep a lid on prices. Unfortunately, the SCC accepted Dominion’s argument that 35% should be read as a ceiling as well as a floor, to the detriment of ratepayers and solar developers. With Dominion now reneging on its solar commitments, it’s more important than ever that private developers be allowed to step in. One bill in the 2024 session would have corrected this problem by explicitly making 35% the minimum. The General Assembly should adopt that measure. 

Fix interconnection

Possibly the most inexplicable failure of the General Assembly this year was failing to pass legislation to resolve the dispute between Dominion and commercial customers over interconnection requirements. The onerous requirements that Dominion adopted in December of 2022  — imposed even in the face of a contrary SCC ruling — have wreaked havoc on plans by local governments to put solar on public buildings and schools. That is fine with Dominion; though the goal of the new requirements was to acquire upgraded distribution infrastructure at no cost to itself, its monopolistic lizard brain is equally satisfied with the result of shutting down competition from small solar companies. 

Legislators should not accept this result, though. The General Assembly adopted net metering years ago because encouraging residents and businesses to go solar is good for the economy and makes communities more resilient. Support for distributed renewable energy is even written into the Virginia Code as official policy. 

And distributed solar is hugely popular. Indeed, the very people who oppose utility-scale solar projects almost inevitably argue that society should maximize rooftop solar instead. In this they are at least half right: If we are really going to meet the energy challenge ahead of us, the very least we can do is milk every kilowatt-hour from sunshine falling on rooftops.

Customers have always paid to interconnect their solar to the utility’s grid. The dispute between Dominion and its customers is about whether Dominion can insist they pay the entire cost of expensive new fiber-optic wire and other cool technology that could make the distribution grid better for everyone, but which any one customer can’t afford. These upgrades could enable not just more solar but also electric vehicle charging in our communities, vehicle-to-grid technology and programs allowing utilities to make use of customers’ battery storage. But if the technology really is that valuable (a determination that should be made by the SCC, not Dominion), then getting it shouldn’t depend on how deep a customer’s pocket is — especially when that customer is a local government and, therefore, effectively, the Virginia taxpayer.

This year’s interconnection bill would have allowed a utility to recover the costs of these grid upgrades from ratepayers, with SCC oversight. Even Dominion would have been better off with the bill, something it would have recognized if its lizard brain weren’t in charge at the time. The General Assembly should pass the bill.

An untapped three gigawatts of energy are waiting off our coast

Dominion’s 2,600 megawatt Virginia offshore wind project is due to begin construction this year, but it is not the only game in town. The Kitty Hawk offshore wind area situated off North Carolina can deliver up to 3,500 megawatts of energy through a cable that will come ashore at Virginia Beach. All that is holding up the project is the lack of a customer.  Offshore wind is more expensive than solar, but we have a lot of power-hungry data centers who could pay a clean energy tariff that would include Kitty Hawk wind. 

Maximize efficiency in buildings 

Possibly the best piece of energy legislation to pass this year was the bill that directs local governments and schools to build to higher efficiency standards and incorporate renewable energy, as appropriate. The language could have been even stronger, but as it is, it will deliver significant cost savings for taxpayers.

In fact, local governments will now build to better standards than most homeowners get for themselves when they buy a house.  That’s because Virginia’s residential building code is pathetically behind the times when it comes to energy efficiency. Home buyers and renters would save more than enough money on utility bills to cover the upfront cost of better housing construction, but builders won’t voluntarily meet higher standards because it reduces profits. That should not be acceptable. 

Legislation passed in 2021 directed the Board of Housing and Community Development to consider amendments that would strengthen the building code. BHCD, which is dominated by builder and real estate interests, simply ignored the law. The matter is now in litigation (and the governor is trying to weaken the code even further), but the General Assembly could resolve the matter by directing BHCD to adopt efficiency measures at least as strong as the national standards set by the International Building Code Council (itself under fire for allowing builder interests to weaken efficiency standards), and to allow local governments to adopt stronger “stretch codes” to help residents save even more money and energy.

Going further, new and renovated buildings should be required to use electricity in place of methane gas, oil or propane for heating, cooling and appliances wherever practicable. Though building electrification increases electricity consumption, electricity is a more efficient technology than burning fossil fuels in the home, so it contributes to lower energy costs for residents and a smaller carbon footprint for the state overall. 

