Category Archives: energy efficiency

Washington Gas loves its customers too much for their own good

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Shows a lit gas stove ring
Choose your fuel source carefully: you are likely to have to live with your decision for the next 10-20 years. Image: iamNigelMorris, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Washington Gas has been emailing its Virginia customers this month to offer them rebates if they buy new gas appliances, including home heating equipment (up to $700) and water heaters (up to $400). What the message doesn’t say is that this is a terrible deal. Customers will be able to get far bigger incentives if they wait until January and buy electric equipment instead.

Under the just-passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Uncle Sam will provide tax credits of up to $2,000 per year for electric heat pumps that provide both heating and air conditioning as well as heat pump water heaters. Lower-income customers will be able to access upfront discounts of up to $8,000 for a heat pump, $1,750 for a water heater, $840 for an induction stove, and other amounts for additional upgrades. If you’re converting from gas and your electric panel isn’t sized to handle the extra electric load, the IRA will help with an upgrade. (For a full rundown of rebates and tax credits for homes, see this list from Rewiring America.)

It used to be that gas furnaces were more efficient and cheaper to operate than most electric heating options, but today the reverse is true: An EnergyStar heat pump uses energy more efficiently and costs less to operate than a fossil fuel furnace or boiler. A heat pump water heater, which I’d never even heard of until recently, is more efficient than either gas or a standard electric hot water heater and, again, saves money on operation.

Advances in heat pump technology and induction stoves, concerns about climate change and growing awareness of the dangers of burning fossil fuels indoors mean the switchover from gas to electricity would have happened without the IRA. But the IRA’s rebates are expected to goose the transition and transform the building sector.

Many consumers haven’t heard about the IRA’s rebates yet, and they may not have given much thought to home electrification. They need this information, but they sure won’t get it from their gas company.

Washington Gas is pushing its gas appliance rebates now for an even bigger reason, though, and one that makes it especially important that customers give them a pass: Installing an expensive new gas furnace locks you into the company’s fond embrace for the life of the furnace, no matter how high natural gas prices go.

It’s true that electric appliances will further tie you to your electric utility (unless you have solar panels), and electricity rates have been going up as well. But electricity rates are going up mainly because fossil fuel costs have skyrocketed. Dominion Energy Virginia, for example, cited a 100% increase in the price of natural gas when it asked for a rate hike this summer. As the electric grid gets greener year by year, lower-priced wind and solar energy will have a moderating effect on electricity prices. Your gas utility, on the other hand, will never have anything to sell you but gas.

It gets worse. Gas companies have to maintain their network of pipelines and other infrastructure regardless of how many customers they have. Those costs will be spread over a shrinking rate base as more and more customers switch over to electricity, raising rates for the remaining customers. If you buy a new gas furnace now, you will be trapped in that shrinking pool of customers, paying ever more to maintain pipelines.

Today, Washington Gas charges customers a flat “system charge” of $11.25 per month, plus supply and distribution costs based on how much gas is used that month. Customers who electrify their homes escape the monthly system charge and gain the convenience of dealing with just one utility. But the real savings come in not being part of a shrinking rate base paying an ever-larger share of the gas company’s fixed costs.

That makes Washington Gas’s rebate offer doubly dangerous for customers who don’t know about the IRA. Someone whose old gas furnace is on the fritz might see the email and decide to use that small rebate to buy a new gas furnace, when they would be far better off keeping the old one limping along for a few more months. Come 2023, they would then reap the benefit of an electric heat pump with a much larger rebate or tax credit.

Consumers are set to save a lot of money and energy under the IRA’s incentives for home electrification — but not if they get locked into fossil fuels first.

This post was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on October 28, 2022.

With a federal windfall incoming, Virginia should require school districts to build to green standards

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The solar panels powering Arlington, Virginia’s Discovery Elementary School, seen through the windows of a science classroom. Photo by Ivy Main

More than $4.3 billion in federal stimulus dollars will be flowing to Virginia this year as part of the American Rescue Plan, with cities and counties in line for another $2.7 billion. In a joint statement in May, Governor Northam and Democratic leaders laid out spending priorities that included rehabilitating and upgrading the infrastructure in public schools. The General Assembly plans to meet for a special legislative session in August to allocate the funds. In addition to the federal money, Virginia also finds itself in the happy position of having surplus funds of its own to spend.

As it stands now, the federal funds cannot be used for new school construction, a restriction that upsets school officials in areas with aging schools and no budget to replace them. But whether some money is spent on new schools or not, the General Assembly should not just throw dollars out the door and hope for the best. Virginia has an enormous opportunity to improve student health and learning, correct historic injustices, and meet the demands of the climate crisis, but only if the right standards are in place from the outset.

First, funding should be prioritized to Title 1 schools, which are those with at least 40 percent of children from low-income families. Given Virginia’s history of segregation and racism, a high number of Title 1 schools are in Black communities, while others are in parts of rural Virginia that have been left behind economically.  Title 1 schools on average are older and in worse condition than schools in more affluent areas, and the students are more likely to suffer from asthma and other health problems that are exacerbated by mold and poor indoor air quality. Improving indoor air quality and student well-being should be the primary goals for all new or renovated facilities, and it makes sense to start with the students most in need.

Second, while many localities are attracted to the idea of shiny new schools, in most cases it takes less time and costs less to retrofit an old school that is structurally sound than to tear it down and build new. It’s also better for the environment, even if the new school would be built to a “green” standard. Children don’t need new buildings; they need healthy, high-performing buildings. A beautiful remodel of the historic school their parents and grandparents attended could be just what the doctor ordered.

Third, new or renovated schools should be required to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency, including windows, insulation and HVAC. New construction should also be all-electric, as should most renovated buildings. This maximizes taxpayer savings on energy costs over the lifetime of the building, supports the goal of healthy indoor air, and is consistent with Virginia’s commitment to phase out fossil fuels.

Fourth, if the roof will be new or upgraded, it should be made solar-ready, allowing the school to take advantage of third-party power purchase agreements (PPAs) or solar services agreements to install solar panels. Leveraging private capital to pay for the school’s primary energy source stretches construction dollars. These agreements provide financing for solar facilities at no upfront cost and typically save money for schools from the outset. Once the solar panels are paid off, energy bills plummet and savings pile up.

New schools and deep retrofits can even achieve net-zero status affordably, and ought to be required to do so in most cases. Net-zero schools become a source of community pride and offer educational benefits as students learn about energy and how solar panels work. According to a study conducted for Fairfax County Public Schools, the additional upfront cost of building a net-zero-ready school (one that will produce as much energy as it uses once solar panels are added) is only about 5 percent more than standard construction, and the additional cost is recovered through energy savings in under 10 years. Renovating older schools to net-zero costs 11 percent more, but still pays off in 15 years.

Even if we weren’t worried about climate, these standards would make sense for student health and taxpayer savings. Yet today, school districts are not required to build high performance schools, and most don’t. The result is higher operating costs, and in some cases school boards being told that their brand-new schools won’t support solar. Solar companies say it’s probable that solar would be just fine, but this shouldn’t even be an issue. Yet it will continue to be cited as an obstacle if solar-readiness is not made standard.

Our children deserve better. Virginia should seize this year’s historic opportunity to invest in healthy, high-performing schools that are free of fossil fuels and will deliver long-term benefits for taxpayers and the climate.

Climate action begins at home. (Literally. With houses.)

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cartoon pig laying bricksYou remember the story of the Three Little Pigs. First the little pigs built themselves a house out of straw, but the big, bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew it down. Barely escaping with their lives, the little pigs built a new house out of sticks, but again the big, bad wolf blew it down. Wiser at last, the little pigs built their third house out of brick, and they lived happily ever after because the wolf could not blow it down.

When you were a child, you probably did not realize what must be obvious to you now: the story is really about the importance of building codes. Shoddy construction brings nothing but grief, as the little pigs learned, and in the end it costs you more than if you had used high-quality materials right from the start.

The story is silent on whether our young porcine heroes also concerned themselves with the energy performance of their house, but it stands to reason they would have taken an interest in the U factors of windows and the R values of wall and ceiling insulation. Their experience with tropical storm-force wolf breath would have given them an appreciation for the snuggest possible construction. Possibly they even went on to put solar panels on their roof and an electric vehicle in the garage, but on this we can only speculate.

I bring up this story now because Virginia is in the final stages of adopting an update to its residential building code, a process the Board of Housing and Community Development undertakes every three years. In addition to ensuring the safety of wiring and plumbing and so forth, the Uniform Statewide Building Code sets standards that determine whether a new home is drafty and expensive to heat and cool, or will be comfortable, healthy and frugal with energy.

Remarkably, the board is currently proposing to continue outdated efficiency standards dating back years instead of adopting the more energy-saving provisions of the latest International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), or even going beyond the IECC to Earth Craft or Passive House standards.

In spite of the global pretensions of its name, the IECC is a national model code. Virginia law specifically instructs the board to refer to the IECC in adopting provisions that permit buildings to be constructed at least cost “consistent with recognized standards of health, safety, energy conservation and water conservation.” The code suggests that the board may go beyond the IECC for purposes of health and safety, but should not fall short of its standards.

So why is the board proposing lower standards? As far as we know, there is no wolf lobby advocating for flimsy homes, but there is a homebuilder lobby doing its own share of huffing and puffing — and Virginia’s code adoption process gives the homebuilders an outsized role in the decision-making process.

Better-insulated houses cost builders slightly more to build. They pass along the added costs if they can, but if buyers won’t pay more, the higher costs cut into profits. This being bad for business, builders prefer to lobby for lower standards that are cheaper to meet, insisting they have only the poor buyers’ pocketbooks at heart.

