Cattle graze at the Christiana Solar Farm,. Photo courtesy of Silicon Ranch.
The conventional wisdom was wrong. And having helped spread the conventional wisdom, I was wrong, too. Mea culpa. It turns out sheep aren’t the only animals capable of handling the job of vegetation management on solar sites.
Farmers are finding that cattle also thrive among solar panels – and they will get their chance to prove it in Virginia.
What’s that, you say? You didn’t know there was a conventional wisdom on this topic, maybe because you really haven’t given much thought at all to solar grazing, so while you have nothing but respect for cattle, sheep and other ruminants, this strikes you as perhaps a bit, shall we say, niche?
Oh, but it’s not. Persuading cattle farmers that it’s in their interest to embrace solar is the key to unlocking low-cost energy supplies in Virginia and ending the rural war on solar.
Not that there’s anything wrong with sheep! In fact, sheep deliver such perfect synergy with solar that including them at solar farms is no longer novel.
The sheep thrive with the forage and shade, and in return they eat the vegetation that would otherwise grow up around the solar panels. Their grazing largely replaces labor-intensive (and polluting) mowers and herbicides while improving soil quality. Thanks to this symbiotic relationship, farmers have managed to keep their land and even grow their operations at farms across the U.S.
The advantages on all sides are so well understood within the solar industry that it’s common these days for new utility-scale projects in Virginia to include plans for grazing. Developers and utilities including Dominion Energy tout the local benefits of their partnerships with sheep farmers and beekeepers.
Yet there are more than 15 times as many cattle as sheep in Virginia, many of them in small herds on family farms.
The market for beef is vastly bigger than the market for lamb, so persuading farmers they should diversify into sheep as well as solar is a tall order. But if cattle prove as compatible with solar as sheep are, there will be vastly more opportunities for both farmers and the solar industry. Given the dire economic situation facing small farms in Virginia today, “cattle-voltaics” could offer a lifeline for rural communities.
Solar site owners and farmers have proceeded cautiously with cattle, fearing the animals might damage expensive solar infrastructure – or themselves – given their great weight and propensity for rubbing their heads on things. And being much taller than sheep, they don’t fit as well under solar panels, which at some times of the day will tilt close to the ground to take maximum advantage of the sun’s rays. Making the supports taller and stronger adds cost. Hence the preference for sheep.
That’s all wrong, according to Josh Bennett, an executive with Colorado-based Huwa Enterprises who spoke at the Virginia Solar Summit in Richmond last month. Since 2023, Huwa has been helping farmers and ranchers integrate cattle with solar in Colorado and elsewhere, and Bennett is now intent on spreading the word that it works.
At a 2000-acre solar farm in Indiana, he said, Huwa “hardened” the site for the cattle but did not raise the panels or change their tilt. According to Bennett they had “zero problems” with the cattle, all yearlings of a docile breed that stand about four and a half feet tall. Contrary to expectations, the cattle have shown no interest in using the steel poles as scratching posts.
Elsewhere, Tennessee-based Silicon Ranch, which includes sheep grazing on 15,000 acres across its 15-state solar portfolio, recently launched a technology that it calls CattleTracker.
The software automatically tilts solar panels to horizontal when cattle are present, allowing the animals to graze underneath. When the cattle are moved to other parts of the site, the panels return to their optimum tilt. Silicon Ranch has been testing the approach at its 3.5-MW solar farm in Rutherford County, Tennessee since 2023, while delivering the power to a local electric cooperative.
Here in Virginia, Marcus and Jess Gray see great potential in solar cattle. The husband-and-wife owners of Gray’s Lambscaping are among the half dozen or so Virginia sheep graziers who contract with owners of large solar farms for vegetation management.
The American Solar Grazing Association featured the Grays, along with beekeeper Allison Wickham of Charlottesville-based Siller Pollinator Company, in a terrific video that was shown at the Solar Summit to great applause from the home team.
For the Grays, solar cattle are the obvious next step in integrating solar into Virginia’s farm culture. At the Solar Summit, Marcus Gray described how he is raising Dexter cattle, a breed that is smaller and more docile than some others, with plans to graze them under solar panels. However, Gray did not provide a target date or site to graze what he calls his “inverter cattle.”
Virginia leaders recognize the importance of further developing agrivoltaics as a way to support both farming and energy production.
The General Assembly passed a bill this session defining agrivoltaics, and the administration of Gov. Abigail Spanberger plans to form a working group to promote it. In addition to grazing and beekeeping, agrivoltaics can include raising crops between rows of panels, a practice that is mostly still in the research stage in Virginia.
The administration’s working group should look for ways to encourage all of these practices, but if it only does one thing, it should create a demonstration program to help farmers understand how to integrate solar and cattle grazing into their operations. Virginia has a huge stake in making solar appealing to rural communities. We need to save our family farms, and we need the low-cost energy that solar provides.
The potential of agrivoltaics is huge, but until farmers see solar as a valuable opportunity for themselves and their families, Virginia will struggle to produce enough electricity to meet our growing demand.
This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on May 8, 2026.
One of the things I like about involving myself in Virginia policy-making is the feeling that it’s possible for an ordinary citizen to participate. Sure, you’re a little fish in a big pond, but legislators will meet with you, and even listen if you propose a bill or suggest changes to legislation. That’s unlike trying to be heard at the federal level, where folks without money and connections typically have no entrée.
But sometimes, even in Virginia, you do what you can and then you just have to wait to see what the big fish do. Some things, my friends, are out of our hands.
That’s the situation now with the Virginia budget, which is hung up on the question of whether to end the data center sales tax exemption and thereby liberate $1.6 billion for other priorities, as the Senate budget provides, or continue the exemption while conditioning it on data centers meeting energy efficiency and clean energy targets, as the House budget provides.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger is caught in the middle of a battle being fought by formidable generals on both sides and from her own party. Spanberger’s pro-business instincts naturally align her with the House approach, which would also bolster her environmental bona fides if the deal includes the clean energy conditions. But mainly, I suspect, she just wants this fight over with.
Can Spanberger negotiate a resolution that keeps the promises made to operators of existing data centers, caps the exemption for future development and imposes clean energy requirements on all of them, while providing at least some savings?
It’s a big challenge, and we little fish don’t have much of a role here. Yet a lot rides on the outcome, not just for data centers but for those of us who care about livable communities, climate and clean air. (Which ought to be everyone, but somehow isn’t.)
Apart from whatever happens with the budget, this was a good year for clean energy but a surprisingly poor year for data center legislation. A Democratic trifecta, concerns about rising utility rates and public sentiment mostly opposed to data center sprawl were not enough to pass bills mandating limits on water use, stricter pollution controls and stronger siting standards.
On the other hand, it was another good year for Dominion Energy. Witness what happened when the governor proposed amendments to Louise Lucas’s Senate Bill 253 and Destiny LeVere Bolling’s House Bill 1393. As passed by the General Assembly, the legislation expanded Dominion’s ability to stick ratepayers with the cost of an expensive program for putting distribution lines underground. Spanberger proposed limits on that program’s ratepayer impacts, but then she went further. In a whole new paragraph, she proposed to cap Dominion’s return on equity at 9.3% (down from the current 9.8%), with excess profits to be returned to ratepayers.
This would have saved millions of dollars for ratepayers, but the General Assembly turned down the changes, supporting Dominion’s ability to charge ratepayers for its undergrounding program and protecting its profitability. The amendments were rejected by voice vote, because who wants to go on record with something like that?
However, legislators did accept other amendments from the governor requiring the SCC to exercise stricter scrutiny of costs associated with data centers to ensure they are not borne by other ratepayers, including residents. Lucas had put something like this in her bill, but legislators recognized that the governor’s language was better.
With some amendments agreed to and others rejected, SB253 and HB1393 are now back with the governor, who will have to either accept the General Assembly’s version or veto them outright.
Other data center bills
Apart from SB 253/HB 1393 and the proposed budget amendments, only a few new laws will impact data center development. Most important among these is one allowing utilities to delay providing service to customers when necessary for grid reliability or to avoid exceeding capacity constraints. Other legislation requires utilities to developdemand flexibility programs for data centers, but such programs would be voluntary.
In an effort to limit the potential for overbuilding infrastructure, Dominion will now be required to provide information allowing the SCC to investigate the utility’s electric load forecasting. The General Assembly accepted an amendment from the governor increasing access to information used in making forecasts.
Residents impacted by data center development won very little in the way of protections. Localities will now have to require data centers to conduct site assessments before they can get special use permits or in rezoning. The Department of Environmental Quality will be prohibited from issuing air permits for diesel generators that don’t meet a Tier 4 equivalent standard for pollution controls, and beginning July 1, 2027, data centers will be required to report their water use. In addition, the Department of Energy will lead efforts to find ways to use the waste heat from data centers.
Renewable energy and storage
The General Assembly passed contentious solar siting legislation that raises standards while requiring localities that reject projects to report their reasons to the SCC. The governor’s minor amendments were accepted; they include a cross-reference to other legislation defining agrivoltaics.
The governor signed legislation significantly increasing the amount of storage Dominion and APCo are required to procure, and adding new targets for long-duration storage (over 10 hours). A separate bill requires Dominion to model economic dispatch scenarios for storage in its IRPs.
An energy storage facility that is co-located with a solar farm that already has an approved special exception will not be required to go through a new permitting process. Legislators acceded to the governor’s amendment limiting the capacity of the storage facility to 100% of the nameplate capacity of the solar facility.
Shared solar, a/k/a community solar, is set to expand significantly under bills approved for Dominion and APCoterritories. While the existing program in Dominion territory has so far benefited only low-income customers, the legislation requires that the expanded program enroll nearly as many non-low-income customers.
Though most of the renewable energy action this year has been around solar, the governor also approved legislation establishing an offshore wind industry workforce program.
Distributed resources
The percentage of renewable energy certificates that Dominion must obtain from projects below 1 MW is set to increase. The 50-kW minimum for power purchase agreements (PPAs) will no longer apply, allowing residents and small commercial customers to use solar or wind PPAs.