It’s a shame the General Assembly settled for simply not going backwards this year, but it is a good sign that Marsden and others are not waiting for next year to consider ways to get us back on the carbon-cutting wagon. With the climate clock ticking, we have no more time to lose.

A version of this article appeared in the Virginia Mercury on April 29, 2024.

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Virginia climate advocates find progress requires more than a Democratic majority

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Virginia's capitol building in Richmond.

Climate advocates felt hopeful last fall when Democrats won control of both the Senate and House with promises to protect the commonwealth’s climate laws, including the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and the Clean Car Standard. It seemed possible the General Assembly might pass much-needed initiatives modest enough to avoid a veto from a Republican governor.   

Apparently not. Democrats did fend off attacks on the VCEA and Clean Cars, and killed a lot of terrible bills. Through the budget process, they’re trying to require Virginia’s renewed participation in the carbon-cutting Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. But Gov. Youngkin won’t even get his shot at most of the priority bills from the environmental community. Of the bills that did pass, most were so watered down as to make their usefulness questionable. A few bills died even when they went unopposed. Some successful bills seem likely to add to Virginia’s energy problems rather than help solve them.

A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of Dominion Energy, which took a bipartisan drubbing in the 2023 session, but was back this year stronger than ever like a plague that surges when we let our guard down.

But that’s only half the story. As a party, Democrats seemed to have simply lost interest in the fight. Climate change may be an urgent issue in the rest of the world, but in Virginia, a lot of lawmakers seem to think they already checked that box. 

Two steps forward

In the spirit of optimism, let’s start with the positive highlights of the session, though admittedly they were more like flashlight beams than floodlights.

Most consequential for the energy transition is legislation establishing a statewide green bank, a requirement for accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for clean energy projects. The House and Senate versions are different and will go to a conference committee. A show of opposition from Republicans in both chambers could attract a veto, but most governors welcome free money.

Similarly, new legislation directs the Department of Energy to identify federal funding available to further the commonwealth’s energy efficiency goals. 

Another encouraging piece of legislation updates and expands on existing energy efficiency requirements for new and renovated public buildings, a category that would now include schools. Provisions for EV charging capabilities, resilience measures, and onsite renewable energy and storage are included. The measure attracted only a couple of Republican votes, so it may be at risk of a veto.

Another change will bring sales of residential rooftop solar within the consumer protections that apply to other contractors. Virginia’s Board for Contractors will be required to issue regulations requiring relevant disclosures.

The net metering law that supports customer-sited solar will now include provisions for the leasing of solar panels and the use of batteries under a measure that is not expected to draw a veto. A solar facility paired with a battery of equal capacity will be exempt from standby charges, and the customer may use the batteries in demand-response and peak-shaving programs. Though none of the bill’s provisions were controversial, Dominion exacted a price in the form of a line directing the SCC to “make all reasonable efforts to ensure that the net energy metering program does not result in unreasonable cost-shifting to nonparticipating electric utility customers.” Our utilities hope this will undermine the current full retail value for net metered solar when the SCC considers the future of net metering in proceedings later this year and next year. 

A bill to require the Board of Education to develop materials for teaching students about climate change passed mainly along party lines. 

Another bill allows, but does not require, local governments to create their own “local environmental impact funds,” to assist residents and businesses with the purchase of energy efficient lawn care and landscaping equipment, home appliances, HVAC equipment, or micro mobility devices (like electric scooters). Almost all Republicans voted against it, so modest as it is, it may draw a veto.

Both chambers have agreed to request the SCC form a work group to consider a program of on-bill financing for customer energy projects such as renewable energy, storage and energy efficiency improvements. The SCC will also be asked to study performance-based regulation and the impact of competitive service providers. Dominion will now also have to assess the usefulness of various grid enhancing technologies in its Integrated Resource Planning at the SCC.

Efficiency advocates had high hopes for a bipartisan measure they dubbed the SAVE Act to strengthen requirements for Dominion and APCo to achieve energy efficiency savings and to make it easier for efficiency programs to pass SCC scrutiny. Unfortunately, the final legislation does almost nothing, with most improvements pushed off to 2029.  

A bill passed that designates each October 4 as Energy Efficiency Day. (I said these were small victories.)