Their argument is, if you will pardon the expression, hogwash. Research demonstrates that houses built to the highest efficiency standards save far more money on energy over time than they add to the upfront cost of the house. This becomes especially important for occupants who don’t make much money and who struggle to afford utility bills.

The board should ignore homebuilder objections and put the needs of building occupants first. Gov. Ralph Northam made it clear with his Executive Order 43 last fall that the commonwealth is now committed to a path of clean energy and energy efficiency. Bringing energy costs down for residents is not a side effect of the energy transition, but a feature. As he noted in the order, “Low-income households pay proportionately more than the average household for energy costs and often experience negative long-term effects on their health and welfare.”

The climate crisis also makes it urgent that we use building codes to reduce our fossil fuel use. The Virginia Clean Economy Act will transition the electric sector to clean energy, but it does not require buildings to become more efficient. This is a problem because buildings represent 40 percent of all energy use and houses typically last between 40 and 100 years.

Some retrofits can be made later, at higher cost, but the cheapest and simplest approach is to build houses snugly to begin with. They should also be sited with solar in mind and have wiring in place to make solar easy. Ultimately (and “ultimately” has got to be pretty darn soon), we have to start building homes that produce as much energy as they use.

The board is accepting comments on its proposal through June 26. The Sierra Club has set up a webpage to forward comments urging the board to adopt high efficiency standards.

Update July 1: The Board of Housing and Community Development is no longer accepting written comments from the public on its proposed updates to the building code. Advocates may write to Governor Northam asking him to insist that the Board at least adopt the provisions of the 2018  International Energy Conservation Code, and additional measures recommended by the Sierra Club’s comments to the Board to save more energy and combat climate change.  

An earlier version of this article appeared originally in the Virginia Mercury on June 23, 2020.

COVID-19 throws a lemon at Virginia’s plan for an energy transition. It’s time for lemonade.

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solar panels on a school roof

The solar panels on Wilson Middle School are saving money for Augusta County taxpayers. Photo courtesy of Secure Futures.

In mid-March, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation to transition our economy from fossil fuels to clean energy over the coming years. Two weeks later, Virginia shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the businesses whose very existence is now in peril are the energy efficiency companies and solar installers we will be counting on to get us off fossil fuels.

Home weatherization and energy efficiency programs have come to an almost complete halt in Virginia, including programs run by Dominion Energy Virginia. Nationwide, the energy efficiency sector has lost almost 70,000 jobs. Meanwhile, companies that install solar, especially rooftop systems, report plummeting sales. The Solar Energy Industries Association reports that nationally, 55 percent of solar workers are already laid off or suffering cutbacks.

The timing seems terrible — although to be fair, there’s no good time for an economy-crushing, worldwide pandemic. Eventually, however, the virus will run its course or be defeated through vaccine or cure. At that point, we will face a choice: we can stagger blinking out into the sunlight aimlessly wondering now what?, or we can execute the well-developed plan we have spent these weeks and months formulating.

Let’s go with the second option.

First, it’s worth remembering that nothing happening now will change the trajectory of clean energy. Solar and wind had banner years in 2019, continuing their steady march to dominance. Wind has become the largest single source of electricity in two states, Iowa and Kansas. The island of Kauai in Hawaii is now 56 percent powered by renewable energy, mostly solar. Across the U.S. wind, solar and hydro produce more electricity than coal. Wind is the cheapest form of new electric generation nationally; solar takes pride of place in Virginia.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel is even more firmly on its way out. Six of the top seven U.S. coal companies have gone into bankruptcy since 2015. That was before the lockdown sent energy demand down, further hurting high-priced coal.

Fracked gas helped kill coal but is itself vulnerable to price competition from renewables. Odd as it sounds, the collapse in oil prices will make natural gas more expensive. That’s because oil producers in Texas and North Dakota are closing wells that produced natural gas along with oil. The tightening supply of gas may finally make fracking companies in Appalachia profitable, but it means higher prices for utilities. Wind and solar will just keep looking better.

The Trump administration is still trying futilely to hold back the tide, but the U.S. will get a lot farther riding the wave than struggling against it. Congressional leaders should declare the country “all in” on clean energy. Instead of bailing out the highly polluting fossil fuel industries, they should put that money to work creating more jobs and economic development — and actually doing something about climate change — with energy efficiency and renewables.

Congress should return the Investment Tax Credit for solar (and offshore wind) to the 30 percent level in effect last year and keep it there, instead of continuing the phase-out now in effect. Congress should also give solar owners the option of taking the credit as a cash grant, as it did during the last recession, and for the same reason: tax-based incentives are less useful in a recession, when companies can’t use the credits.

Virginia’s Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner have a critical role to play in convincing their colleagues to support solar. So far neither is rising to the task.

On the state level, Northam did the right thing in signing this year’s energy legislation, allowing utilities and industry members to start planning for the future. But the Clean Economy Act gets wind and solar off to a very slow start; Dominion doesn’t have to build Virginia solar for five years yet. And though the new laws remove many policy constraints on customer-sited solar, they offer next to nothing in the way of financial incentives.

Governor Northam should make it clear he intends to make rooftop solar a priority for next year, along with projects on closed landfills, former coal mine areas, and other brownfields, with a special focus on areas hardest-hit economically. He can also encourage corporations that do business in Virginia to meet their sustainability goals with Virginia wind and solar, starting right now.

The governor should also prioritize building efficiency. Virginia will be adopting a new residential building code this year, and if past years are any indication, its energy efficiency provisions will fall short of the most recent model code standard. It’s up to the governor to make sure Virginia adopts the full code.

Local governments are already taking advantage of suddenly-empty buildings to accelerate maintenance and repairs. But it’s a good time to think bigger, with new financing tools available that make energy efficiency retrofits and solar facilities cash-positive right from the start.

Energy performance contracting allows the energy savings to pay for retrofits. The Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy keeps a list of pre-qualified energy service companies and offers expertise to help local government employees navigate the process.

This year’s legislation also greatly expanded local governments’ ability to finance on-site solar through third-party power purchase agreements, effective July 1. The PPAs are structured so that a school district, municipality or any commercial or non-profit customer can have a solar array installed at no cost, paying just for the energy produced.

In December, Fairfax County awarded contracts for PPAs to install solar on more than a hundred sites, including schools and other government buildings. The county’s contract is “rideable,” which allows other counties and cities to piggyback, getting the same terms without the need for new contract negotiations.

Unfortunately, local governments in southwest Virginia are prevented from pursuing PPAs — not by state legislation, which allows it starting July 1, but by a contract with Appalachian Power that governs their electricity purchases from the utility. The contract is up for renewal this year; disgracefully, APCo is refusing to agree to new terms allowing the localities to use solar PPAs. APCo should back off, and let local governments in economically depressed southwest Virginia start saving money and supporting solar jobs this year.

Arlington County has gone beyond on-site solar, contracting for a share of a large solar farm in southern Virginia that will provide more than 80 percent of the electricity for county government operations. It’s a model any locality can adopt.

Virginia residents and businesses also have good reasons to focus on clean energy. The enforced down-time many people are experiencing means more time to research options, and companies are motivated to offer low prices on energy efficiency upgrades and rooftop solar.

The federal government offers more generous tax credits this year than next. Credits for residential energy efficiency equipment and a deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings expire at the end of this year.

The investment tax credit for solar (as well as for geothermal heat pumps, fuel cells and small wind turbines) stands at 26% for projects placed in operation this year, but it will drop to 22% in 2021. It falls to 10% for commercial customers and disappears altogether for residential customers in 2022. If Congress acts to raise the credit to 30%, buyers will get an even bigger boost. If it doesn’t, there will be a rush this year to get projects done by the end of the year, so customers should secure their place in line now.

Virginia nonprofits have helped hundreds of residents and businesses save money on solar and EV chargers through bulk purchasing programs. Virginia Solar United Neighbors just announced a series of virtual information sessions to promote the Arlington Solar EV Co-op. And LEAP, which closed operations temporarily due to the virus, reports it has restarted two programs, Solarize NOVA and Solarize Piedmont.

In an ideal world, the U.S. would already be well along in executing a comprehensive plan for a clean energy transition, one that includes job retraining for workers, and that resists counterproductive efforts to save the fossil fuel industry. But we can do the next best thing, and use the tools of government, the market and consumer choice to speed us in the right direction.

COVID-19 has handed all of us a big, fat lemon. Let’s make some lemonade.

 

A version of this article appeared originally in the Virginia Mercury on April 30, 2020.

 

With a framework for Virginia’s energy transition in place, here’s what happens next

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workers installing solar panels on a roof

One expected effect of the Clean Economy Act will be a boom in solar jobs across Virginia. Photo courtesy of NREL.

With Democrats in charge, Virginia passed a suite of bills that establish a sturdy framework for a transition to renewable energy in the electric sector.

At the center of this transformation are the Clean Economy Act, HB1526/SB851, and the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act, HB981/SB1027. Other new laws direct further planning, make it easier for customers to install solar, improve the process for siting wind and solar farms, and expand financing options for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Gov. Ralph Northam has signed some bills already, and has until April 11 to sign the others or send them back to the General Assembly with proposed amendments. Once signed, legislation takes effect on July 1.

I assume the Governor has other things on his mind right now than asking the General Assembly to tinker further with a bill like the Clean Economy Act, though bill opponents may be using the virus pandemic to argue for delay. That would be a self-defeating move; as the economy restarts, Virginia is going to need the infusion of jobs and investment that come with the build-out of clean energy. And one of the strongest arguments in support of our energy transition, after all, is that it will save money for consumers.

So what happens after July 1? How does this all work? Let’s look at the way these major pieces of legislation will change the energy landscape in Virginia.

Virginia joins RGGI, and CO2 emissions start to fall. 