Standby charges for net-metered solar can now be assessed only above 20 kW for residential projects in Dominion territory. (In 2020, the VCEA removed them entirely in Appalachian Power territory.)
Balcony solar, also called plug-in solar, will become legal, with no local permit or utility approval required. The legislation provides for a maximum output from the solar panels of 1200 kW. The SCC will develop a notification form that the customer must provide to the utility.
Localities can now require solar canopies to be included on some new parking lots.
Appalachian Power must develop a virtual power plant (VPP) program, following similar legislation last year for Dominion. Separate legislation authorizes VPP programs for electric cooperatives.
By July 1, 2028, localities must adopt streamlined permitting software for residential solar, which can be an existing platform like the national SolarAPP+ or a Virginia-specific platform to be developed by Virginia’s Department of Energy.
A consumer protection bill requires solar companies to provide a set of disclosures to residential customers in an effort to eliminate predatory practices.
A distributed energy resources task force will meet to discuss additional ways to support distributed solar and storage. The governor amended this bill mainly to specify that the task force will be chaired by the Chief Energy Officer, which the House and Senate concurred with. In March the governor appointed Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Josephus Allmond to this new cabinet position, a move applauded by distributed energy advocates.
Finance
Most proposed grant funds for renewable energy did not survive their voyages to the Finance and Appropriations committees, but two avoided the shoals and have now been approved by the governor. One is a new clean energy innovation bank and fund. The other is a one-year, $2 million grant fund to defray solar interconnection costs incurred by public bodies.
Utility regulation
The governor approved the General Assembly’s overhaul of the utility planning process. Among the changes, Appalachian Power will once again have to submit integrated resource plans (IRPs) to the State Corporation Commission, all IRPs will use a 20-year planning period instead of 15 years, and both utilities must align their IRPs more closely with the VCEA.
Also approved was a bill requiring the SCC to consider and make recommendations on proposals concerning performance-based regulation of utilities.
Dominion and APCo will now have to submit annual reports to the SCC disclosing their votes at regional transmission organization PJM and explaining how these votes are in the public interest. The utilities’ votes were previously secret. Rising electricity rates due to data center demand and PJM’s failure to move on renewable energy projects awaiting interconnection have triggered suspicions that the utilities with voting power at PJM might be acting – ahem – other than in their customers’ best interests.
Of course, the move that will most affect the plans of utilities and other power generators is Virginia’s return to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, required now by statute. The timeline and procedure is laid out in the budget, but the administration hasn’t waited for that to be finalized. A statement from RGGI welcoming Virginia back into its fold says our participation will be in effect in time for this September’s carbon auction.
Grid optimization
The governor proposed, and legislators agreed to, a disappointing amendment to a bill requiring Dominion and APCo to assess their surplus interconnection capacities and establish pilot programs to add solar and storage at these connection points. The General Assembly had set hard targets for the pilot programs, subject to SCC approval; the amendment loosens the targets with the addition of the phrase “up to” those amounts. This further weakens a bill that was already a skinny version of its original handsome self.
Finally, Dominion and APCo will need to report grid utilization metrics to the SCC, which will use that data to report on the potential for increased grid utilization using non-wires alternatives.
Reports show that 2025 was another record year for solar in the United States. The nation saw 27,225 MW of solar added last year, more than any other energy source and blowing away natural gas, the only fossil fuel that gained capacity. In fact, the U.S. also installed more energy storage and wind energy than gas. All in all, clean energy added 50 GW to the grid, fully 92% of all new generating capacity.
And this didn’t just happen in states with renewable energy mandates. Texas took the lead on clean energy from California, installing 11.6 GW of new solar and 7 GW of battery storage. Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, and Arkansas were also among the top 10 states for solar additions in 2025.
But then there was Virginia. Virginia installed only 716 MW of solar in 2025, the least amount since 2019 and less than half of what it installed in 2024. The state added no new battery storage, though the Department of Environmental Quality approved plans for several projects late in the year.
For a state with one of the most ambitious energy transition laws in the country, we should be doing a heck of a lot better. For context: 716 MW of solar is less than the amount of new data center capacity Dominion Energy Virginia says it’s receiving requests for each month.
Never mind the Virginia Clean Economy Act, Virginia is going backwards on climate.
In 2020, the VCEA set Virginia on a path to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050, with clean energy targets that were both ambitious and achievable. In 2020, though, electricity use was barely growing. Today, our utilities are swamped with new demand from data centers.
Instead of ramping up additions of solar and storage, utilities are importing more fossil fuel electricity from other states – and in the case of Dominion, bucking the national trend towards renewables and instead pursuing a 944-MW gas peaker plant.
Sadly, the State Corporation Commission, which should enforce the VCEA, all but rubber-stamped Dominion’s flawed claim that the gas plant meets the requirements of the law’s reliability escape clause. The result will be higher bills for its customers, as Dominion’s increased reliance on fracked gas runs into the high gas prices that have made other states turn so heavily to clean energy.
The SCC also made it harder for the private sector to install solar. In February, the commission rejected a challenge from the Distributed Solar Alliance to Dominion’s punitive new interconnection requirements for projects over 250 kW, including most large rooftop projects on public schools. Again, the SCC simply accepted Dominion’s claims in the face of strong contradictory evidence.
All this backsliding has probably driven CO2 emissions higher instead of lower, though we don’t know for sure. Dominion used to calculate carbon emissions from its power plants in its integrated resource plans (IRPs) back when the numbers were declining. Its last couple of IRPs omitted the information, which might have drawn unwelcome attention to the incompatibility of new gas plants with climate action.
As for the state as a whole, the Department of Environmental Quality is responsible for keeping track of Virginia’s greenhouse gas emissions, updating an inventory it keeps on its website.
However, DEQ produced no updates during former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration until Youngkin was on his way out at the end of 2025, when it released an update for 2021. In response to an email I sent to DEQ, a spokeswoman told me the agency is now working on the 2022 inventory, and that this lag time is totally normal.
We have to assume the numbers for 2022 won’t be good, but they will only have gotten worse between then and now. Nationwide, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.4% in 2025, including a 3.8% rise in power sector emissions due to utilities burning 13% more coal. The increase in coal-burning is attributed to rising data center demand and high natural gas prices, which motivated fuel-switching at utilities.
But all that was 2025; in 2026 we have a new Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Surely things are looking up?
Dominion’s 2,600 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project will start delivering carbon-free power this month, with full completion expected next winter. The General Assembly has sent to the governor’s office the most ambitious set of energy bills since the VCEA, along with legislation and a budget amendment that will put Virginia back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
Returning to RGGI is important to reducing CO2, but it’s no panacea. RGGI works by sending a market signal to electricity generators in member states, rewarding efficiency and carbon-free energy and penalizing carbon-emitting generation.
However, it does not reach generators in non-member states, so the electricity Virginia imports is largely unmanaged. That’s a huge loophole that will only grow with the data center industry here, driving up overall carbon emissions. In the case of Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative – second in data center load only to Dominion – almost all of the electricity it provides to its customers is imported, and it is projecting enormous growth.
There are ways to close the loophole. Electric cooperatives could be required to meet the same renewable energy minimums that apply to Dominion and Appalachian Power, and data centers located anywhere in the state could be required to source clean energy. (The latter requirement was included in bills in both the House and Senate that died this year, though the House provisions might still be incorporated into a budget amendment that the governor and General Assembly leaders are debating.)
The SCC’s willingness to put consumers and the climate second to Dominion’s interests presents a separate problem. Some of the bills passed this year will make it harder for Dominion to propose further investments in gas plants; in particular, legislation requiring more storage and demand response and better management of the grid all work against the case for expensive peaker plants.
The House and Senate also passed integrated resource planning reform legislation that requires Dominion and Appalachian Power to present the SCC with plans that adhere more closely to the spirit of the VCEA. The General Assembly is also taking tentative stepstowards performance-based regulation, which would reward utilities for doing things like meeting clean energy and affordability goals rather than for just building more infrastructure.
But there is no way to fully tame profit-motivated utility monopolies that lavish elected officials with millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Gov. Abigail Spanberger and legislative leaders will have to remain vigilant and ready to counter SCC missteps like its orders on interconnection and Dominion’s gas plant, and to keep the pressure on the utilities to make money in ways that are better aligned with the public interest.
The good news is that Dominion tends to bend with the political winds. Though in the last few years it doubled down on gas in sync with Republican obsessions, back in 2022 it published a climate report that envisioned a grid dominated by solar. This year, with Democrats back in charge, Dominion is already acceding to some legislative initiatives it fought in past years.
But Spanberger needs to drive the agenda. She will have an opportunity to lay out a path forward this fall when she releases the energy plan that Virginia law requires of each new governor.
According to statute, the plan needs to identify actions to be taken over the next 10 years that further the goals of the Commonwealth Clean Energy Policy. The policy has a timeline that is even more aggressive than the VCEA’s (2040 instead of 2050 for electricity), and it targets the entire economy for decarbonization by 2045. That means the governor’s energy plan must address emissions from transportation, buildings, industry and agriculture as well as the power sector.
After that, it will be up to the governor to make sure her administration and the legislature follow through with the plan. Certainly, they face a daunting task in putting Virginia back on its climate track. But we won’t get there by building more gas and less solar.
Two themes have emerged in the first half of the General Assembly session this year. First, legislators have no intention of stopping the data center boom, even temporarily. And second, their preference for dealing with the skyrocketing energy demand is to piece together a lot of small and medium-sized initiatives in hopes they all add up to enough to meet the moment. If it doesn’t work, that’s a problem for next year.
I’ll write about data center legislation in my next column; for now, let’s look at some of the bills that are aimed at increasing the ability of Virginia utilities to serve the data centers – and incidentally, the rest of us.
Everybody seems to have ideas for how Virginia can generate more energy, use it better, or make the grid (and our utilities) operate more efficiently. Many of these ideas aren’t new, but the pressure of rising electricity rates means the stakes are higher than ever, and bills are often advancing with bipartisan support.
Notice how many different legislators are named as the sponsors of these bills. This is not just the usual in-crowd of energy wonks crafting measures. This year, everyone has ideas, and a remarkable number of these ideas are getting traction.