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Finally, in a rejection of one of the more inane initiatives of the governor’s regulation-gutting agenda, both Houses overwhelmingly passed legislation preventing changes to the building code before the next regular code review cycle. I imagine the governor will have to veto the bill, and Republican legislators will then be caught between party loyalty and a duty to govern intelligently, but any way you look at it, eggs are meeting faces.

Two steps back 

Failure to pass a bill might seem to leave matters where they are, with no winners or losers. Inaction in the face of climate change, however, means we lose time we can’t afford to waste.

Inaction can also have devastating consequences in the here and now. Solar projects on public schools and other commercial properties in Dominion Energy’s territory have been delayed or outright canceled for more than a year due to new rules imposed by Dominion in December of 2022 that raised the cost of connecting these projects to the grid exponentially. Legislation promoted by the solar industry and its customers would have divided responsibility for grid upgrades between the customer and the utility, while giving Dominion the ability to recover costs it incurred. Through its lobbyists’ influence on legislators, Dominion killed the bills not for any compelling reason, but because it could. 

Dominion’s obfuscations and half-truths often work magic when the subject is technical. But of all the votes taken this year on energy bills, this one actually shocks me. No one listening to the committee testimony could have misunderstood the significance of the legislation, affecting dozens of school districts and local governments. In desperation, the solar industry offered amendments that (in my opinion) would have given away the store, to no avail.  

A cross-check of votes and campaign contributions shows the legislation failed due to the votes of committee members who happen to accept large campaign contributions from Dominion. This dynamic tanked a number of other climate and energy bills as well, and underlines why utilities must be barred from making campaign contributions.  

Dominion’s influence also killed a priority bill for the environmental community that would have required the SCC to implement the Commonwealth Energy Policy, slimmed down SCC review of efficiency programs to a single test, increased the percentage of RPS program requirements that Dominion must meet from projects of less than 1 megawatt, and increased the percentage of renewable energy projects reserved for third-party developers. Two other bills that were limited to the Commonwealth Energy Policy provision also failed.

Dominion’s opposition was also enough to kill a bill designed to expand EV charging infrastructure statewide, especially in rural areas, in part by protecting gas station owners who install electric vehicle charging from competition by public utilities. Sheetz and other fuel retailers testified that they want to invest in charging infrastructure but won’t take the risk as long as Dominion can install its own chargers nearby. The reason is that using ratepayer money allows a public utility to undercut private business. Other states have dealt with this by prohibiting utilities from getting into the EV charging business. Here, the retailers asked for 12 miles between themselves and any utility-owned chargers. Dominion opposed the bill, and the fuel retailers lost in subcommittee. A second bill that would have created an EV rural infrastructure fund passed the House but could not get funding in the Senate. 

Bills in both the House and Senate would have required most new local government buildings to include renewable energy infrastructure, especially solar. The House bill, though unopposed, was killed by Democrats in Appropriations because a fiscal impact statement erroneously said it might cost something, in spite of bill language exempting situations where the improvements would not be cost-effective. Then the same committee felt tradition-bound to kill the Senate bill when it came over, although that bill carried no fiscal impact concerns and it was by then clear that killing the House bill had been a mistake. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but also of mindless rules.  

Moving along: all of the bills that would have put limits on the ability of localities to bar solar projects in their jurisdictions failed, as did legislation that would have given solar developers essentially a right to appeal an adverse decision to the SCC.

None of the many bills supporting customer choice in electricity purchasing passed. Legislation to allow localities to regulate or ban gas-powered leaf blowers also failed, as did a bill that would have required Dominion and APCo to reveal how they voted in working groups advising grid operator PJM. This bill passed the House but, like so many others, it died in the heavily pro-utility Senate Commerce and Labor committee.

Two steps sideways?

Community solar, known as shared solar in Virginia, staggered a few steps forward, or maybe just sideways. Readers will recall that the Dominion program authorized in 2020 has proven a success only for low-income customers who don’t have to pay the high minimum bill Dominion secured in the SCC proceeding that followed enactment.  

Trying to make the program work for the general public was the goal of legislation that advanced this year but may or may not help. As passed, the compromise language offers an opportunity to expand the program a little bit and to take the argument about the minimum bill back to the SCC with a different set of parameters.  

In addition to modifying the program in Dominion territory, shared solar now has a modest opening in Appalachian Power territory under a similar bill. Again, the final bill offers far less than advocates hoped, and it lacks even the special provisions for low-income subscribers that make the original Dominion program work at all. Like Dominion, APCo fought the bill, though unlike Dominion, APCo’s rate base has been shrinking, so losing customers to alternative suppliers is a more legitimate concern. 