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality has already written the regulations that call for Virginia power plants to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The mechanism for achieving this involves Virginia trading with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional carbon cap and trade market.

The regulations have been on hold as the result of a budget amendment passed last year, when Republicans still ruled the General Assembly. After July 1, DEQ will be able to implement the regulations, with the commonwealth participating in carbon allowance auctions as early as the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2021.

In addition to joining RGGI, the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act also allows the commonwealth to earn money from the allowance auctions. The Department of Housing and Community Development will spend 50 percent of auction proceeds on “low-income efficiency programs, including programs for eligible housing developments.”

The Department of Conservation and Recreation will get 45 percent of the auction proceeds to fund flood preparedness and climate change planning and mitigation through the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund. The last 5 percent of proceeds will cover administrative costs, including those for administering the auctions.

Energy efficiency savings become mandatory, not just something to throw money at.

Two years ago, the Grid Transformation and Security Act required Dominion and Appalachian Power to propose more than a billion dollars in energy efficiency spending over 10 years, but the law didn’t say the programs had to actually be effective in lowering electricity demand.

This year that changed. For the first time, Virginia will have an energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) requiring Dominion to achieve a total of 5 percent electricity savings by 2025 (using 2019 as the baseline); APCo must achieve a total of 2 percent savings. The SCC is charged with setting new targets after 2025. At least 15 percent of the costs must go to programs benefiting low-income, elderly or disabled individuals, or veterans.

The EERS comes on top of the low-income energy efficiency spending funded by RGGI auctions.

Dominion and Appalachian Power ramp up renewables and energy storage. 

The Clean Economy Act requires Dominion to build 16,100 megawatts of onshore wind and solar energy, and APCo to build 600 megawatts. The law also contains one of the strongest energy storage mandates in the country: 2,700 MW for Dominion, 400 MW for Appalachian Power.

Beginning in 2020, Dominion and Appalachian must submit annual plans to the SCC for new wind, solar and storage resources. We’ll have a first look at Dominion’s plans just a month from now: the SCC has told the company to take account of the Clean Economy Act and other new laws when it files its 2020 Integrated Resource Plan on May 1.

The legislation provides a strangely long lead time before the utilities must request approval of specific projects: by the end of 2023 for APCo (the first 200 MW) or 2024 for Dominion (the first 3,000 MW). But the build-out then becomes rapid, and the utilities must issue requests for proposals on at least an annual basis.

In addition to the solar and land-based wind, Dominion now has the green light for up to 3,000 MW of offshore wind from the project it is developing off Virginia Beach, and which it plans to bring online beginning in 2024. All told, the Clean Economy Act proclaims up to 5,200 MW of offshore wind by 2034 to be in the public interest.

Dominion’s plans for new gas plants come to a screeching halt.

Before the 2020 legislative session, Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan included plans for as many as 14 new gas combustion turbines to be built in pairs beginning in 2022. In December, the company announced plans to build four gas peaking units totaling nearly 1,000 MW, to come online in 2023 and 2024.

But that was then, and this is now. The Clean Economy Act prohibits the SCC from issuing a certificate of convenience and necessity for any carbon-emitting generating plant until at least January 1, 2022, when the secretaries of natural resources and commerce and trade submit a report to the General Assembly “on how to achieve 100 percent carbon-free electric energy generation by 2045 at least cost to ratepayers.”

Even with no further moratorium, Dominion will find it hard to sell the SCC on the need for new gas plants on top of all the renewable energy and energy storage mandated in the Clean Economy Act. Solar and battery storage together do the same job that a gas peaker would have done — but they are required, and the gas peaker is not. Meanwhile, the energy efficiency provisions of the act mean demand should start going down, not up.

Dominion has already signaled that it recognizes the days of new gas plants are largely over. On March 24, Dominion filed a request with the SCC to be excused from considering new fossil fuel and nuclear resources in its upcoming Integrated Resource Plan filing, arguing that “significant build-out of natural gas generation facilities is not currently viable” in light of the new legislation.

Fossil fuel and biomass plants start closing.

By 2024, the Clean Economy Act requires the closure of all Dominion or APCo-owned oil-fueled generating plants in Virginia over 500 MW and all coal units other than Dominion’s Virginia City Hybrid plant in Wise County and the Clover Station that Dominion co-owns with Old Dominion Electric Cooperative.

This mandate is less draconian than it sounds; it forces the closure of just two coal units, both at Dominion’s Chesterfield plant. Other Dominion coal plants in Virginia have already been retired or switched to using gas or biomass, and one additional coal plant in West Virginia lies beyond the reach of the legislation. Oil-fired peaking units at Yorktown and Possum Point were already slated for retirement in 2021 and 2022. APCo owns no coal or biomass plants in Virginia.

Although the exceptions might appear to swallow the rule, the truth is that coal plants are too expensive to survive much longer anyway. One indication of this is a March 24 report Dominion filed with the SCC showing its fuel generation sources for 2019: coal has now fallen to below 8 percent of generation.

By 2028, Dominion’s biomass plants must shut down, another victory for consumers. All other carbon-emitting generating units in Virginia owned by Dominion and APCo must close by 2045, including the Virginia City plant and all the gas plants.

As of 2050, no carbon allowances can be awarded to any generating units that emit carbon dioxide, including those owned by the coops and merchant generators, with an exception for units under 25 MW as well as units bigger than 25 MW (if they are owned by politically well-connected multinational paper companies with highly-paid lobbyists).

Solar on schools and other buildings becomes the new normal.

In December, Fairfax County awarded contracts for the installation of solar on up to 130 county-owned schools and other sites, one of the largest such awards in the nation. Using a financing approach called a third-party power purchase agreement (PPA), the county would get the benefits of solar without having to spend money upfront. The contracts were written to be rideable, meaning other Virginia jurisdictions could piggyback on them to achieve cost savings and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Fairfax County’s projects, along with others across the state, hit a wall when, on Jan. 7, the SCC announced that the 50 MW program cap for PPAs in Dominion territory had been reached. But with the passage of the Clean Economy Act and Solar Freedom legislation, customers will be able to install up to 1,000 MW worth of solar PPAs in Dominion territory and 40 MW in APCo territory.

Fairfax County schools will soon join their counterparts in at least 10 other jurisdictions across the state that have already installed solar. With the PPA cap no longer a barrier, and several other barriers also removed, local governments will increasingly turn to solar to save money and shrink their carbon footprints.

Virginia agencies start working on decarbonizing the rest of the economy. 

In spite of its name, the Clean Economy Act really only tackles the electric sector, with a little spillover into home weatherization. That still leaves three-quarters of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to be addressed in transportation, buildings, agriculture and industry. Ridding these sectors of greenhouse gas emissions requires different tools and policies.

Other legislation passed this session starts that planning process. SB94(Favola) and HB714 (Reid) establish a policy for the commonwealth to achieve net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2045 (2040 for the electric sector) and require the next Virginia Energy Plan, due in 2022, to identify actions towards achieving the goal. Depending on who the next governor is, we may see little or nothing in the way of new proposals, or we may see proposals for transportation and home electrification, deep building retrofits, net-zero homes and office buildings, carbon sequestration on farm and forest land and innovative solutions for replacing fossil fuels in industrial use.

Collateral effects will drive greenhouse gas emissions even lower.

Proposed new merchant gas plants are likely to go away. With Virginia joining RGGI and all fossil fuel generating plants required to pay for the right to spew carbon pollution, the developers of two huge new merchant gas plants proposed for Charles City County will likely take their projects to some other state, if they pursue them at all.

Neither the 1,600 MW Chickahominy Power Station and the 1,050 C4GT plant a mile away planned to sell power to Virginia utilities; their target is the regional wholesale market, which currently rewards over-building of gas plant capacity even in the absence of demand. The Chickahominy and C4GT developers sought an exemption from RGGI through legislation; the bill passed the Senate but got shot down in the House.

If the C4GT plant goes away, so too should Virginia Natural Gas’ plans for a gas pipeline and compressor stations to supply the plant, the so-called Header Improvement Project.

Other coal plants will close. Although the CEA only requires Dominion to retire two coal units at its Chesterfield Power Station, other coal plants in the state will close by the end of this decade, too. That’s because the economics are so heavily against coal these days that it was just a matter of time before their owners moved to close them.

Adding the cost of carbon allowances under RGGI will speed the process along. That includes the Clover Station, which Dominion owns in partnership with Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC), and the Virginia City Hybrid Electric plant in Wise County, Dominion’s most expensive coal plant, which should never have been built. 

The Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines find themselves in more trouble than ever. If I had a dollar for every time a Dominion or Mountain Valley spokesperson said, “Our customers desperately need this pipeline,” I would not be worried about the stock market right now.

The fact is that no one was ever sure who those customers might be, other than affiliates of the pipeline owners themselves—and that doesn’t exactly answer the question. With Virginia now on a path away from all fossil fuels, neither pipeline has a path to profitability inside Virginia any longer, if they ever had one.

 

A version of this article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on March 31. 

It’s halftime at the GA, and do we ever have a show!

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battle scene

Tense negotiations over the Clean Economy Act. (Aniello Falcone, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Welcome to “Crossover,” the day on which the Virginia House and Senate have to finish the work on their bills and send them over to the other chamber. This is sudden death time; if a bill didn’t get across the finish line in time, it is dead for the year.

In past years, henceforth to be known as “the bad old days,” almost nothing good even got out of committee, much less reached Crossover. Clean energy advocates could pretty much plan vacations for the second half of February.

This year the Democrats are on a tear, especially in the House. Yes, a lot of good bills have been heavily watered down. This is still the Old Dominion, with the emphasis on Dominion. And it is definitely too early to break out the champagne, because the action isn’t over for the bills still in play. But overall, 2020 is shaping up to be a watershed year for clean energy.