Making the most of the wires you’ve got
The first priority is to maximize use of the existing grid, allowing it to handle more power without building new transmission.
Bills addressing the grid take many forms, including targeting new generation for places on the grid where there is spare room already, using demand-response programs to shift demand from peak hours to off-peak, improving energy efficiency and tapping into distributed resources at homes and businesses to supplement what utilities can do.
House Bill 114 from Del. Lee Ware, R-Powhatan, and Senate Bill 267 from Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, task the SCC with studying alternatives to new generation. Possibilities to be studied include “capacity uprates for zero-carbon electric generating resources and energy storage resources and transmission upgrades including grid enhancing technologies and high-performance conductors.”
Intriguingly, the legislation also directs the SCC to analyze pathways for large load customers to voluntarily finance the grid upgrades “as a condition of accelerated interconnection.” Ware’s bill has already passed the House unanimously and is now in Senate Commerce and Labor, which is expected to hear the identical Senate version this week.
Similarly, HB 434 from Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Henrico, requires the SCC to set a “grid utilization standard” for Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Company, which the utilities are then required to meet. The bill passed the House unanimously. SB 621 from Sen. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun, is similar.
Last year the General Assembly passed legislation establishing a pilot program for a “virtual power plant” (VPP), a way to aggregate distributed generation and storage resources to help utilities shift some electricity demand away from peak times. VPPS have emerged as a way to tap into customer-sited resources for the benefit of the grid without the utility having to invest in a similar amount of generation – or the transmission to go with it.
Last year’s program was only for Dominion. This year bills expanding programs to APCo and interested electric cooperatives appear likely to pass both chambers without problems.
HB 1065, introduced by Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, known as the FAST Act, directs Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to examine the points on the grid where solar facilities are interconnected in order to figure out where there is room to add more capacity.
The idea is that the utilities ought to be able to add solar generation and storage where there is this surplus interconnection capacity instead of having to make new investments in grid capacity. The legislation then requires the utilities to issue requests for proposals for appropriate projects, under the supervision of an independent auditor.
HB 1065 has passed out of the Labor and Commerce committee. Its Senate companion, SB 508 from VanValkenburg, will be heard in Senate Commerce and Labor this week.
Energy efficiency programs remain one of the best tools for lowering energy consumption, freeing up room on the grid for new customers. Most legislation this year is aimed at serving low-income residents.
These include HB 2 from Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, which has already passed the House, and its companion, SB 72 from Srinivasan. The bills require Dominion and APCo to increase their efforts to serve qualifying households. HB 1393 from Bolling and SB 327 from VanValkenburg require these utilities to develop a program for spending on energy upgrades.
Other bills in the House and Senate establish a task force designed to remove barriers for low-income residents to access energy efficiency and weatherization programs.
And lest we not forget, low-income energy efficiency programs receive 50% of the auction proceeds from participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
When Gov. Glenn Youngkin yanked Virginia out of RGGI, hundreds of millions of dollars for these programs were lost. HB 397 from Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, and SB 802 from Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, reiterate the requirement that the state participate in RGGI. Herring’s bill has passed the House, and Locke’s bill is set to pass the Senate this week.
Outside the Capitol, Attorney General Jay Jones recently announced hestopped the state’s appeal of a court ruling that found former Gov. Glenn Youngkin unlawfully removed Virginia from RGGI.
Everything’s better with storage
Batteries and other forms of energy storage have emerged as a panacea of sorts for correcting the mismatch of generation and demand at various times of the day. Too much nuclear at night when no one needs that much power? Store it. Too much solar during the day? Okay, for now that’s a trick question. Solar still makes up less than 10% of our electricity. But you get the point.
That’s why one of this year’s most consequential pieces of legislation is HB 895 from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, and SB 448 from Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico. The bill hugely expands the VCEA’s targets for utility investments in energy storage, and includes new provisions for long-term storage of more than 10 hours in duration. Sullivan’s bill has gone to House Appropriations after passing out of Labor and Commerce, while Bagby’s has been referred from Commerce and Labor to the Finance committee.
A related bill from Sullivan, HB893, requires Dominion to assess the use of its energy storage resources through a power flow model. I would explain that if I understood it. The bill has reached the House floor.
A little energy here, a little there, and next thing you know you’ve got megawatts
Six years ago, a bill known as Solar Freedom caught on for its promise of removing barriers that were holding back rooftop solar. Most of its provisions became part of the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Loosening restrictions on customer investments in distributed generation led to significant increases in small solar facilities at homes and businesses as well as on public buildings, particularly schools.
This year, the loss of federal tax incentives for solar, coupled with a sense of urgency to add every possible kilowatt to a grid under strain, has prompted legislators to look for more ways, large and small, to unlock private investment in solar and storage.
Solar Freedom was successful in eliminating the dreaded “standby” charges assessed by Appalachian Power, while limiting Dominion’s ability to collect them for residential systems over 15 kW. This year, HB 1255 from Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax, aims to raise that to 20 kW. The bill has passed House Labor and Commerce and moves to the House floor.
Solar Freedom and the VCEA also made it easier for commercial and government customers to finance solar acquisition through power purchase agreements (PPAs); however, residents have not been allowed to use PPAs, with the exception of low-income customers. The prohibition made no sense then, and it is a genuine barrier now that residents can no longer access federal tax credits for solar through direct ownership of the panels.
HB 628 from Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Albermarle, resolves that problem along with increasing the percentage of the state’s renewable portfolio standard that must be met with distributed generation projects of under one megawatt. The legislation passed the House unanimously. Its Senate companion is expected to be heard this week.
Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar, captured the public’s imagination this fall as a simple, low-cost way for residents to access solar without the hassle of permits and interconnection agreements. Several bills in the House were rolled into one piece of legislation carried by Fairfax Democrat Del. Paul Krizek and Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax. The House version has already passed the chamber unanimously, while the Senate version will be heard in committee this week.
Another idea popular with the public is putting solar canopies over parking lots. HB 1234 from Del. Briana Sewell, D-Prince William, would allow localities to require certain commercial developers to install solar on as much as 50% of a surface parking lot with more than 100 spaces. The bill has been reported from committee and will head now to the House floor. A Senate companion, SB26 from Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, will be heard this week in committee.
HB 590 from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, and SB 382 from Surovell, streamline residential solar permitting in an effort to reduce delays and “soft costs” that drive up the cost of distributed solar.
Finally, Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi is expected to head up a task force to seek further ways to promote distributed solar and generation if a bill from Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, and VanValkenburg succeeds.
Making it easier to build stuff, big and little
A related group of bills shares the goal of making it easier to get energy and storage projects sited, permitted or over the finish line.
Two bills expand the existing shared solar programs available in Dominion and APCo territories. HB 807 from Sullivan and SB 254 from Surovell expand the Dominion program by an additional 525 MW, with a provision for more after that.
Sullivan and Surovell are also the patrons of House and Senate bills expanding the smaller APCo program by 100 MW in two stages, again with provision for more later. Both of Sullivan’s bills have now passed the House unanimously, while Surovell awaits action in Senate Commerce and Labor.
HB 891 from Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax, and SB 443 from Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William, will make it easier to site battery storage at solar facilities by removing the second round of permitting. The bills have passed both the House and Senate.
As I’ve written before, getting solar projects approved at the local level has increasingly been a challenge in rural parts of Virginia. A bill I especially liked, allowing farmers to install solar by right, failed in subcommittee. However, legislation setting standards for projects and requiring localities to consider them on their merits (in lieu of blanket bans) has already passed both the House and Senate.
A few legislators have proposed grant programs to help customers, and in some cases utilities, pay for solar and storage. All of these face an uphill battle in the money committees; if successful, they will have to fight for a slice of the budget pie.
HB 1089 from Del. Michael Webert, R-Fauquier, and SB 415 from Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, increase the subsidy for an existing program incentivizing solar on brownfields and coal mine sites. HB 1133 from Del. David Reid, D-Loudoun, and SB 834 from Sen. Michael Jones, D-Richmond, establish a new grant program for solar and, especially, batteries. (Update: Reid’s bill perished, but Jones’ has reached the Senate floor.)
HB 683 from Herring and SB 659 from Sen. Christie New Craig, R-Chesapeake, create a grant fund to help pay the interconnection costs for solar on schools and other public bodies. Herring’s has passed the House. New Craig’s has reached the Senate floor.
Meanwhile, HB 1444 from Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, and SB 225from Surovell create a green bank to provide financing for clean energy projects.
Looking towards the future
Lawmakers are thinking long term about offshore wind energy. Sure, it feels like the industry has stalled out in the face of President Trump’s visceral loathing, but the general feeling is that the hostility will disappear in three years when its source does. Meanwhile, the East Coast is desperate for new energy sources close to load centers that don’t require new transmission lines on land. Offshore wind still fits the bill.
That may be why offshore wind continues to earn bipartisan support in Virginia. HB 67 from Del. Michael Feggans, D-Virginia Beach, was among the earliest bills to pass both chambers this session, with support from members of both parties. Both HB67 and SB 25 from Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, would organize an offshore wind workforce effort.
(We will have some catching up to do. While U.S. states struggle to complete the 5 GW of offshore wind currently under construction in the face of Trump’s attacks, the rest of the world has kept building. China’s offshore wind capacity has grown to more than 40 gigawatts, and its advances in the technology have made it cost-competitive there.)
If all else fails, throw a Hail Mary
Legislators still like to think big, when “big” is comfortably off in the future, where potential problems don’t loom as large. Many of them have their sights set on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). If all goes well, they hope, this technology will provide many gigawatts of carbon-free energy on a 24/7 basis, paid for by tech companies. If things don’t go well, a few overpriced projects would provide a nice boondoggle for Dominion and APCo at ratepayer expense. What’s not to like?
Currently the VCEA treats nuclear as a middle-tier resource, neither incentivized like renewable energy nor discouraged like fossil fuels. Some legislators from both parties want to elevate new nuclear to the same status as renewable energy, proposing a system of “zero emission credits” (ZECs) that both utilities and customers like data centers could purchase in lieu of renewable energy credits (RECs).