(At least for now. All APCo needs to do to reverse the decline is to lure a couple of data centers from up north. Data centers are such energy hogs that they would swamp any losses from shared solar, and residents of NoVa would be glad to forgo a few. Or for that matter, a few dozen.) 

Other new measures garnered support from many in the environmental community, but don’t really move the needle. One allows geothermal heat pumps, which reduce a building’s energy demand but don’t generate electricity, to qualify under Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). Another allows an old hydroelectric plant to qualify for the RPS, a move that adds no new renewable energy to the grid but means the electric cooperative that gets the electricity from the plant can now sell the renewable energy certificates to Dominion and APCo.

Lying down and rolling over

In the face of the single greatest threat to Virginia’s — and the nation’s — energy security and climate goals, the General Assembly’s leaders chose to do nothing. In fact, doing nothing was their actual game plan for data centers. A quick death was decreed for legislation requiring data centers to meet energy efficiency and renewable energy procurement requirements as a condition of receiving state tax subsidies. Also killed were a bill that sought to protect other ratepayers from bearing the costs of serving data centers, and more than a dozen bills dealing with siting impacts, water resources, noise abatement, undergrounding of transmission lines and other location-specific issues. 

The excuse for inaction is that the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee is undertaking a study to examine the energy and environmental effects of data centers. However, legislators did not impose a concomitant pause in data center development while the study is ongoing. Instead, for at least another year, Virginia’s leaders decreed that there will be no restraints or conditions on the growth of the industry, even as ever more new data center developments are announced and community opposition increases. 

And falling for the boondoggle

Nuclear energy has always had its true believers at the General Assembly, and the prospect of small modular reactors (SMRs) has excited them again. Many of the same legislators who busied themselves killing climate and energy bills this year insist Virginia needs SMRs to address climate change. They are more than happy to let utilities charge ratepayers today for a nuclear plant tomorrow — or rather, ten years from now, or maybe never if things go as badly here as they did in South Carolina, Georgia and Idaho.

More cautious lawmakers say if Dominion or APCo wants to go all in on an unproven and risky technology like small modular reactors, they should shoulder the expense themselves and only then make the case for selling the power to customers. 

Dominion has achieved a terrific success rate with boondoggles over the years. (See, e.g. its coal plant in Wise County, spending on a North Anna 3 reactor that was never built, and the so-called rate freeze, followed by the also-lucrative legislation undoing the rate freeze.) By now you’d think more legislators would have joined Team Skeptic. But as always, utility donations and lobbyists’ promises are the great memory erasers. So once again, the General Assembly voted to allow ratepayer money to be spent on projects that may never come to fruition. 

This year APCo is in on the act as well. Two bills, one for APCo and the other for Dominion, will allow the utilities to charge ratepayers for initial work on nuclear plants of up to 500 MW. The final language of both bills requires SCC oversight and imposes limits on spending. That is, for now.

Will the real climate champions please step forward?

This round-up might leave readers thinking there aren’t many lawmakers in Richmond who take climate change seriously. Fortunately, this is not the case. Close to two dozen legislators introduced bills targeting stronger measures on energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric vehicles and utility reform. Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, led the pack both in the sheer number of initiatives he introduced and the tenacity with which he pursued them, but he was not alone. 

A few Republicans also supported good energy legislation, and even, in the case of Del. Michael Webert, R-Fauquier, sponsored priority bills like the SAVE Act. With groups like Energy Right and Conservatives for Clean Energy making the case from a conservative perspective, maybe we will see progress towards a bipartisan climate caucus to build on Virginia’s energy transition. 

If that sounds too optimistic, consider that the alternative right now is the near-total inaction that marked this year’s session; we just don’t have time for that.

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To be or not to be a clean energy state, that is the question

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For the third year in a row, a tug-of-war is going on in the General Assembly over whether Virginia stays the course of the energy transition laid out in 2020 and 2021, or rolls it back hard.

Democrats remain committed to a renewable energy future to address pollution, high electricity costs and the causes of catastrophic climate change. Gov. Glenn Youngkin and most Republican legislators cling to the familiar (dis)comfort of fossil fuels. Republicans are still lobbing grenades at the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and the Clean Car Standard; Democrats are holding the line on those advances.