BILLS STILL ALIVE

Energy Transition

HB1526/SB851, the Clean Economy Act, has been the subject of intense and continuous negotiation. First there were a bunch of amendments that weakened it; then there were a bunch that strengthened it. It’s been a wild ride, and we may still see more changes during the second half of Session. But it’s alive! (HB1526 passed the House 52-47; Democrats Rasoul and Carter voted no. SB851 passed the Senate on a party-line vote of 21-19.)

SB94 (Favola) rewrites the Commonwealth Energy Policy to bring it in line with Virginia’s commitment to dealing with climate change. The bill sets a target for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy wide by 2045, and in the electric sector by 2040. This section of the Code is for the most part merely advisory; nonetheless, it is interesting that Dominion Energy supported the bill. (Passed the Senate 21-18, on party lines.)

Delegate Reid’s HB714 is similar to SB94 but contains added details, some of which have now been incorporated into SB94. (Passed the House 55-45 with a substitute.)

HB672 (Willett) establishes a policy “to prevent and minimize actions that contribute to the detrimental effects of anthropogenic climate change in the Commonwealth.” State agencies are directed to consider climate change in any actions involving state regulation or spending. Local and regional planning commissions are required to consider impacts from and causes of climate change in adapting comprehensive plans. (Passed the House 55-44 with a substitute.)

HB547 (Delaney) establishes the Virginia Energy and Economy Transition Council to develop plans to assist the Commonwealth in transitioning from the use of fossil fuel energy to renewable energy by 2050. The Council is to include members from labor and environmental groups. (Passed the House 54-45.)

RGGI bills, good and bad

The Democratic takeover of the General Assembly means Virginia will finally join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), either according to the regulations written by DEQ or with a system in place that raises money from auctioning carbon allowances.

HB981 (Herring) and SB1027 (Lewis) is called the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act. It implements the DEQ carbon regulations and directs DEQ to enter the RGGI auction market. Auction allowances are directed to funds for flood preparedness, energy efficiency and climate change planning and mitigation. We are told this is the Administration’s bill. A similar bill, HB20 (Lindsey), was incorporated into HB981. (HB981 passed the House 53-46. SB1027 passed the Senate 22-18.)

SB992 (Spruill) requires the Air Board to give free allowances for three years to any new power plant that was permitted before June 26, 2019, the effective date of the carbon trading regulations. Essentially it gives special treatment to two planned gas generation plants that aren’t needed and therefore have sketchy economics unless they get this giveaway. Clean energy advocates will be looking to kill this one in the House. (Passed the Senate 27-13. A number of Democrats who should know better voted for the bill.)

RPS

The Clean Economy Act contains a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requiring utilities to include in their electricity mix a percentage of renewable energy that ratchets up over time. In addition, HB1451 (Sullivan) is a stand-alone RPS bill that also includes an energy storage mandate. It appears to be identical to the RPS and storage provisions of the CEA (of which Sullivan is also the patron). (Passed the House 52-47.)

Customer-sited solar/net metering

Solar Freedom SB710 (McClellan) and HB572 (Keam) lifts barriers to customer-sited renewable energy such as rooftop solar. The changes include lifting the caps on PPAs and net metering, and eliminating standby charges. Nearly identical versions were filed by Delegates Lopez (HB1184) (rolled into HB572) and Simon (HB912) (ditto). SB532 (Edwards), a stand-alone bill to make PPAs legal, was rolled into SB710. (SB710 passed the Senate 22-18 with a substitute that is much more limited than the original bill. HB572 passed the House with just a minor substitute 67-31. HB1647 (Jones) is a Solar Freedom bill that also includes community solar. (Passed the House 55-45.) Several provisions of Solar Freedom also appear in the Clean Economy Act.

HOAs HB414 (Delaney) and SB504 (Petersen) clarifies the respective rights of homeowners associations (HOAs) and residents who want to install solar. The law allows HOAs to impose “reasonable restrictions,” a term some HOAs have used to restrict solar to rear-facing roofs regardless of whether these get sunshine. The bill clarifies that HOA restrictions may not increase the cost of the solar facility by more than 5%, or decrease the expected output by more than 10%. (HB414 passed the House 95-4. SB504 passed the Senate 40-0.)

Community solar

HB1647 (Jones) (see above) includes community solar in a bill that otherwise looks like Solar Freedom.

SB629 (Surovell) creates a program for “solar gardens.” (Substitute passed the Senate 39-0.)

HB1634 (Jones) requires utilities to establish shared-solar programs that allows customers to purchase subscriptions in a solar facility no greater than 5 MW. (Amended with a substitute; it now looks a lot like SB629. Passed the House 99-0.)

HB573 (Keam) affects the utility-controlled and operated “community solar” programs required by 2017 legislation. The bill requires that “an investor-owned utility shall not select an eligible generating facility that is located outside a low-income community for dedication to its pilot program unless the investor-owned utility contemporaneously selects for dedication to its pilot program one or more eligible generating facilities that are located within a low-income community and of which the pilot program costs equal or exceed the pilot program costs of the eligible generating facility that is located outside a low-income community.” (Passed the House 90-8.)

Offshore wind

The CEA contains detailed provisions for the buildout and acquisition of offshore wind. HB234 (Mugler) directs the Secretary of Commerce and Trade to develop an offshore wind master plan. (Passed House unanimously with substitute.)

SB860 (Mason) and HB1664 (Hayes) puts the construction or purchase of at least 5,200 MW of offshore wind in the public interest. (SB860 passed the Senate 22-18. HB1664 amended to incorporate HB1607, but with less gold-plating than the other bill. HB1664 passed the House 65-34.)

HB1607 (Lindsey) and SB998 (Lucas) allows Dominion to recover the costs of building offshore wind farms as long as it has a plan for the facilities to be in place before January 1, 2028 and that it has used reasonable efforts to competitively source the majority of services and equipment. All utility customers in Virginia, regardless of which utility serves them, will participate in paying for this through a non-bypassable charge. Surely this bill came straight from Dominion. (HB1607 amended to incorporate HB1664; only 1664 moves forward. SB998 passed the Senate 40-0.)

Nuclear and biomass

SB828 and SB817 declare that any time the Code or the Energy Policy refers to “clean” or “carbon-free” energy, it must be read to include nuclear energy. In subcommittee, Senator Lewis suddenly announced he was amending the bills to add “sustainable biomass” as well. After an uproar and a crash course on biomass, both bills eventually went back to being only about nuclear. (Both bills passed the Senate unanimously.) Unfortunately, some biomass from paper companies did creep into the Clean Economy Act in spite of the best efforts of clean energy advocates.

Energy Efficiency

HB1526/SB851, the Clean Economy Act, contains a mandatory energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) and contains other provisions for spending on low-income EE programs. HB981 (the RGGI bill) specifies that a portion of the funds raised by auctioning carbon allowances will fund efficiency programs.

There are also a few standalone efficiency bills. HB1450 (Sullivan) and SB354 (Bell) appear to be the same as the efficiency provisions of the CEA, though the standalone applies only to Dominion and APCo. (HB1450 passed House 75-24,picking up a respectable number of Republicans. SB354 stricken at request of patron in C&L.)

HB1576 (Kilgore) doesn’t set new efficiency targets, but it makes it harder for large customers to avoid paying for utility efficiency programs. In the past, customers with over 500 kW of demand were exempt; this bill allows only customers with more than 1 MW of demand to opt out, and only if the customer demonstrates that it has implemented its own energy efficiency measures. (Passed the House, 99-0.)

HB575 (Keam) beefs up the stakeholder process that Dominion and APCo engage in for the development of energy efficiency programs. (Passed the House 99-0 and referred to Senate C&L.)

SB963 (Surovell) establishes the Commonwealth Efficient and Resilient Buildings Board to advise the Governor and state agencies about ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase resiliency. Every agency is required to designate and energy manager responsible for improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (Passed the Senate 40-0.)

SB628 (Surovell) requires the residential property disclosure statement provided by the Real Estate Board to include advice that purchasers should obtain a residential building energy analysis as well as a home inspection prior to settlement. (Passed the Senate 26-14.)

Energy storage

HB1183 (Lopez) requires the SCC to establish a task force on bulk energy storage resources. (Passed the House 91-9 with a substitute.)

SB 632 (Surovell) creates a storage target of 1,000 MW and states that this is in the public interest.  Senator Surovell says this bill originated with the Governor’s office. (Passed the Senate 20-19 with a substitute.)

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

HB1327 (Austin) allows localities to impose property taxes on generating equipment of electric suppliers utilizing wind turbines at a rate that exceeds the locality’s real estate tax rate by up to $0.20 per $100 of assessed value. Under current law, the tax may exceed the real estate rate but cannot exceed the general personal property tax rate in the locality. Wind developer Apex Clean Energy helped develop the bill and supports it. (Passed the House 81-12, now goes to Senate Finance.)

HB656 (Heretick) and SB875 (Marsden) allow local governments to incorporate into their zoning ordinances national best practices standards for solar PV and batteries. (Both bills passed their chambers unanimously with substitute language.)

HB1131 (Jones) and SB762 (Barker) authorize localities to assess a revenue share of up to $0.55 per megawatt-hour on solar PV projects, in exchange for which an existing tax exemption is expanded. (HB1131 Passed the House 54-42 with a substitute. SB762 passed Senate 40-0.)

HB657 (Heretick) and SB893 (Marsden) exempt solar facilities of 150 MW or less from the requirement that they be reviewed for substantial accord with local comprehensive plans. (HB657 passed the House with a substitute, 59-41. SB893 was passed by indefinitely—killed—in Local Government.)