Though the House Labor and Commerce committee does not seem inclined to take up Republican bills to make nuclear qualify for the renewable portfolio standard, other pro-nuclear bills are moving forward.
HB 369, from Reid, allows certain corporate customers to buy ZECs from Virginia sources and avoid their share of a utility’s renewable energy costs. The bill has made it to the House floor and is likely to pass this week.
In the Senate, the nuclear bill most likely to pass is SB 598, from Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville.
Deeds’ bill puts ZECs on an equal footing with RECs beginning in 2035. The legislation also speeds up the timeline for Dominion to purchase renewable energy in the near term and increases the percentage of it that must be built by third parties. From 2035 to 2045, Dominion and APCo are instructed to seek permission from the SCC to build or buy zero-carbon energy – 1600 MW for APCo and 5,000 MW for Dominion. Again, half of that would be developed by third parties.
The bill also allows the SCC to reduce the targets if load growth doesn’t justify them. Oddly, however, the SCC is not empowered to cancel the targets for reasons like questionable safety, lousy economics or commercial non-viability, a remarkable oversight given the less-than-stellar track record of the SMRs under development. The bill will be heard in Senate Commerce and Labor this week.
This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on February 10, 2026. It has been updated to include one bill I left out and to reflect recent action at the General Assembly.
Legislators cue up last year’s vetoed legislation for a new session, but leave us wanting more
Last spring Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed more energy bills than he signed, killing legislation designed to increase rooftop solar and energy storage, strengthen utility planning requirements, and make efficiency improvements more available to low-income residents.
Now, with Abigail Spanberger set to replace Youngkin in the Governor’s Mansion and Democrats in a position of legislative strength, those bills are back.
Members of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR) met several times this fall to examine last year’s failed energy bills to determine which should get the commission’s endorsement this year. CEUR is comprised primarily of legislative leaders from the Senate and House committees that hear energy bills, so endorsements signal a strong likelihood of passage.
But while the bills CEUR endorsed show promise, I can’t help thinking they had better be just a starting point.
Energy affordability and making data centers pay their fair share are supposed to be the top objectives for legislators this year. That makes it interesting, and concerning, that even as CEUR went beyond the vetoed bills to endorse some small new initiatives, it didn’t propose any legislation that would either supercharge generation in Virginia or put the onus on the tech companies to solve their supply problem themselves.
We know bills like that are coming. Ann Bennett, the lead author of the Sierra Club’s comprehensive report on the state of the industry in Virginia, was, I hope, being hyperbolic when she told me she expects “a hundred” data center bills this session. Regardless, there will be a lot of them.
Many will be land use bills that don’t go to the energy committees, but others will tackle the central contradiction at the heart of Virginia’s data center buildout: our leaders want the industry to grow, but haven’t faced squarely the problem of where the energy will come from.
Getting more power on the grid (or freeing up capacity)
Some of the vetoed bills returning this year will put more energy on the grid. They won’t be enough to power the data center industry, but every bit helps. This includes one of the environmental communities’ top priorities, a bill that expands the role of rooftop solar in Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS).
A new bill permitting balcony solar also got CEUR’s endorsement. Balcony solar – two or three panels that plug into a wall outlet, reducing a resident’s need to buy power – is the buzziest new idea of the year. The systems are too small to make much of a difference in megawatt terms, but by democratizing access to solar they counter the reputation of solar as a technology for rich people and will make it possible for solar skeptics to see for themselves that solar does actually work and save money.
Another CEUR initiative is a bill similar to one Youngkin vetoed that creates a carveout in the state’s renewable portfolio standard specifically for geothermal heat pumps. Like balcony solar, geothermal heat pumps don’t put electricity onto the grid, but by freeing up power for other customers it has the same effect.
CEUR also endorsed a bill to simplify billing in the shared solar program in Appalachian Power Company’s territory, but a far more significant proposal to greatly expand shared solar in Dominion territory was deemed not ready for consideration after one of its patrons, Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, said it was still in negotiation.
The SCC recently directed a change in the calculation of Dominion Energy’s minimum bill that industry advocates say should make the program workable for customers beyond the low-income residents who were the only ones formerly able to access it. As currently drafted, the bill would allow shared solar to increase up to a maximum of 6% of Dominion’s peak load. That gives this bill the potential to make a meaningful dent in Virginia’s energy shortfall – if Dominion doesn’t block it.
That assumes developers can get the community solar projects permitted at the local level.
Virginia localities are notorious for denying permits to solar projects of all sizes, a recalcitrance that has contributed to Virginia having to import fully half of the electricity consumed in the state. CEUR has now scrapped last year’s big idea of allowing solar developers to appeal local government permit denials to the SCC, after failing to persuade enough legislators to vote for it last year. All that is left of that bill is a piece that establishes a university consortium to provide research and technical assistance.
Luckily, last year’s other major solar siting bill lives on; it codifies best practices for solar projects without removing localities’ ability to deny permits even for projects that meet the high standards. New this year, however, is a requirement that localities provide a record of their decisions to the SCC, including the reason for any adverse decision.
It’s not the solution the industry and landowners need to bring predictability to the local permitting process, but it does ratchet up pressure on county boards that have a habit of denying projects without articulating a legitimate reason. And sure enough, imposing that modest amount of accountability was enough to get Joe Lerch from the Virginia Association of Counties to speak against the proposal at the CEUR meeting.
VACO seems likely to lose the fight this time around, and it should. Blocking solar development leads directly to higher electricity prices for consumers across the state. Moreover, it denies even a minimum of due process to landowners who want to install solar on their property – including farmers who need the income just to hold onto their land. For VACO to insist on counties having carte blanche to reject projects, with no responsibility to justify their decision, is arrogant and an abuse of the local prerogative.
Making the most of what’s already there
Anyone who keeps up with energy news has learned more in the past year about how the grid works than most of us ever wanted to know. There is widespread agreement that grid operator PJM has mismanaged its job, keeping new low-cost generation from interconnecting and driving up utility bills for customers across the region. Unfortunately, there is little that Virginia can do by itself to fix PJM.
But one key bit of information we can use is that utilities and the grid operator build infrastructure to meet the highest levels of demand on the hottest afternoons and coldest nights of the year, leaving much of that infrastructure sitting idle at other times. A recent study showed the grid could absorb far more data center demand than it can now if it weren’t for the 5% of the time when demand is at its highest.
The issue is framed in terms of data centers being willing to curtail operations at times of peak demand, a solution for the companies that can do it. But there is also a broader point: we don’t need as much new generation if we use what we have better.
That’s the principle behind several bills that CEUR endorsed. The most significant of these is a bill vetoed by Youngkin last year that almost doubles the targets for short-term energy storage laid out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act and adds targets for long-duration energy storage. As currently drafted, the 2026 version also adds new fire safety standards.
But CEUR did not discuss another obvious approach to increasing storage capacity on the grid: requiring data centers to have storage on-site, replacing highly-polluting diesel generators for at least the first couple of hours of a power outage and using spare battery capacity to assist the grid at other times. If Virginia is going to keep adding data centers at the current rate, this simply has to be part of the plan. We need far more storage than the CEUR bill calls for, and tech companies, not ratepayers, should bear the cost.
CEUR’s utility reform proposals would also help Virginia’s grid get the most out of what we already have. A bill to improve the integrated resource planning process (again, vetoed by Youngkin) requires utilities to consider surplus interconnection service projects to maximize existing transmission capacity.
CEUR also proposes to have the SCC create a workgroup to study load flexibility. Though the SCC is already doing this through its technical conferences, the proposed legislation would formalize the process and task the work group with making recommendations.
And if all else fails, under another CEUR initiative, utilities would be explicitly allowed to delay service to new customers with more than 90 MW of demand if there wasn’t the generation or transmission available to serve them, or to protect grid reliability. As a fail-safe this is both obvious and inadequate; if a utility doesn’t have that authority now, it certainly needs it — but it needs it for a customer of any size.
Helping low-income residents save money
CEUR endorsed several proposals that could help residents save money on energy bills. Some, like shared solar, balcony solar, geothermal heat pumps and the distributed solar expansion bill, would benefit anyone willing to make the investment.
For low-income residents, weatherization and efficiency upgrades remain the focus. Last year the governor vetoed legislation from Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax and Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico, which would have required Dominion and APCo to expand their low-income weatherization assistance to reach 30% of qualifying customers. Sickles has already reintroduced his bill as HB2. CEUR endorsed a different recommendation from staff that the two utilities be required to extend their spending on energy assistance and weatherization programs.
CEUR did not examine a related bill that has been reintroduced this year following a Youngkin veto last winter, establishing an income-qualified energy efficiency and weatherization task force to produce policy recommendations to ensure repairs and retrofits reach all eligible households.
However, CEUR endorsed a bill that will require all utilities to disclose to the SCC information about electric utility disconnections, which presumably will inform the work of the task force.
We’re going to need more
Even taken together, CEUR’s initiatives don’t fully address the biggest energy crunch Virginia has ever faced, and the rising utility bills that result. Possibly that is intentional; Democrats will continue to control the governor’s seat as well as the legislature for at least two years, giving them time to ramp up programs and see what works.
But data center development is so far outstripping supply side solutions that if legislators aren’t more aggressive this year, next year they will find themselves further behind than ever.
As more bills are filed over the coming weeks, we are likely to see plenty of bold proposals. Hopefully, legislators now understand the urgency, and will be ready to act.
An earlier version of this article appeared in the Virginia Mercury on December 15, 2025. It has been edited to include the last two bills in the section titled “Making the most of what’s already there.”
An aggressive legislative agenda this year will demonstrate national leadership on managing the data center buildout while delivering climate, health and economic benefits to all Virginians
Solar on schools and other public buildings reduce pressure on the grid while saving money for taxpayers. Photo courtesy of Secure Solar Futures LLC
If Virginia’s election last month was more than an unleashing of anti-Trump sentiment (and it definitely was that), it was about affordability. Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger made the cost of living the focus of her campaign, frequently mentioning high energy bills. House Democrats, whose majority has been boosted by the addition of 13 new members of their party, are also expected to focus on these bread-and-butter issues.