Last year House Republicans used small subcommittees to kill Democrats’ energy bills, even those that passed the Senate on a bipartisan basis. This year the Democrats’ slim majority in both chambers will let more bills get to the governor’s desk. But with the threat of a veto tempering expectations, the party of clean energy is not running big, ambitious bills, but is instead focused on solving problems that have popped up along the march to zero carbon.

Committees have already begun work on the hundreds of energy bills filed in past days. That’s too many for even the Mercury’s dedicated readers to review without more caffeine than is good for you, so let’s focus on just some that would have the most consequence for the clean energy transition.

To be: Democrats work to further the clean economy

Many of the Democratic bills contain small fixes to existing law that add up to big gains for clean energy. One of these is HB 638, from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, and SB 230, from Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond. Most of its provisions are tweaks to the VCEA. Among them are increasing from 1% to 5% the percentage of Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power’s renewable energy purchasing that must come from small projects like rooftop solar; streamlining the State Corporation Commission’s review of energy efficiency programs by creating a single cost-effectiveness test; and supporting competition in the development of renewable energy and energy storage facilities by specifying that “at least”35% of projects must come from third-party developers, instead of the simple 35% number currently in the law. 

The bill also contains a provision that goes beyond the VCEA. It states that the SCC has an “affirmative duty” to implement the Commonwealth Energy Policy at “lowest reasonable cost.” (Two other bills, one from Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Fairfax, and the other from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, contain only this provision.) The energy policy is separate from the VCEA, and it sets ambitious goals for the decarbonization of Virginia’s whole economy, including a faster timeline for achieving net zero in the electricity sector. The catch is that the policy does not have teeth, and for that reason it is routinely ignored. Requiring the SCC not just to take account of it, but also to implement it, is a step towards broader decarbonization, though it is not clear how it would actually play out at the SCC. 

Legislation from Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax and Sullivan would resolve problems with the shared solar program in Dominion territory (including putting restraints on the minimum bill that the utility can charge) and expand it to Appalachian Power territory. 

SB 79, from Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, would save taxpayers money by requiring new or substantially renovated (over 50%) public buildings to have solar-ready roofs or, if solar is deemed impractical, to meet one of two high-efficiency alternatives. New or substantially renovated schools would have to be designed and built to net-zero energy standards, unless the locality determines that to be impractical or the school is a historic building. 

Sullivan and Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, have introduced legislation to resolve the interconnection problem that has stalled commercial solar projects across Dominion territory. The House and Senate bills specify that customers are responsible for costs on their side of the meter, while the utility pays for costs on its side, including upgrades to the distribution grid. 

A few bills seek to break through the local-level gridlock that has bedeviled utility-scale solar and wind projects. The most significant of these is HB 636from Sullivan and SB 567 from Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, which provides an alternative permitting process for larger utility solar (50 MW or more), wind (100 MW or more) and renewable energy storage projects (at least 50 MW nameplate and discharge capacity of 200 MWh or more) that go through the local permitting process but end up without permits. Developers get a second chance at the SCC if they meet a list of requirements. These include safeguards for farmland protection, stormwater, setbacks, wetlands, wildlife corridors, etc. Applicants are also charged $75,000 to cover the locality’s cost of participating in the SCC proceeding. (There is some irony here that small projects, which have less impact, are left at the mercy of local whims, while the most impactful projects have what amounts to a right of appeal.) 

Vehicle electrification would also get support from Democratic legislation. One bill of particular interest is Sullivan’s HB 118, which requires Dominion and Appalachian Power to take charge of upgrades to the distribution grid needed to support EV charging by non-residential customers. The utilities are also tasked with filing detailed plans to “accelerate widespread transportation electrification across the Commonwealth in a manner designed to lower total ratepayer costs.” 

Regardless of the fate of these bills, Virginia’s efforts to transition to a zero-carbon economy will be swamped by new demand from the fast-growing data center industry, unless the industry itself can be made part of the solution. A dozen or so bills seek to put conditions on the industry in one way or another, but one takes on the energy demand directly. HB116, from Sullivan, and SB192, from Subramanyam, condition data center operators’ receipt of tax credits on demonstrating compliance with minimum standards for energy efficiency and renewable energy procurement, as well as not using diesel generators for backup power. 