HB1434 (Jones) and SB763 (Barker) reduces the existing 80% machinery and tools tax exemption for large solar projects. (HB1434 passed the House 57-41. SB763 passed the Senate 40-0.) 

SB870 (Marsden) authorizes local planning commissions to include certain regulations and provisions for conditional zoning for solar projects over 5 MW. (Passed Senate 40-0 with a substitute.)

HB1675 (Hodges) requires anyone wanting to locate a renewable energy or storage facility in an opportunity zone to execute a siting agreement with the locality. (Passed House 89-7.)

Grants, tax deductions, tax credits and other financing

HB654 (Guy) authorizes DMME to sponsor a statewide financing program for commercial solar, energy efficiency and stormwater investments. The effect would be to boost the availability of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) in areas of the state where the locality has not developed a program of its own. (Passed House 75-23. Assigned to Senate Committee on Local Government.)

SB754 (Marsden) authorizes utilities to establish on-bill financing of energy efficiency, electrification, renewable energy, EV charging, energy storage and backup generators. (Passed Senate 40-0 with a substitute.)

HB1656 (O’Quinn) authorizes Dominion and APCo to design incentives for low-income people, the elderly, and disable persons to install energy efficiency and renewable energy, to be paid for by a rate adjustment clause. (Passed the House 95-4.)

HB1707 (Aird) makes changes to the Clean Energy Advisory Board, which is (already) authorized to administer public grant funding. (Passed the House 65-33 with a substitute. Referred to Senate Ag.)

SB634 (Surovell) establishes the Energy Efficiency Subsidy Program to fund grants to subsidize residential “efficiency” measures, interestingly defined as solar PV, solar thermal or geothermal heat pumps. It also creates a subsidy program for electric vehicles. (Passed the Senate 32-7. Senator Surovell has requested a budget amendment of $1 million for the fund. )

SB1039 (Vogel) allows a real property tax exemption for solar energy equipment to be applied retroactively if the taxpayer gets DEQ certification within a year. (Passed the Senate 40-0.)

SB542 (Edwards) repeals the sunset date on crowdfunding provisions and provides fixes for certain existing obstacles to this financing approach. (Passed the Senate 40-0.)

Customer rights to shop for renewable energy

HB868 (Bourne) and SB376 (Suetterlein and Bell) allows customers to buy 100% renewable energy from any licensed supplier, regardless of whether their own utility has its own approved tariff. (HB868 passd the House 55-44. But note that its Senate companion SB376 was passed by indefinitely in C&L.)

HB 889 (Mullin) and SB 379 (McPike), the Clean Energy Choice Act, is broader than HB868. The legislation allows all customers to buy 100% renewable energy from any licensed supplier regardless of whether their utility has its own approved tariff. In addition, large customers (over 5 MW of demand) of IOUs also gain the ability to aggregate their demand from various sites in order to switch to a competitive supplier that offers a greater percentage of renewable energy than the utility is required to supply under any RPS, even if it is not 100% renewable. Large customers in IOU territory who buy from competing suppliers must give three years’ notice before returning to their utility, down from the current five years. The SCC is directed to update its consumer protection regulations. (HB889 passed the House 56-44. But its Senate companion SB379 passed by indefinitely in C&L.)

Other utility regulation

HB528 (Subramanyam) requires the SCC to decide when utilities should retire fossil fuel generation. (Passed the House 55-44.)

HB1132 (Jones, Ware) put the SCC back in control of regulating utility rates. (Passed the House 77-23.)

SB731 (McClellan) also affects rates, in this case by addressing a utility’s rate of return. The SCC determines this rate by looking first at the average returns of peer group utilities, and then often going higher. The bill lowers the maximum level that the SCC can set above the peer group average. (Passed the Senate 38-1.)

HB167 (Ware) requires an electric utility that wants to charge customers for the cost of using a new gas pipeline to prove it can’t meet its needs otherwise, and that the new pipeline provides the lowest-cost option available to it. (Note that this cost recovery review typically happens after the fact, i.e., once a pipeline has been built and placed into service.) Last year Ware carried a similar bill that passed the House in the face of frantic opposition from Dominion Energy, before being killed in Senate Commerce and Labor. (Passed the House unanimously with a substitute. It will now go to Senate C&L, where it may still have trouble from a Dominion-friendly committee.)

DEAD FOR THE YEAR

Green New Deal HB77 (Rasoul) sets out an ambitious energy transition plan and includes a fossil fuel moratorium. (Sent from Labor and Commerce to Appropriations, where it was not brought up. This is a polite way of killing a bill without anyone having to vote on it).

Undercutting RGGI HB110 (Ware) says that if Virginia joins RGGI, DEQ must give free carbon allowances to any facility with a long-term contract predating May 17, 2017 that doesn’t allow recovery of compliance costs. Rumor has it the bill was written to benefit one particular company. (Left in Labor and Commerce.)

Clean energy standard Instead of an RPS, SB876 (Marsden) proposed a “clean energy standard” that made room for some coal and gas with carbon capture. (Recognizing a number of problems with this approach, Senator Marsden rolled his bill into SB851; that’s GA-speak for killing a bill while still giving the patron points for trying).

Greenhouse gas inventory HB525 (Subrmanyam and Reid) require a statewide greenhouse gas inventory covering all sectors of the economy. (Laid on the table in a subcommittee, which also means it was killed.)

Brownfields HB1306 (Kory) directs the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to adopt regulations allowing appropriate brownfields and lands reclaimed after mining to be developed as sites for renewable energy storage projects. (Stricken from docket in House Ag.) HB1133 (Jones) makes it in the public interest for utilities to build or purchase, or buy the output of, wind or solar facilities located on previously developed sites. (Continued to 2021, yet another polite way of killing a bill, though it leaves them not technically dead. So should we call them the undead? Let’s hope the concept is resurrected next year, anyway.)

Local action HB413 (Delaney) authorizes a locality to include in its subdivision ordinance rules establishing minimum standards of energy efficiency and “maintaining access” to renewable energy. (Left in Cities, Counties and Towns.)

Retail choice SB842 (Petersen) provides for all retail customers of electricity to be able to choose their supplier, and instructs the SCC to promulgate regulations for a transition to a competitive market for electricity. Existing utilities will continue to provide the distribution service. The bill also requires suppliers of electricity to obtain at least 25% of sales from renewable energy by 2025, 50% by 2030, and 100% by 2050. Renewable energy is defined to include “sustainable biomass” but not waste incineration or landfill gas. (Continued to 2021.)

Resilience hubs HB959 (Bourne) directs DMME to establish a pilot program for resilience hubs. These are defined as a simple combination of solar panels and battery storage capable of powering a publicly-accessible building in emergency situations or severe weather events, primarily to serve vulnerable communities. (Continued to 2021.)

Net metering HB1067 (Kory) deals with a specific situation where a customer has solar on one side of property divided by a public right-of-way, with the electric meter to be served by the solar array on the other side. The legislation declares the solar array to be located on the customer’s premises. (Item 4 of Solar Freedom would also solve the problem.) (Continued to 2021.)

Utility restructuring

HB1677 (Keam) replaces Virginia’s current vertically-integrated monopoly structure with one based on competition and consumer choice. Existing monopoly utilities would be required to choose between becoming sellers of energy in competition with other retail sellers, or divesting themselves of their generation portfolios and retaining ownership and operation of just the distribution system. Other features: a nonprofit independent entity to coordinate operation of the distribution system; performance-based regulation to reward distribution companies for reliable service; consumer choices of suppliers, including renewable energy suppliers; an energy efficiency standard; a low-income bill assistance program; and consumer protections and education on energy choices. (This was politely continued to 2021 in Labor and Commerce with no debate. The patrons were complimented for “starting a conversation.”)

HB206 (Ware) was, I’m told, the beta version of Delegate Keam’s HB1677. (Incorporated into HB1677, which was continued to 2021.)

SB842 (Petersen) seeks to achieve the same end as HB1677 and HB206, but it puts the SCC in charge of writing the plan. The bill provides for all retail customers of electricity to be able to choose their supplier, and instructs the SCC to promulgate regulations for a transition to a competitive market for electricity. Existing utilities will continue to provide the distribution service. The bill also requires suppliers of electricity to obtain at least 25% of sales from renewable energy by 2025, 50% by 2030, and 100% by 2050. Renewable energy is defined to include “sustainable biomass” but not waste incineration or landfill gas. (Continued to 2021.)

Anti-renewable energy bills

HB205 (Campbell) adds unnecessary burdens to the siting of wind farms and eliminates the ability of wind and solar developers to use the DEQ permit-by-rule process for projects above 100 megawatts. (Laid on the table in subcommittee.)  HB1171 (Poindexter) is a make-work bill requiring an annual report of the acreage of utility scale solar development, as well as the acreage of public or private conservation easements. (Continued to 2021.) HB1636 (Campbell) prohibits the construction of any building or “structure” taller than 50 feet on a “vulnerable mountain ridge.” You can tell the bill is aimed at wind turbines because it exempts radio, TV, and telephone towers and equipment for transmission of communications and electricity. (Laid on the table in subcommittee. FWIW, we’re told it was aimed at hotels, not wind. Yeah, sure . . .) HB1628 (Poindexter) prohibits the state from joining RGGI or adopting any carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program without approval from the General Assembly. (Passed by indefinitely in subcommittee. Yep, another way to kill a bill.)

Financing

HB461 (Sullivan) establishes a tax credit of 35%, up to $15,000, for purchases of renewable energy property. It is available only to the end-user (e.g., a resident or business who installs solar or a geothermal heat pump). Unfortunately, loose drafting would have also made the credit available for wood-burning stoves and other non-clean energy applications. (Died in a Finance subcommittee on a 5-5 vote.)