In Virginia, the cause of these high bills is not hard to identify: Data centers are driving up demand well beyond the available supply, and high fossil fuel prices are pinching a state that relies on natural gas for most of its electricity. Spanberger has committed to making data centers “pay their fair share,” and both she and legislators will be looking for other opportunities to lower costs.
The bad news is that adding ever more data centers across Virginia means the upward pressure on electricity prices will continue. If the governor and legislators don’t want to kick tech companies to states with spare capacity, and if the administration of President Donald Trump continues to throttle the energy supply with its war on wind and solar, lowering energy costs in the near term likely isn’t possible.
Even so, there is a lot that Spanberger and the General Assembly can do to protect residential consumers from these higher prices.
Making data centers pay their fair share means more than tweaking rate structures. Several Virginia utilities have created special rate classes for large load users like data centers. The utilities will require data center operators to sign long-term contracts committing them to paying for a large percentage of the electricity and transmission they say they need, even if they don’t end up using that much or leave the Virginia market prematurely.
These new tariffs can help protect other customers from some – though not all – of the risk involved in serving data centers, but they don’t address the “fair share” issue. The current allocation of transmission costs, with residential ratepayers picking up most of the tab for new lines that don’t benefit them, needs to change. If the SCC determines it doesn’t have authority to do that on its own, the General Assembly and Spanberger should pass legislation to make it happen.
The harder problem is how to make residents whole for rate increases that result from data centers gobbling up all available power. The supply and demand problem has been compounded by a lot of bad decisions, with plenty of blame to go around. The federal government has driven up fossil fuel prices by allowing the export of increasing amounts of natural gas, while hindering and even blocking solar and offshore wind projects that could make up the deficit.
Outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin is to blame for illegally pulling Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), removing the market incentive for Virginia utilities to increase investments in low-cost renewable energy instead of burning expensive fossil fuels. (His promotion of the false narrative that gas is “cheap” doesn’t help.)
Virginia utilities share the blame for relying too much on natural gas and high-priced electricity imported from other PJM states. And grid operator PJM is to blame for failing to approve enough new generation, including wind and solar facilities that make up the vast majority of projects waiting for approval to interconnect.
This history leaves Spanberger with a fine mess. Keeping prices in check now requires two things that can actually be accomplished during the next four years: a greater buildout of solar generation and energy storage to get more capacity on the grid; and investments in energy efficiency and rooftop solar to take pressure off the demand side.
Solve utility solar siting with agrivoltaics. Virginia needs more energy, and solar is the only source that can be built quickly. Yet one of the knottiest problems confronting the General Assembly in the past few years has been the rise of anti-solar sentiment in rural counties.
Landowners who want to lease their property for solar, or even to install arrays for their own use, find themselves stymied by opposition from neighbors who don’t like the look and are able to persuade county boards to deny permits. As we’ve seen, sometimes denial of a solar permit even follows approval of an energy-sucking data center.
Last year the General Assembly came close to passing a bill that would require solar developers to implement industry best practices. Passing legislation like that this year will address the legitimate concerns of localities around controlling erosion and maintaining native plant buffers. But more can be done to make solar look and function like a normal part of Virginia’s agricultural economy.
Already, solar facilities have become integrated with agriculture, as sheep and sometimes cattle take over vegetation management and farmers learn which crops do well growing between rows of solar arrays. It’s a trend that offers benefits to the land and the community alike. Farmers are struggling; solar can provide a stable income while protecting land from permanent development and putting much-needed energy on the grid.
Businesses are ahead of public policy on this. Virginia-based Gray’s Lambscaping manages vegetation with over 800 sheep at solar farms across the state, and the company plans to grow to over 5,000 sheep by the end of this year. Meanwhile, solar panels have proven compatible with a wide range of food crops.
Virginia should take a leading role in expanding agrivoltaics. Virginia law already recognizes the right to farm as an exception to localities’ authority over land use decisions, and this should be extended to farmers who put solar on their land, as long as they are also using the same land for traditional agricultural practices like grazing and crops.
Install solar on new public buildings and schools. Heck, put it everywhere. In the past ten years or so, Virginia’s commercial solar sector has blossomed while saving taxpayers money. To date, an estimated 150 Virginia schools have installed solar panels, saving schools about 25% on their energy bills. Solar on every sunny school rooftop would add up to more than 1,000 MW of carbon-free generation. Extend the effort to the roofs of all suitable public buildings across the state, and that number can go much higher.
Dominion and APCo have long tried to squelch competition from rooftop solar, a war that looks increasingly foolish as Virginia finds itself short on energy for all customers. Earlier this year Congress drastically accelerated the phase-out of solar tax incentives, but the savings remain available for commercial and utility-scale projects for the next two years. There is no shortage of good ideas out there to be acted upon. Spanberger and legislators should take full advantage of that opportunity to install as much solar as possible.
Battery storage at data centers does triple duty. While solar is the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest way to generate power, it needs batteries or other forms of energy storage to make it into a 24/7 resource, and storage remains relatively expensive. For tech companies, however, the calculus makes more sense.
Data centers need backup power anyway; they typically have three layers of redundancy so that they never risk losing power when the grid goes down. Today the backup power is mostly provided by massive diesel generators, sometimes three times as many as they might actually need. Most of these have no pollution controls and are therefore not supposed to run except in emergencies and for testing and maintenance. That’s sill a lot of run time — and DEQ is proposing to make matters worse by expanding the definition of “emergency” to include scheduled outages.
Some tech companies are now installing generators with selective catalytic converters that produce fewer emissions. The catch is that these can legally be used in non-emergency situations, raising the possibility that they might be used for demand-response or peak shaving. In effect, data centers would be solving the peak demand problem with one of the dirtiest forms of energy. The cumulative effect on air quality could be worrisome, and Virginia’s carbon footprint would grow at a time when the law says it should be shrinking.
What if, instead of diesel generators, data centers installed storage as their first line of defense against power outages, leaving diesel generators to be used only in the rare case of extended grid outages? Air quality would benefit, carbon emissions would decrease, and the data centers would have the backup power they need. The tech companies would pay more upfront but could be compensated by utilities for using their storage capability for grid services and demand response, lowering their draw from the grid at peak demand times.
All the data centers in Virginia today use 6 gigawatts of power. That much storage would exceed the targets set in the VCEA for Dominion and APCo combined. Even limiting the requirement to two hours of storage at new data centers would bring enough storage online quickly to eliminate the expensive demand peaks that drive the high price of energy.
Require data center operators to source their own zero-carbon electricity. Most of the tech companies have sustainability commitments that they aren’t meeting, so it isn’t asking too much of them to put them in charge of this effort. Legislation to require this as a condition of accepting Virginia’s generous tax subsidies has been defeated for the past two years. The difference this year is that rising energy prices are now affecting everyone.
Under this proposal, the zero-carbon electricity doesn’t have to come from Virginia, as long as it is available to customers here. Maybe the tech companies could even tap into their considerable influence with the Trump administration to make electricity more plentiful and affordable by reversing its war on solar and wind energy.
Why, after all, should Virginia residents sacrifice for the richest corporations in the world? If “paying their fair share” means anything, it should mean that data centers, not residents, bear the costs of making enough energy available to Virginia, and complying with our clean energy mandate.
Lower demand with energy efficiency and distributed solar. The gap between energy supply and demand does not have to be filled entirely through supply-side solutions. Lowering demand should also be part of the solution. Virginia utilities, Dominion in particular, have done a poor job of running energy efficiency programs. Looking on the bright side, though, that means plenty of opportunities remain.
House Democrats have already started work on this issue, with a focus on lowering winter heating costs for lower-income households. As reported in the Mercury last week, HB 2, from Farifax Del. Mark Sickles, requires Dominion and APCo to make their “best, reasonable efforts” to provide energy efficiency and weatherization to 30% of income-qualified customers by the end of 2031. HB 3, from Del. Destiny Levere Bolling, D-Henrico, sets up a task force to study income-qualified energy efficiency and weatherization.
These steps are okay for starters, and they would be juiced by the influx of money from RGGI carbon auctions (see next section), earmarked for low-income energy efficiency. But Dominion has repeatedly failed to meet the energy efficiency targets the legislature sets for it, and after all, why stop with 30% of low-income customers when all households could benefit from more comprehensive programs? Virginia can do much better.
My last column discussed Rewiring America’s proposal to have tech companies pay for heat pumps, solar and batteries in the residential sector, saving money for households and freeing up capacity for data centers to come online sooner. An independent provider could run the program and verify the energy savings.
(If the tech companies complain that an awful lot of the solutions I’m proposing come at their expense, it’s true. But the industry benefits from a state tax subsidy that has reached nearly a billion dollars per year, and will only grow further as the number of data centers doubles and triples. They can afford to give back.)
Use RGGI for long-term affordability. Gov.-elect Spanberger has committed to seeing Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the compact of northeastern states working to lower carbon emissions by 30% by 2030. RGGI works by requiring owners of carbon-emitting generating plants to buy carbon allowances at auction, penalizing carbon-intensive generation and rewarding investments in zero-carbon facilities like wind, solar and nuclear. States collect the auction proceeds, which in Virginia are dedicated to low-income energy efficiency and climate adaptation measures.
Republicans have already renewed their attacks on RGGI, calling it a tax on energy consumers. To the extent that’s true, it’s a tax mostly paid by the largest consumers (including data centers) for the benefit of low-income residents and people most vulnerable to storms and sea level rise. Moreover, all energy consumers benefit over the longer term as low-cost clean energy increasingly replaces expensive fossil fuels.
Beef up efficiency standards in the residential building code. Most people who buy a new home assume that modern building codes incorporate the latest standards for insulation and efficient technology. In Virginia, they do not. Buyers would be dismayed to learn that their homes are costing them more on their utility bills than they saved on a purchase price supposedly made more affordable by poorer-quality insulation and appliances. Buyers are rarely consulted on these trade-offs, and few have the expertise to question a builder’s choices. Building codes are supposed to do that job.