Not to be: Republicans try out arguments against the energy transition 

Many of the Republican anti-clean energy transition bills are blunt instruments that are more about campaigning in Trump country than low-cost energy. For example, HB 397, from freshman Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford, would repeal most of the important provisions of the VCEA, while declaring that development of new nuclear is “in the public interest” (a phrase that pretty much means “watch your wallet”). 

Similarly, five bills seek to repeal outright the Advanced Clean Cars law passed in 2021, which effectively put Virginia among the states that follow California’s path to vehicle electrification. The law does not kick in until 2025, but trying to repeal it has become a Republican standby. A more subtle bill from Del. Lee Ware, R-Powhatan, would condition repeal on the Virginia Automobile Dealers certifying that Virginia is not meeting its annual EV sales targets. 

Some anti-EV bills are merely performative. One non-starter, from Griffin again, would provide a tax credit for purchases of vehicles with internal combustion engines. A bill from Sen. William Stanley, R-Franklin, would require any business selling an EV or any EV component to a public body to provide a sworn declaration that there was no child labor involved not just in the manufacturing but at any point anywhere along the supply chain, starting with mining minerals abroad. 

If Stanley were truly concerned about child labor violations, of course, he would seek to apply this sworn declaration requirement to all industries. He could start with the domestic meatpacking industry, where child labor violations are rife, including in Virginia. Ah, if only that were the point. 

It’s not just state-level decarbonization that comes in for a brute-force attack. A bill from another new delegate, Eric Zehr, R-Lynchburg, makes its target any federal regulations that “may threaten the production or supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy within the Commonwealth.” If alerted to such a threat by a utility or the SCC, the Attorney General’s office would be required to intervene. This sort of bill is not intended to survive its first committee hearing, if it even gets a hearing. Its only purpose is to show off the patron’s hard right bona-fides.

To be fair, there are Republicans who are actually trying to solve real problems in the energy sector. As one example, take SB562 from Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell. His bill would create a ratepayer-funded pilot program for utilities to figure out a way to use coalbed methane for electricity without burning it (perhaps with fuel cells?). The problem is, he proposes to make this electricity eligible for Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). It’s a creative, if expensive-sounding, response to the real climate problem of methane leaking from old and often abandoned coal mines, part of the true cost of coal. But calling fossil methane renewable is, shall we say, counterfactual. Some problems are more effectively tackled head-on, using tax dollars or tax credits, rather than being used to undermine the integrity of the RPS.

To be: somewhere else entirely

The reality of renewable energy is that we have to build a great many wind, solar and storage projects, each one taking months or years of design, permitting and construction work and requiring acreage we would rather use for something else. Yes, it means economic activity, investment and jobs, but it’s also something of a slog. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a magic solution that could just provide carbon-free electricity without all that bother?

That’s the dream that continues to attract both Democrats and Republicans to nuclear energy. Opinion is divided on whether small modular reactors (SMRs) could hold the answer to all our energy woes, or are just the latest con from an industry looking to attract a new set of deep-pocketed suckers. 

 Three things are clear at this point. One, SMRs are still many years away from commercialization, coming too late to solve the climate problem that is here and now. Second, SMRs are going to cost a lot. Not only is there no free nuclear lunch, there isn’t even a low-priced breakfast. And third, Dominion is frothing at the bit to build an SMR – but only if customers have to pay for it. 

Some legislators are happy to oblige, even with all these drawbacks. The most concerning of the bills are HB 1323 from Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville, and SB 454 from Sen. David Marsden, D-Fairfax. The legislation would allow Dominion or Appalachian Power to charge ratepayers “at any time” to recover development costs of a small modular nuclear reactor, defined as a nuclear reactor not larger than 500 MW. Not only is that not small, but by the language of the bill it need not even be modular or use advanced technology. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be in Virginia. Dominion could build any kind of nuclear plant, anywhere it chooses, and satisfy the terms of the bill. 

But it’s that “at any time” language that should be a red flag for lawmakers. Charging customers for a nuclear plant before and during construction, including cost overruns and with no guarantee of completion, is precisely how residents of South Carolina got stuck paying billions of dollars for a hole in the ground. 

That amount of money buys a lot of low-cost renewable energy and storage, right in the here and now. Virginia needs to be a clean energy state for the sake of ratepayers, the economy and the climate, and there is no time to waste.

This article was first published on January 21, 2024 in the VIrginia Mercury.