HB633 (Willett) establishes a tax deduction up to $10,000 for the purchase of solar panels or Energy Star products. (Stricken from docket in a Finance subcommittee.)

HB947 (Webert) expands the authority of localities to grant tax incentives to businesses located in green development zones that invest in “green technologies,” even if they are not themselves “green development businesses.” Green technologies are defined as “any materials, components, equipment, or practices that are used by a business to reduce negative impacts on the environment, including enhancing the energy efficiency of a building, using harvested rainwater or recycled water, or installing solar energy systems.” (Continued to 2021.)

SB1061 (Petersen) allows residential customers to qualify for local government Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs for renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements; currently the availability of this financing tool is restricted to commercial customers. (Continued to 2021.)

HB754 (Kilgore) establishes the Virginia Brownfield and Coal Mine Renewable Energy Grant Fund, which will support wind, solar or geothermal projects sited on formerly mined lands or brownfields. (Left in Appropriations.)

[Updated February 12 to include late votes and fix a random meaningless line, and later to correct various other screw-ups that people have kindly brought to my attention.]

And finally, energy efficiency and storage bills

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advocates holding clean energy signs

Hundreds of grassroots activists turned out on January 14 to lobby for clean anergy. Photo by Alex Kambis.

You’ve heard these statistics before: Virginia residents pay the 7th highest bills in the nation, due in large part to the fact that our utilities rank among the lowest in the nation for energy efficiency programs. 2018’s “grid mod” bill required massive utility investments in efficiency spending, but the legislation did not actually mandate results, and Dominion has been slow to propose programs.

That leaves Virginia with a lot of low-hanging fruit that looks mighty tempting as we seek to decarbonize our energy supply at the least possible cost.

Not surprisingly, then, spending on energy efficiency programs is central to the big energy transition bills like HB77, the Green New Deal, and HB1526/SB851, the Clean Economy Act. RGGI bills generally also specify that a portion of the funds raised by auctioning carbon allowances will fund efficiency programs.

There are also a few standalone efficiency bills. HB1450 (Sullivan) and SB354 (Bell) appear to be the same as the efficiency provisions of the CEA, though the standalone applies only to Dominion and APCo.

HB1576 (Kilgore) doesn’t set new efficiency targets, but it makes it harder for large customers to avoid paying for utility efficiency programs. In the past, customers with over 500 kW of demand were exempt; this bill allows only customers with more than 1 MW of demand to opt out, and only if the customer demonstrates that it has implemented its own energy efficiency measures.

HB413 (Delaney) authorizes a locality to include in its subdivision ordinance rules establishing minimum standards of energy efficiency and “maintaining access” to renewable energy.

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

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

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

Funding efficiency

These bills are also covered under the renewable energy roundup.

HB633 (Willett) establishes a tax deduction up to $10,000 for the purchase of solar panels or Energy Star products.

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

HB947 (Webert) expands the authority of localities to grant tax incentives to businesses located in green development zones that invest in “green technologies,” even if they are not themselves “green development businesses.” Green technologies are defined as “any materials, components, equipment, or practices that are used by a business to reduce negative impacts on the environment, including enhancing the energy efficiency of a building, using harvested rainwater or recycled water, or installing solar energy systems.”

SB754 (Marsden) authorizes utilities to establish on-bill financing of energy efficiency, electrification, renewable energy, EV charging, energy storage and backup generators.

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

HB1701 (Aird) authorizes the Clean Energy Advisory Board to administer public grant funding, and makes small changes to the Board.

SB634 (Surovell) establishes the Energy Efficiency Subsidy Program to fund grants to subsidize residential “efficiency” measures, interestingly defined as solar PV, solar thermal or geothermal heat pumps. It also creates a subsidy program for electric vehicles.

SB1061 (Petersen) allows Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan programs to include residential as well as commercial customers.

Energy storage

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

SB 632 (Surovell) creates a storage target of 1,000 MW and states that this is in the public interest.  Senator Surovell says this bill originated with the Governor’s office.

HB1306 (Kory) directs the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to adopt regulations allowing appropriate brownfields and lands reclaimed after mining to be developed as sites for renewable energy storage projects.

 

A first look at the Clean Economy Act and the Green New Deal

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Three young women holding climate action signs

Students joined more than 200 other grassroots activists for a lobby day at the General Assembly on Tuesday. Photo Ivy Main

Climate and energy activists have been pinning their hopes on the 2020 legislative session to produce a framework for transitioning our economy to 100 percent carbon-free energy.

After years of talking big but delivering little in the way of carbon reductions and clean energy, the General Assembly is under pressure to finally deliver.

Much of the initial focus and discussion so far has been on two very different omnibus bills, the Clean Economy Act and the Green New Deal Act. But dozens of other bills also aim to reform Virginia energy law in ways both big (breaking up the monopolies) and small (clarifying HOAs’ abilities to regulate solar panels) — and everything in between (removing barriers to customer solar, taxing fossil fuel investments).

In the coming days I’ll post summaries of many of these bills. But for now, let’s take a look at the two omnibus bills that have energized so many activists. Both have their strong points; both would benefit from strengthening amendments. And both are guaranteed to be better than anything Dominion will put forward in the coming days, if rumors of such a bill prove correct.

The Clean Economy Act

HB1526 (Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax) and SB851(Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond) are the Clean Economy Act put forward by a coalition of renewable energy industry and environmental groups. This is a massive bill, running to 37 pages and covering diverse aspects of the electric sector, and yet it is also surprisingly restrained in its ambitions.

The CEA’s goal is a zero-carbon electricity supply by 2050, a goal that allows nuclear energy to keep its role in the mix, and also one that, after an initial kick, requires a ramp-up of renewable energy of only 3% per year from 2021 to 2050. Utilities also must achieve energy efficiency savings that start slow and creep upwards to a top rate of 2% per year in 2027; utilities generally can’t build new generation unless they first meet the efficiency targets.

The very modest pace of the required investments in renewable energy and efficiency leaves no room for utilities to argue that the targets cannot be met or will cause economic pain. On the contrary, critics can justly complain they are too easy. On the other hand, the bill has lots of elements utilities still won’t like, including an energy storage mandate, community solar, net metering reforms and a limited moratorium on new fossil fuel generation.

The bill includes provisions for joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce statewide electric sector carbon emissions 30% by 2030, in accordance with DEQ’s regulations finalized last year. The state would auction carbon allowances, with 50% of proceeds funding energy efficiency programs for low-income, disability, veteran and elderly residents; 16% going to energy efficiency measures on state and local property; 30% for coastal resilience; and 4% for administrative costs.

The renewable portfolio standard provisions look more complicated than they are, but even so, understanding what’s going on is not a job for the meek. First off, note that the RPS only applies to “total electric energy,” which does not mean, you know, total electric energy. The code defines the term to mean total electric energy minus electricity produced by nuclear power. Since nuclear provides about 30% of Virginia’s electric generation, that means the RPS percentages look 30% bigger than they really are. (This is a neat trick Dominion devised years ago to make our voluntary RPS sound more meaningful. People fell for it, which is why our voluntary RPS is widely described as targeting 15% renewable energy by 2025 instead of about 10%.)

Thus, the nominal RPS goal of 41% by 2030 does not mean that Virginia would get 41% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030. The true percentage would be 41% of 70%, or — oh Lord, now I have to do math — somewhat under 30%.

Not incidentally, 30% by 2030 is the renewable energy target Governor Ralph Northam set in his Executive Order 43 back in September, and that squares pretty well with Dominion’s building plans. (The CEA, however, strives mightily to ensure that less expensive independent developers get a good share of the business.)

The drafters of the Clean Economy Act also chose not to change the code’s existing kitchen-sink definition of renewable energy, foregoing an opportunity to fix the mischief Dominion has got up to lately with what I call its Green Power for Suckers program and the Great Thermal REC Boondoggle. Instead, the RPS provisions exclude biomass and sometimes waste, then limit which specific technologies qualify for each tier of the RPS. The result is that even without changing the definition of renewable energy, biomass and thermal RECs have no place in the CEA mix, municipal waste incineration is limited to existing facilities and old hydro dams will cease to qualify when their contracts run out.

The system of tiers also allows the CEA to prioritize among technologies and project sizes.

  1. Offshore wind has its own tier beginning in 2027, as well as detailed instructions for how it will be developed.
  2. Tier II covers distributed (under 3 MW) Virginia-based wind, solar and anaerobic digestion (presumably meaning biogas from things like pig manure, reflecting Dominion’s deal with Smithfield Foods). This tier is divided into sub-tiers that ensure smaller projects are represented, and 10% of each tier is supposed to be sourced from projects serving low-to-moderate income persons. This tier begins at 3% of the RPS total in 2021, increasing to 9% in 2028, and then bouncing around strangely between 7 and 9% thereafter.
  3. Tier III can be met with Virginia wind, solar, wave, tidal, geothermal or energy from waste (poorly defined, but with a limit on the number of eligible RECs that, I’m told, just covers the output of existing waste incinerators in Virginia), or landfill gas (also from existing landfills and with a limit). These projects don’t have a size limit. Utilities are instructed to issue annual requests for proposals to acquire Tier III resources. Tier III begins at 30% of the RPS, gets as high as 43% in 2030, and then declines as offshore wind in Tier I takes a greater share.
  4. Tier IV can be met with renewable energy certificates from wind, solar and some hydro sources inside or outside Virginia, but within the PJM, the regional transmission organization that coordinates the electric grid in all or parts of 13 states, including Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Tier IV starts at 38% of the RPS total, goes as high as 51% in 2023, and then declines by fits and starts until it is less than 20% in the out years.
  5. The fifth tier consists of the old hydro RECs from PJM with existing purchase contracts. These begin at a whopping 29% of the total but decline rapidly to 6% in 2023 and even less thereafter.