Unfortunately, Virginia’s Board of Housing and Community Development, which writes the code, is dominated by the homebuilding industry. The industry wants to build homes as cheaply as possible to ensure the highest profit possible on the homes it sells. Even as national model code standards have become more rigorous, homebuilders have protected their own interests by keeping weak energy efficiency requirements in Virginia’s residential building code.
In 2021, Virginia adopted legislation requiring the board to consider and adopt energy standards “at least as stringent as” the latest national model code standards when the benefits over time to residents and the public exceed the incremental costs of construction. But the board simply didn’t do it. Will this be the year legislators realize that a board dominated by the industry it regulates won’t act in the public interest without explicit directions?
This is Virginia’s moment. Since the passage of the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020, renewable energy and storage have only gotten cheaper, while energy efficiency opportunities remain plentiful. Coal has solidified its place as the most expensive baseload source, and fossil gas remains stubbornly expensive compared to solar. Spanberger and the Democratic majority have an opening this year to go big on clean energy. An aggressive legislative agenda this year will demonstrate national leadership on managing the data center buildout while delivering climate, health and economic benefits to all Virginians.
This column was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on December3, 2025.
There is a principle in law that says someone intends the natural result of their actions. You cannot throw me out a window and say you didn’t mean for me to get hurt.
By the same principle, if you block new solar and wind generation, you can’t say you didn’t intend to throttle energy production.
President Trump has made it clear he wants to kill wind and solar, and his appointees have followed through. The Department of Interior is refusing leases and permits to wind and solar projects, even as it moves ahead on lease sales for oil and gas drilling.
Interior even issued a stop-work order on an offshore wind farm that is 80% complete. The project was on track to supply enough energy for 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, until the Trump administration stepped in. A judge later lifted the order, but not before the company building the project saw its share price drop to a record low.
Reducing the amount of low-cost, clean electricity developers can add to the grid will have an enormous impact. Clean energy is so much less expensive and faster to build than fossils fuels that renewable energy and batteries made up over 90% of the energy capacity added in the U.S. last year.
It’s fortunate for consumers that Trump won’t be able to stop all wind and solar projects, because the small number of fossil fuel plants under development won’t fill the gap. It takes years to develop a new gas plant, and gas turbines face an order backlog of up to 7 years.
The shortfall in new generation is happening at a time when the use of electricity is surging, mainly due to demand from data centers. Other customers, including ordinary residents, now have to compete with data centers for increasingly expensive electricity. Rates are going up as a result, and grid operators warn we may soon face power shortages.
Trump’s only concession to the power crunch is to order a few fossil fuel plants to stay open that their owners had planned to close for economic reasons. Ordering an uneconomic plant to stay open means someone loses money. Trump hasn’t offered federal dollars to pay the difference. The utilities that own the plants will pass the cost on to consumers.
If throttling energy production and raising energy costs is the natural result of Trump’s actions, it’s reasonable to assume that’s his intent. So many experts have pointed out the damage his policy will do that the alternative explanation – that the president is deluded and foolishly thinks his actions will somehow result in more energy production and lower costs – doesn’t hold up.
But why would the president deliberately hamstring American energy production and raise electricity costs for consumers?
Because that’s the deal he made with oil and gas industry leaders at a closed-door fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago last year, in exchange for the more than $200 million the industry spent to get him elected. Actually, Trump asked for a billion dollars, and in return promised to dismantle environmental regulations, go after the wind industry and scrap President Biden’s policies promoting electric vehicles.
Promises made, promises kept, as Trump’s fans like to say. Trump’s appointees have gutted environmental protections and done their best to keep wind and solar off the grid. Most people know the “One Big Beautiful Bill” revoked tax incentives for homes and businesses to install solar; less widely reported is that it included $18 billion in tax incentives for the oil and gas industry and lowered the amounts the industry must pay to lease federal lands for drilling, among other rewards.
Less renewable energy and higher prices means more market share and higher profits for fossil fuels. The natural result is that the American consumer will have to pay through the nose for energy.
Too bad, folks, but that was the deal.
This article was originally published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on September 30, 2025.
What lights up your life? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Running for office requires candidates to know about topics they might never have given much thought to. Most Virginia campaigns are won or lost on hot-button issues like taxes, education, reproductive rights, guns and gay marriage, so everyone who runs for office has a position on these questions. This holds true for candidates in this year’s high-stakes races for the state’s executive branch and all 100 House of Delegates seats.
Inevitably, though, there are topics the average candidate doesn’t completely grasp. Some are narrow and – thankfully – nonpartisan. Where do you stand on Sunday hunting? Should I-81 have more lanes? How do you feel about skill games? Will you vote to save the menhaden, whatever a menhaden is? (It’s a fish, and I encourage you to say yes.)
Other topics affect the lives of every Virginian, but they are, frankly, complicated. One of these is energy. Not only is it hard to get up to speed on energy issues, but technology is changing so rapidly that keeping abreast of developments would be a full-time job. Who would spend that kind of time on such a dreary topic?
Uh, that would be me.
So here we go: I’m going to cover five things political hopefuls need to know about energy in Virginia before you get to the General Assembly and start passing laws that affect your constituents’ wallets and futures. And for voters, these are things you should ask candidates about before they earn your vote.
First up:
If you are going to talk about energy, you have to talk about data centers
By now you surely know that Virginia has embraced the most energy-intensive industry to come along since the steam engine launched the Industrial Revolution. Northern Virginia hosts the world’s largest concentration of data centers, which already consume an estimated 25% of the state’s electricity, with massively more development planned. The reason isn’t vacation photos or Instagram cat videos; it’s the competition to develop artificial intelligence (AI).
After putting tax incentives in place to attract the industry 15 years ago, the General Assembly and the current governor have rejected all attempts to put guardrails on development or make data centers more energy efficient. The subsidies now cost taxpayers a billion dollars per year (and counting). Virginia asks for almost nothing in return.
Under the best of circumstances, the skyrocketing demand for electricity would put upward pressure on energy prices. But our situation is even worse: Virginia already imports about half our electricity from other states, and the regional grid that we’re part of faces its own energy crunch.
Grid manager PJM has been so slow to approve new generation that governors from member states, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, wrote a letter taking PJM to task and urging it to move faster. But the damage has been done. Supply is tight, electricity prices have risen, and prices will continue to rise unless and until supply catches up.
PJM has decided to fast-track new high-cost, gas-fired generating plants ahead of the cheaper renewable energy projects that make up 95% of the queue. It’s a much-criticized move and seems more likely to increase costs. Once built, fossil gas plants burn a fuel that has doubled in price just over the past year, threatening a repeat of the post-pandemic price surge that Virginia ratepayers are still paying for. And there is no relief in sight, with utilities now having to compete with a doubling of U.S. natural gas exports.
Short of unleashing all the renewable energy stuck in the queue, there is no easy way to protect Virginia residents from higher electricity costs. Dominion Energy, Appalachian Power, and at least one of the electric cooperatives have proposed special rate classes for large-load customers, but that would shield residents from only some of the costs of serving the data centers.
Utility bills are going up. Dominion Energy is seeking hefty rate increases that would push up residential bills by an average of more than $10 per month in base rates plus almost $11 per month in fuel costs, primarily due to those higher natural gas prices. Coal-heavy APCo has seen even steeper rate increases in the past few years.
Virginia needs new legislation ensuring data centers bear the full expense and risks of serving Big Tech, and they should be required to source their own clean energy. Localities, meanwhile, must be required to evaluate the costs to all Virginians before they issue permits to data centers, including considerations like where the energy will come from, water impacts, and the siting of transmission lines.
You can’t get from here to there without solar
Virginia wasn’t producing all of its own energy even before the data center rush, and PJM’s problems are now pushing us into a crisis. Our near-term options are limited; new data centers are breaking ground at a breathtaking rate, and only solar can be installed on the timeline needed to prevent an energy shortfall. Even if we were willing to pay for high-priced gas or nuclear plants, developers face a backlog of as long as seven years for gas turbines, and advanced nuclear is still not commercially viable.
Fortunately, solar is not just the fastest energy source to deploy, it’s also the cheapest and cleanest. Though President Donald Trump blames rising electricity prices on renewable energy, that’s false, just one of many myths the fossil fuel industry has propagated against solar. Nor is solar unreliable, another myth. When solar is paired with battery storage, it can match the rise and fall of demand perfectly.
It’s true, however, that while the great majority of Virginians support solar energy, many rural residents oppose it on aesthetic grounds. Of course, they would also oppose nuclear reactors and gas fracking in their neighborhoods. Legislators should be sensitive to their concerns – but having chosen to welcome data centers, Virginia leaders can’t just shrug off the need for energy.
We also have to recognize that many farmers need to lease their land for solar in order to keep the land in their family and generate stable income. This should be as important a consideration to lawmakers as the objections of people who aren’t paying the taxes on the farm. Preventing landowners from making profitable use of their land is more likely to lead to the land being sold for development than to it remaining agricultural.
The good news is that solar panels are compatible with agricultural uses including livestock grazing, beekeeping, vineyards and some crops. Dominion Energy uses sheep instead of lawnmowers at several of its solar facilities in Virginia and plans to expand the practice. The combination is a beautiful synergy: sheep and native grasses improve the soil, and in 30 years when the solar panels are removed, the land has not been lost to development.
While there is no getting around the need for utility-scale solar projects, rooftop solar also has an important role to play. In addition to harnessing private dollars to increase electricity generation, distributed solar saves money for customers and makes communities more resilient in the face of extreme weather.
This year the governor vetoed a bill to expand the role of distributed solar in Virginia. The legislation had garnered strong bipartisan support, so it will likely pass again next year. However, lawmakers will need to go further to encourage customer investments in solar now that federal tax credits will be eliminated for residential consumers at the end of this year.
Batteries: For all your reliability needs
The fastest-growing energy sector today is battery storage. Batteries allow utilities to meet peaks in demand without having to build gas combustion turbines that typically run less than 10% of the time. Batteries also pair perfectly with intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, storing their excess generation and then delivering electricity when these resources aren’t available.