Solar installers who focus on Virginia may be dismayed by the modesty of the in-state requirements. Only Tier II serves distributed generation, and all its sub-tiers and low-income provisions don’t make up for the fact that distributed generation must account for less than 0.3% of total statewide demand in 2021 (3% of the initial 14% goal, adjusted downward for nuclear). This may well be less than the amount of net-metered solar we will have then anyway, with or without the CEA. By 2030, distributed renewables would still account for less than 2.5% of total generation in Virginia, a far cry from the 25% or more that studies have shown is possible.

Meanwhile, Tiers IV and V allow RECs from utility-scale facilities located anywhere within PJM, accounting for more than half the RPS total for the first several years. If utilities choose to buy these out-of-state RECs instead of building new renewable energy in Virginia for this tier, ratepayers will be paying for economic development and jobs in other states, rather than supporting clean energy jobs at home.

(As I’ll describe below, this is an even bigger drawback of the Green New Deal Act.)

Defenders of the PJM RECs approach cite market efficiency and cost; RECs from states that don’t have RPS laws tend to be cheap, and allowing them to qualify for our RPS means projects will get built wherever it is cheapest to do it. That justifies allowing a small percentage of PJM RECs, but not making those RECs the centerpiece.

The CEA already has another, and better, cost-containment measure. If prices of RECs go too high, utilities have an option of paying into a fund administered by the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy instead. The money will be used for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in Virginia benefiting mainly low-income residents. This “deficiency payment” alternative is a standard feature of other states’ RPS laws; it provides a critical cost cap while not letting utilities off the hook.

The CEA also includes community solar provisions and removal of certain barriers to net metering. It raises the net metering cap to 10%, raises the commercial size cap to 3 MW, removes all caps on third-party power purchase agreements, eliminates standby charges on residential and agricultural customers, and allows customers to install facilities large enough to meet 150% of their previous year’s demand. (These net-metering provisions intentionally duplicate five of the eight provisions of the Solar Freedom legislation, HB572, SB710 and others.)

In addition to all of this, the CEA includes a mandate for 2,400 megawatts of energy storage by 2035, with interim targets beginning with 100 MW by the end of 2021.

And just in case Dominion thinks that somehow all this still leaves room for any new fossil fuel plants, the CEA ends with a one-year moratorium on the permitting of any new carbon-emitting generating units that an investor-owned utility might want to build, until the government produces a report with recommendations for achieving a carbon-free electric sector by 2050 at least cost to ratepayers.

If I’d been writing this bill, I would have accelerated the timeline and focused the RPS more on Virginia projects, including rooftop solar. But as a framework this is still a strong bill, and it’s possibly the best we can do this year.

The Green New Deal

HB77 (Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke) is the Green New Deal Act. Its major features include a moratorium on any new fossil fuel infrastructure; a very aggressive timetable for 100% renewable energy by 2036; energy efficiency standards and a mandate for buildings to decrease energy use; low-income weatherization; job training; a requirement that companies hire workers from environmental justice communities; and assistance for workforce transition for fossil fuel workers.

The GND looks almost nothing like the Clean Energy Act. Its moratorium on new fossil fuel infrastructure is far broader than that in the CEA, covering not just electric-generating plants but also pipelines, refineries, import and export terminals and fossil fuel exploration activities.

It directs DMME to develop a climate action plan that addresses mitigation, adaptation and resiliency, supports publicly-owned clean energy and incorporates environmental justice principles. Forty percent of funds spent under the plan are to be targeted to low-income communities and communities of color.

The GND’s energy efficiency mandates are tougher than the CEA’s, requiring savings of 2.4% per year beginning immediately. These savings will be achieved not just by weatherizing buildings, upgrading heating and cooling, etc., but also by dramatically improving new buildings and requiring installation of rooftop solar wherever feasible.

DMME is also required to set performance benchmarks for scholarships, low-interest loans, job training programs and renewable energy projects to serve EJ communities (“until such date that 100 percent of the energy consumed in such communities is clean energy”), as well as a mandate that 50% of the workforce for energy efficiency and clean energy programs come from EJ communities.

(We should pause here for a reality check. We’re talking about Virginia, where many excellent programs that are already on the books currently go unfunded, and underinvestment in education and social services means companies can’t find enough qualified workers as it is.)

With all its aims of putting the energy transition on steroids, the Green New Deal also has a surprisingly weak RPS. In fact, it appears utilities would not have to build renewable energy projects in Virginia at all — or for that matter, close any fossil fuel plants.

The bill doesn’t actually say so, but it appears to contemplate that the very fast ramp-up of renewable energy to 80% by 2030 can be achieved by utilities buying renewable energy certificates from other states. I’m told Delegate Rasoul has confirmed this is his intention. There is no requirement for utilities to buy from in-state producers.

There is a practical reason for this: given how far behind Virginia is in developing wind and solar, allowing utilities to buy out-of-state RECs is probably the only way to meet an 80% by 2030 target. These RECs are traded on the open market; that makes it easy for utilities to comply, and eliminates reliability concerns because utilities can continue to run their existing fossil fuel plants as usual.

But there’s the rub: the bill contains no requirement to build wind and solar in Virginia, and utilities can run their fossil fuel plants as usual. That’s not the energy transition a lot of people are looking for.

[Update January 23: Dominion did not file a separate bill, but has drafted language it proposes to shoehorn into another bill from a friendly legislator, likely Senator Lucas’ SB998. The proposal is almost comically bad. If it comes with a slogan, it will be “Leave the Driving to Us.” We’ve seen what that means. Watch your wallets.]

Energy efficiency in Virginia: talking big while headed the wrong way

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map of US shows changes in retail sales of electricity in each state

Data from the Energy Information Agency shows Virginia retail electricity sales increased by 2% year over year, one of the largest increases in the country. Nationwide, electricity sales declined slightly on average.

There’s bad news for Virginians looking to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels: The job just got 2% harder.

That’s the percentage increase in electricity use in Virginia over the past year, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).

The increase was driven by the continuation of a three-year upward trend in the commercial sector. (My guess is it’s those data centers.) The somewhat better news is that residential use has stayed basically flat for 10 years.

The thing is, we would expect a 2% decrease in electricity demand every year, if we were among the states with the strongest energy efficiency programs. Needless to say, Virginia is not among them.

Virginia consumers share in the benefits of federal energy-saving programs for lighting, appliances and other equipment (advances that are now under attack from the Trump administration). These national standards, pretty much painless for consumers, have kept residential electricity usage from growing even as the population grows.

Yet Virginia makes little effort to build on these savings, and it shows. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranks Virginia 29th in the nation overall in its 2019 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard; in the narrower category of electricity savings, Virginia came in a dismal 47th.

This should concern policy-makers, not least because wasting energy costs money. Recent EIA data reveals that in spite of Virginia having slightly lower electricity rates than the U.S. average, our residential bills are almost $20 per month higher, continuing a long and, especially for low-income residents, painful trend. Virginia residents use more electricity per household than any other state in the nation with the exception of just six southern states (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas).

Lobbyists for our utilities argue it’s the weather here. They say hot summers drive up the use of air conditioning, while cold winters keep electric heat pumps running. We’d like to see their data. The fact is, Virginia residents use more electricity (averaging 1165 kWh per month) and have higher bills (averaging $136.59) than residents of Maryland (1005 kWh, $133.68) and Delaware (977 kWh, $122.43), even though both of those states don’t just have colder winters, they have slightly warmer summers as well.

So if it isn’t weather, what is it? Policy. Both Maryland and Delaware have laws requiring reductions in energy consumption and have programs to make it happen.

It’s worth mentioning that Maryland and Delaware are members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the carbon-cutting compact of northeastern states that Virginia plans to join. Critics of the plan claim it will harm Virginia consumers. That makes it especially telling that of all the RGGI states, only Connecticut has higher residential electricity bills than Virginia.

Most RGGI states appear in the top ranks of the ACEEE scorecard. That’s not a coincidence; those states use money from the auctioning of carbon emission allowances to fund energy efficiency programs. Consumers benefit from the resulting trade-off: their electricity rates go up, but their bills go down.

Shrinking a state’s carbon footprint and reducing reliance on fossil fuels are prime objectives of energy efficiency in the RGGI states, but the lower bills give success that sweet taste that keeps them coming back for more.

Virginia has tackled energy efficiency in fits and starts over the years, with limited programs that tend to expire before they gain traction. That’s supposed to change now with implementation of 2018’s Grid Transformation and Security Act (GTSA). The GTSA requires Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power together to propose a billion dollars’ worth of energy efficiency programs over 10 years. The State Corporation Commission approved one round of spending from Dominion in May of this year.

The problem is that the GTSA only requires utilities to propose programs; it doesn’t say the programs have to be good ones, and it doesn’t require the SCC to approve them. Even the ongoing participation of a stakeholder group doesn’t change the fact that, as ever, the utilities are in the driver’s seat.

Since they’re spending their customers’ money, Dominion and APCo are happy with this set-up. Alas, they don’t have much incentive to produce really great programs. Quite the reverse: their business model depends on an ever-increasing demand for electricity. Successful energy efficiency programs are bad for business.

By contrast, the states at the top of the ACEEE scorecard all have laws called energy efficiency resource standards (EERS) that require utilities to achieve savings, not just spend money, or that take the job away from utilities entirely and entrust it to a separate entity without a conflict of interest.

More than half of states now have EERS, though not all target—or achieve—energy savings of 2% per year.

How does a good EERS work its magic? As ACEEE explains:

“In states ramping up funding in response to aggressive EERS policies, programs typically shift focus from widget-based approaches (e.g., installing new, more-efficient water heaters) to comprehensive deep-savings approaches that seek to generate greater energy efficiency savings per program participant by conducting whole-building or system retrofits.”

Some deep-savings approaches also draw on complementary efficiency efforts, such as utility support for full implementation of building energy codes. Deep-savings approaches may also promote whole-building retrofits, grid-interactive efficient buildings and comprehensive changes in systems and operations by including behavioral elements that empower customers.

The good news for Virginia is that, having failed to do much of anything on energy efficiency for all these years, we have a lot of low-hanging fruit. The GTSA can’t help but gather up some of it; a real EERS could do much more and at lower expense. We could also follow the lead of other states in adopting state-level appliance efficiency standards, tightening our building codes and allowing localities to go beyond state codes in their jurisdictions.

More and more, Virginia legislators accept the urgency of the climate crisis and the need to transition to renewable energy. It’s a job that requires lowering energy consumption as well as building wind and solar, and we can’t afford to do it wrong. Two years ago, most legislators settled for the flawed approach of the GTSA. In 2020, we should expect them to do better.

After all, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, you can always count on the General Assembly to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.

 

A version of this article appeared in the Virginia Mercury on October 11, 2019. 

Governor Northam’s Executive Order, Dominion Energy’s about-face on offshore wind: is Virginia off to the clean energy races?

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Man at podium

Arlington County Board Chair Christian Dorsey speaking to clean energy supporters on September 21, following the Board’s adoption of its new Community Energy Plan. Arlington’s plan would produce a carbon-free grid 15 years earlier than Governor Northam’s plan, while also tackling CO2 emissions from transportation and buildings.

A single week in September brought an unprecedented cascade of clean energy announcements in Virginia. On Tuesday, September 24, Governor Northam issued an Executive Order aimed at achieving 30 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050, and with near-term state procurement targets.

On Thursday, Dominion Energy announced it would fully build out Virginia’s offshore wind energy area by 2026, in line with one of the goals in the Governor’s order.

Then, Saturday morning, the Democratic Party of Virginia unanimously passed resolutions endorsing the Virginia Green New Deal and a goal of net zero carbon emissions for the energy sector by 2050.

Saturday afternoon, Arlington became the first county in Virginia to commit to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035, and economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050.

So is Virginia off to the clean energy races? Well, let’s take a closer look at that Executive Order.

The governor’s order sounds great, but how real are its targets?

Executive Order 43, “Expanding access to clean energy and growing the clean energy jobs of the future,” directs the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME) and other state agencies to “develop a plan of action to produce 30 percent of Virginia’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and one hundred percent of Virginia’s electricity from carbon-free sources by 2050.”

The difference between “renewable energy” and “carbon-free” sources is intentional. The latter term is a nod to nuclear energy, which provides about a quarter of Virginia’s electricity today. Keeping Dominion’s four nuclear reactors in service past 2050 may not prove feasible, economical or wise, but the utility wants to keep that option open.

The order also doesn’t define “renewable energy.” It talks about wind and solar, but it doesn’t specifically exclude carbon-intensive and highly-polluting sources like biomass and trash incinerators, which state code treats as renewable. Dominion currently meets Virginia’s voluntary renewable energy goals with a mix of old hydro and dirty renewables, much of it from out of state. Dominion will want to keep these subsidies flowing, especially for its expensive biomass plants, which would undermine the carbon-fighting intent of the order.

Finally, there is the question whether all of the renewable energy has to be produced in Virginia. Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, which supplies electricity to most of the member-owned cooperatives in the state, buys wind energy from outside Virginia. Surely that should count. But what if a Virginia utility just buys renewable energy certificates indicating that someone, somewhere, produced renewable energy, even if it was consumed in, say, Ohio? Those had better not count, or we’ll end up subsidizing states that haven’t committed to climate action.

What will DMME’s plan look like?

In describing what should be in the action plan, Northam’s order largely recites existing goals and works in progress, but it also directs DMME and the other agencies to consider going beyond existing law and policy to achieve specific outcomes:

  • Ensure that utilities meet their existing commitments to solar and onshore wind energy development, including recommending legislation to reduce barriers to achieving these goals. These goals include 500 MW of utility-owned or controlled distributed wind and solar. Customer-owned solar is not mentioned.
  • Make recommendations to ensure the Virginia offshore wind energy area is fully developed with as much as 2,500 MW of offshore wind by 2026.
  • Make recommendations for increased utility investments in energy efficiency, beyond those provided for by the passage of SB 966 in 2018, the Grid Modernization Act.
  • Include integration of storage technologies into the grid and pairing them with renewable generation, including distributed energy resources like rooftop solar.
  • Provide for environmental justice and equity in the planning, including “measures that provide communities of color and low- and moderate-income communities access to clean energy and a reduction in their energy burdens.”

Can the administration do all that?

Nothing in this part of the order has any immediate legal effect; it just kicks off a planning process with a deadline of July 1, 2020. Achieving some of the goals will require new legislation, which would have to wait for the 2021 legislative session.

That doesn’t mean the governor will sit on his hands until then – delay is the enemy of progress — but it could have the effect of slowing momentum for major climate legislation in 2020.

Cynics, if you know any, might even suggest that undercutting more aggressive Green New Deal-type legislation is one reason for the order.

A second part of Northam’s order, however, will have immediate effect, limited but impressive. It establishes a new target for state procurement of solar and wind energy of 30 percent of electricity by 2022, up from an 8 percent goal set by former Governor Terry McAuliffe. This provision will require the Commonwealth to negotiate amendments to the contract by which it buys electricity for state-owned facilities and universities from Dominion. The order also calls for at least 10 MW annually of power purchase agreements (PPAs) for on-site solar at state facilities, and requires agencies to consider distributed solar as part of all new construction.

State facilities will also be subject to new energy savings requirements to reduce state consumption of electricity by 10 percent by 2022, measured against a 2006 baseline, using energy performance contracting.

These provisions do for the state government what the action plan is intended to do for Virginia as a whole, but 8 years faster and without potential loopholes.

Thirty percent by 2030? Gee, where have we heard that before?

Just this spring, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality finalized regulations aimed at lowering carbon emissions from Virginia power plants by 30 percent by 2030. These numbers look so similar to Northam’s goal of 30 percent renewable energy by 2030 that it’s reasonable to ask what the order achieves that the carbon rule doesn’t. (This assumes the carbon regulations take effect; Republicans used a budgetary maneuver to stall implementation by at least a year.)

The answer goes back to the reason Dominion opposed the carbon rule. Dominion maintains—wrongly, says DEQ and others—that requiring lower in-state carbon emissions will force it to reduce the output of its coal and gas plants in Virginia and buy more power from out of state. That, says Dominion, would be bad for ratepayers.

As the company’s August update of its Integrated Resource Plan showed, Dominion would much prefer a rule requiring it to build more stuff of its own. As it turns out, that would be even more expensive for ratepayers, but definitely better for Dominion’s profitability.

So legislation to achieve Governor Northam’s renewable energy goals would take the pain out of the carbon regulations for Dominion. Whether it might also lower carbon emissions beyond DEQ’s 30 percent target remains to be seen.

The 2050 carbon-free goal, on the other hand, goes beyond anything on the books yet. Dominion’s corporate goal is 80 percent carbon-free by 2050, and it has no roadmap to achieve even that.

Is there anything in the order about pipelines?

No. In fact, there is no mention of any fossil fuel infrastructure, though shuttering coal and gas plants is the main way you cut carbon from the electricity supply.

That doesn’t mean Northam’s order leaves the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines in the clear. If Dominion joins Duke Energy in its pledge to go to zero carbon by 2050, the use of fracked gas to generate electricity in Virginia and the Carolinas has to go down, not up, over the coming decades (Duke’s own weird logic notwithstanding). As word gets around that Virginia is ditching fossil fuels, pipeline investors must be thinking about pulling out and cutting their losses.

What about Dominion’s offshore wind announcement?

I saved the best for last. For offshore wind advocates like me, Dominion’s announcement was the really big news of the week: it’s the Fourth of July, Christmas and New Years all at once. Offshore wind is Virginia’s largest long-term renewable energy resource opportunity, and we can’t fully decarbonize without it.

Dominion has taken a go-slow approach to offshore wind ever since winning the right to develop the federal lease area in 2013. Until this year, it refused to commit to anything more than a pilot project. The two, 6-MW turbines are currently under construction and will be installed next summer.

Then in March, Dominion CEO Tom Farrell told investors his company planned to build one commercial offshore wind farm, of unspecified size, to be operational in 2024. In its Aug. 28 resource plan update filed with the state regulators, Dominion Energy Virginia included for the first time an 880-MW wind farm, pushed back to 2025.

A mere three weeks later, the plan has changed to three wind farms, a total of 220 turbines with a capacity of 2,600 MW, with the start date moved up again to 2024, and all of them in service by 2026, exactly Northam’s target (except his was 2,500 MW).

Certainly the case for developing the full lease area has been improving at a rapid clip. Costs are falling dramatically, and it appears Dominion expects to maximize production by using massive 12 MW turbines, which did not even exist until this year.

But if the situation has changed that dramatically from August to September, all I can say is, I can’t wait to see what October brings.

Maybe it will bring answers to questions like who will build these wind farms, who will pay for them, and how Dominion expects to meet this accelerated timeline. As Sarah Vogelsong reports, several northeastern states have wind farms slated for development in the early-to-mid-2020s, too. Industry members are already worried about bottlenecks in everything from the supply chain to installation vessels, workforce training and the regulatory approval process.

That is to say, we’re coming to the party pretty late to expect good seats. But hey, it’s going to be a great party, and I’m glad we won’t miss it.

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on September 27, 2019.