Battery prices have tumbled to new lows, while the technology continues to improve. Most lithium-ion batteries provide 4 hours of storage, enough to meet evening peak demand with midday solar. When renewable energy becomes a larger part of Virginia’s energy supply (it’s less than 10% now) we will need longer term storage, such as the iron-air batteries that are part of a Dominion pilot program. This year the governor vetoed a bill that would have increased the amount of storage our utilities must invest in. Given the increasing importance of batteries to the grid, the legislation will likely be reintroduced next year.
Batteries installed at homes and businesses can also play a vital role in supporting the grid. Alone or combined with distributed solar, smart meters and electric vehicle charging, customer devices can be aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) to make more electricity available to the grid at peak demand times. Dominion will be developing a VPP pilot program under the terms of legislation passed this year.
Advanced nuclear is still in Maybeland
The enormous expense of building large nuclear plants using conventional light-water technology has made development almost nonexistent in this century. Proponents believe new technology will succeed with scaled-down plants that can, in theory, be standardized and modularized to lower costs. Many political and tech leaders hope these small modular reactors (SMRs) will prove a carbon-free solution to the data center energy problem.
It’s hard not to think they’re kidding themselves, or maybe us. Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power plan to develop one SMR each, with Dominion shooting to have one in service in 2035. Not only is this too late to meet today’s energy crunch, but a single SMR would add less energy to the supply side than new data centers add to the demand side each year. Virginia still needs near-term solutions, which means solar and batteries.
Industry enthusiasts believe the 2035 timeline can be shortened, while critics say SMRs may never reach commercial viability. SMRs have to be able to compete on cost with much cheaper renewable energy, including wind, solar and emerging geothermal technologies, and cost parity is a long way off. The economic case for nuclear reactors also requires that they generate power all the time, including when the demand isn’t there, so SMRs need batteries almost as much as renewable energy does.
Finally, radioactive waste remains a challenging issue, as much (or more) for SMRs as for legacy nuclear plants. The U.S. has never resolved the problem of permanent storage, so nuclear waste is simply kept onsite at generating stations. The risk of accidents or sabotage makes it unlikely that communities will accept SMRs in their midst, especially if the idea is for SMRs to proliferate on the premises of privately-owned data centers near residential areas statewide.
A nuclear technology with less of a waste problem is fusion energy. A fusion start-up plans to build its first power plant in Virginia in the “early 2030s,” if the demonstration plant it is building in Massachusetts proves successful. While fusion would be an energy game-changer, there are so many uncertainties around timeline and cost that only an inveterate gambler would bet on it helping us out of our predicament.
Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t make it go away
We don’t have to talk about climate change to make the case for transitioning to carbon-free renewable energy, but global warming hovers in the background of any energy debate like an unwanted guest. If you need a primer or are even slightly tempted to say you “don’t know” whether human activity is responsible because you’re not a scientist, read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s summary for policymakers. The continued habitability of the planet is too important for ignorance to be an acceptable dodge – and of course you, as a respectable candidate, would never stoop to such a thing.
Virginia codified its own action plan in 2020 with two major laws. One provides for the commonwealth to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multistate compact that uses auctions of carbon emission allowances to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels and raise money for energy efficiency and climate adaptation. After taking office in 2022, Youngkin removed Virginia from RGGI – illegally, as a court ruled. Virginia remains outside RGGI while the appeals process continues.
The second law is the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which creates a pathway for Dominion and APCo to transition to carbon-free electricity by 2050. The VCEA includes provisions requiring Dominion and APCo to invest in renewable energy, storage and energy efficiency and make renewable energy an increasing portion of their electricity supply.
The VCEA contains special provisions for offshore wind, which I haven’t addressed here because Trump is determined not to allow projects to move forward while he is in office. This is a shame, as there is bipartisan support in Virginia for this industry and the huge economic development opportunities that come with it. Still, Virginia’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project is 60% complete and will start delivering power next year. Eventually, hopefully, it will be remembered as the first of many.
The VCEA also prohibited new investments in fossil fuel plants except under certain conditions. Dominion is currently seeking permission from the State Corporation Commission to build a $1.5 billion, fossil gas-fired peaker plant, citing data center demand and a need for reliability. Local residents, environmental organizations and ratepayer advocates oppose the plant and filed expert testimony showing that solar, storage and other less expensive technologies would better serve consumers.
In what passes for a bombshell in the energy space, Dominion was forced to admit last month that it had not obtained an independent review of the bid process before selecting its own gas plant over resources offered by third-party bidders.
“No regrets” solutions are progressive and conservative
As you’ve probably figured out by now, there is no perfect power source available today. And yet we would need new generation even if we stopped data center construction cold in its tracks – which isn’t in the plans. Solar is the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest source of generation, allowing us to preserve land – and keep options open – for the future. If the data center boom goes bust, having surplus clean energy on the grid will let us eliminate dirty sources faster, while saving money.
Who would run against that?
First published in the Virginia Mercury on September 15, 2025.
Rooftop solar panels are helping generate electricity after Hurricane Maria destroyed much of the island electrical infrastructure. (Photo by Aaron Sutch/Solar United Neighbors)
Back in 2017, a hurricane destroyed Puerto Rico’s power grid. The island struggled to rebuild it, with limited success, and continues to experience a severe electricity shortage and frequent power outages. Customers and nonprofits have stepped into the void, installing solar panels on rooftops all over the island and backing them up with batteries. Today, 175,000 households have solar — about 1 in 7 – and at least 160,000 of those also have battery backup. Thousands of new installations go in every month.
The solar and batteries don’t just secure electricity for the customers who install them. Through programs like one managed by the solar company Sunrun, Puerto Rico’s grid can draw on the batteries to provide power in times of emergency, reducing the frequency and duration of power outages for everyone.
Last month, as hurricane season got underway again, Puerto Rico’s grid operator announced it had reached a “major energy milestone.” In a statement posted on X, LUMA Energy said it “successfully dispatched approximately 70,000 batteries, contributing around 48 MW of energy to the grid.” That’s about as much as a gas peaker plant, with no need for fuel.
Puerto Rico’s experience shows how residents and businesses no longer need to be passive energy consumers. With a well-designed program they can play an active role in keeping the lights on in their communities, and get paid for it.
This customer participation creates what is called a “virtual power plant” (VPP), sometimes also called a community power plant. The VPP may use battery aggregation, as in Puerto Rico, or demand reduction measures like temporary adjustments to smart thermostats or shifting electric vehicle charging to off-peak times. The more these measures are combined, the bigger the benefit to the grid, and the less a utility needs to invest in new generation to meet peaks in demand.
VPPs offer such promise that this year Virginia’s General Assembly directed Dominion Energy to develop a pilot program for its customers, to be overseen by the State Corporation Commission.
HB2346, from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, calls for a program of up to 450 MW to “optimize demand” with distributed energy resources, mainly batteries but also smart thermostats, electric vehicle charging and non-battery storage (e.g., electric hot water heaters). The proposal, due to be filed with the SCC by December 1, must include incentives for at least 15 MW of residential batteries. The legislation calls for stakeholder participation in the development of the VPP, with opportunities for public input.
Dominion is also tasked with expanding the electric school bus program it began in 2019, which allows the utility to make use of school bus batteries at times of the day when the buses are not needed to transport children. As of March of 2024, Dominion had 135 electric buses in the program, spread across 25 school districts in Virginia.
The impact of VPPs can be significant. This summer, California’s grid operator conducted an experiment to determine how much customer batteries could contribute to the needs of the grid. More than 100,000 residential batteries across California delivered an average of 535 MW of power from 7 to 9 p.m. on July 29, an output equivalent to that of a coal plant.
Many other states are also using VPPs. Some are limited to solar-powered battery aggregation, like Xcel’s Colorado program and a new Texas program, while others involve demand response programs using smart appliances – anything that can be turned off and on remotely for short periods. In Michigan, DTE pays electric vehicle owners to charge at off-peak times, while Arizona Public Service’s VPP pays customers for the ability to access their smart thermostats to reduce peak demand.
Vermont’s Green Mountain Power runs two popular battery programs, one for people who own their own batteries and the other that leases batteries to customers. Both allow the utility to draw on the batteries when the power grid requires more capacity.
While Virginia has not had a VPP program before, appliance-based demand response will be familiar to residents who opted into Dominion Energy’s “Smart Cooling Rewards” program. Participants allowed the utility to remotely turn their air conditioners on and off for a few minutes at a time on hot days in exchange for an annual $40 payment. This helped the utility shave peak demand without affecting residents’ comfort.
Dominion ended the cooling rewards program in 2022 and now offers a “Peak Time Rebate” program that rewards customers for reducing energy use during certain times of high energy demand. This program, however, requires residents to take affirmative measures themselves, like adjusting thermostats and delaying laundry. A well-designed VPP program, by contrast, takes the burden off the individual.
Josephus Allmond, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center who helped to craft the Virginia VPP legislation, told me in an email that he expects school buses and smart thermostats will make up most of Dominion’s program initially, but he’d like to see the residential battery component grow significantly from the initial 15 MW. Even 100,000 aggregated residential batteries would be a minor share of Dominion’s 2.8 million residential accounts, he pointed out.
I emailed Nathan Frost, Dominion’s general manager for new business and customer solutions, to ask for more information about the VPP program. Frost replied only that Dominion is “actively developing our VPP framework and will be engaging stakeholders soon.”
Stakeholders, including customers themselves, are likely to have a lot to say. Clean energy advocates have long urged that VPPs, distributed generation sources and microgrids can contribute to a more efficient, secure and resilient grid, at less cost to everyone.
No doubt recentering the grid around customers is too tall an order for a monopoly utility with a profit model based on centralized generation. But from what we’ve seen in Puerto Rico, California and elsewhere, harnessing even some of the power of customer-owned resources is a worthwhile project whose time has finally come.
This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on September 2, 2025.
Update: on September 15, Dominion sent this note:
Dominion Energy Virginia is preparing to file a virtual power plant (“VPP”) pilot proposal by December 1, 2025, pursuant to House Bill 2346 and Senate Bill 1100. As part of this effort, Dominion Energy Virginia is seeking stakeholder input. Please visit our website at https://www.dominionenergy.com/vpp. The website contains an overview of the legislation, a timeline, an informational webinar about VPPs and the Company’s plan, and additional information. We encourage all interested stakeholders to review the materials posted on the website and provide feedback through the link on the website by October 6, 2025.
This year’s General Assembly session notably failed to produce legislation addressing the widening gap between electricity demand and supply in Virginia. Legislators shied away from measures that would address the growing demand from data centers, but they also couldn’t bring themselves to improve the supply picture by supporting landowners who want to host solar facilities. By the time the session ended, a mere handful of bills had passed that could improve our ability to meet demand.
Still, the initiatives that did pass offered positive steps forward on energy efficiency, distributed generation, interconnection of rooftop solar, energy storage, EV charging and utility planning. In addition, two data center-related bills passed requiring more planning and transparency during the local permitting process and tasking utilities with developing a demand response program to relieve some of the added burden on the grid.
Sadly, however, Republican Gov. Glen Youngkin decided to use his powers of veto and amendment to water down or scuttle the limited (and mostly bipartisan) progress legislators made. The only two data center bills were effectively killed, as were most energy bills – some by veto, others by amendments that made them worse than no action at all.
There’s nothing very subtle going on here. The governor loves data centers and isn’t about to limit their growth, regardless of the consequences to residential ratepayers and communities. He’s also stuck in a rut of attacking the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which prioritizes low-cost renewable energy over legacy fossil fuels. He won’t be in office when the chickens come home to roost in the form of an electricity shortfall and skyrocketing rates, but he’s setting up his party to cast blame on the liberal climate agenda.
Data centers
The General Assembly failed to pass legislation that would have shifted responsibility for sourcing clean energy onto the data center operators. The only bill to pass that even makes energy a consideration in the siting of data centers is HB 1601, sponsored by Del. Josh Thomas, D-Gainesville. In addition to site assessment provisions at the permitting stage, it requires the utility serving the facility to describe any new electric generating units, substations and transmission voltage that would be required.
Limited as these provisions are, the governor proposed amendments to further weaken the bill, then added a clause requiring that for the bill to take effect, it has to be passed all over again in 2026. That’s a veto by another name.
SB 1047 from Sen. Danica Roem, D-Manassas, requires utilities to implement demand-response programs for customers with a power demand of more than 25 MW, a way of relieving grid constraints during times of high demand. The governor vetoed the bill, deeming it unnecessary.
The only data center-related bill that did get the governor’s approval is one of questionable utility. HB 2084 from Del. Irene Shin, D-Herndon, merely requires the SCC to use its existing authority during a regular proceeding sometime in the next couple of years to determine whether Dominion and Appalachian Power are using reasonable customer classifications in setting rates, and if not, whether new classifications are reasonable. The SCC seems to be doing this already anyway, but maybe this lets our leaders claim they are doing something to protect residential ratepayers. Plus, they can now call it a bipartisan effort!
Utility reform
With Virginia fixed on a collision course between growing demand for energy from data centers and our leaders’ refusal to support low-cost solar to provide the power, it is more important than ever that our utilities engage in transparent and comprehensive planning through the integrated resource plans (IRPs) filed with the State Corporation Commission. Over the course of last fall, the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation hammered out what I think is truly good legislation to ensure Dominion and APCo present the information the SCC and the public need to be sure our utilities are making the decisions that will improve our energy position and put the needs of ratepayers ahead of corporate profits.
In vetoing SB 1021 from Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, and HB 2413 from Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Dumfries, the governor offered this muddled statement: “The State Corporation Commission has the expertise and the authority to make requirements and changes to the integrated resource plan process. The Virginia Clean Economy Act is failing Virginia and those that champion it should stop trying to buttress this failing policy. But rather should be focused on procuring the dependable power needed to meet our growing demand through optimizing for reliability, affordability, and increasingly clean power generation.”
We get it: Johnny One-Note doesn’t like the VCEA. He said that already. But right now, APCo isn’t filing IRPs at all, and the SCC has been so frustrated with Dominion’s filings that it didn’t approve the last one, and demanded a supplement to the most recent one even before it was filed. Clearly the SCC could use a little help here.
Distributed energy sources
Advocates for small-scale solar were more successful this year than their colleagues who focus on utility-scale projects. Bipartisan majorities seemed to agree that if we can’t or won’t site large solar farms, at least we should make it easier to put solar on rooftops and other small sites close to users.
Sadly, however, only one bill survived the governor’s scrutiny relatively unscathed, though it’s an important one for customer-sited solar. HB 2266 from Del. Kathy Tran, D-Springfield, resolves the interconnection dispute that has stalled commercial solar projects in the 250 kW to 3 MW size range, which includes most rooftop solar on schools. Tran’s bill requires the SCC to approve upgrades to the distribution system that utilities say are needed to accommodate grid-connected solar, a safeguard that will prevent the utility from larding on costs. The utility must then spread the costs across all projects that benefit from the expanded capacity.
Youngkin’s proposed amendment rearranges the language a bit and places it into a new section of code, but does not otherwise change it. He then adds a provision in the tax code to make grid upgrades tax-deductible. I would have thought they would be anyway, as business expenses, but it can only be helpful to spell it out.
Unfortunately, that’s it for the good news.
HB 1883 from Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Charlottesville, and SB 1040 from Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Richmond, contain several provisions aimed at increasing the amount of distributed solar in Virginia. Among other things, the legislation increases the percentage of Dominion’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) obligation that must be met with renewable energy certificates (RECs) from behind-the-meter small solar projects, a change that would make rooftop and other distributed solar more profitable for homeowners and businesses.
HB 1883 also increases to 3 MW from 1 MW the size of solar projects that could qualify for this favored category. Additionally, for the first time it would give all residential ratepayers the right to use power purchase agreements (PPAs) to install solar with no money down, and would increase the amount of electricity Dominion would build or buy from solar facilities on previously developed project sites. To give the market a chance to ramp up, Callsen’s bill excuses Dominion from having to meet its REC obligations from Virginia projects for an additional two years, pushing that date from this year to 2027.
Among all those changes, the only one the governor liked is the idea of softening the requirements around REC purchases. His proposed amendment would make all REC compliance voluntary for four years. Effectively, Virginia would have no renewable energy requirements until 2028, undercutting solar development of any size. His preferred version scraps all of the provisions of Callsen’s bill, leaving no provisions to support solar development and replacing them with an open attack on the VCEA.
I checked in with Callsen by email to get her reaction. She responded, “We sent the administration bipartisan legislation that protects ratepayers, gives Virginians more options for solar on our homes and businesses, and saves rural land. Rather than sign HB 1883 into law,” Callsen wrote, “the governor used this opportunity to attack the Clean Economy Act from 2020. Instead of looking at the past, our Administration should look around; we have a developing energy crisis and are reliant on importing energy to meet our needs.”
The governor also offered a destructive amendment to HB 2346 from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, and SB 1100 from Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, legislation establishing a pilot program in Dominion territory for virtual power plants (VPPs), which aggregate customer solar and storage resources and demand response capabilities. Although VPPs don’t by themselves add electricity on the grid, they allow time-shifting and other efficiencies that make it easier for utilities to meet peak demand without having to build new generation. The payments utilities make to customers for this service can justify customers’ investments in things like solar, battery storage and smart appliances.
Instead of improving on the pilot program, however, the governor’s amendment scraps it and calls for the SCC to convene a proceeding to talk about VPPs. On the plus side, Youngkin suggests that the conversation include Appalachian Power as well as Dominion, and consider allowing the service to be provided by either the utilities or third-party aggregators, the latter being the favored approach of many industry members. Still, the amendment pushes off any hope of a program for at least another year, until the SCC has made its recommendations. Since it would have been feasible to both start a pilot program this year and have the SCC consider parameters for a broader program in the future, it’s hard to see the governor’s amendment as a step forward.
When I asked her for a comment, Hashmi did not mince words, saying it was “incredibly disappointing” that Youngkin chose to offer a substitute instead of signing the legislation.
“This legislation was the result of several months of conversation among a variety of stakeholders, including our utility companies, energy partners, and environmental groups. The Virtual Power Plant has the promise of helping Virginia meet the goals of our increasing energy demands. The Governor’s substitute shows that he is not serious about responding to the growth of Virginia’s energy needs,” Hashmi wrote.
Other solar bills drew outright vetoes, including Mundon King’s HB 2356, establishing an apprenticeship program to help develop a clean energy workforce. The bill requires participants to be paid prevailing wages, a provision that was a certain veto magnet for Youngkin, whose veto statement reads, “This bill will increase the construction costs which will ultimately be passed along to ratepayers, raising costs for consumers.”
Another bill that drew an outright veto was HB 2037 from Del. David Bulova, D-Fairfax. His bill would allow local governments to include in their land development ordinances a requirement that certain non-residential applicants install solar on a portion of a parking lot.
The governor vetoed it because, he said, it would be expensive for developers, and if it weren’t, they would do it without having to be told. (It’s a strange objection. Does he not understand the whole concept of government acting in the public good? Well, maybe not; see the veto.)
Also vetoed was Shin’s HB 2090, changing the rules around multifamily solar. Admittedly I was not crazy about this bill; although it allows solar facilities to be placed on nearby commercial buildings instead of being restricted to the multifamily building itself, it also imports the requirement for minimum bills that has made other shared solar programs in Virginia unworkable for all but the low-income customers who are excused from the minimum bills.
Maybe the trade-off would have opened new opportunities for apartment buildings serving low-income households, which would make it a plus on balance. But among his objections to HB2090, the governor noted that excusing low-income customers from high minimum bills would shift costs onto other customers.
Energy efficiency
The governor vetoed SB 1342 from Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond, and HB 2744 from Del. Mark Sickles, D-Franconia, that would have pushed Dominion and APCo harder to provide energy efficiency upgrades to low-income homes, setting a target of 30% of qualifying households.
He also vetoed SB 777 from Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, and HB 1935from Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Richmond, which would have established a task force to address the needs of low-income customers for weatherization and efficiency upgrades. The governor said it isn’t needed.
If you notice a pattern here when it comes to helping low-income households with their energy burden, you are not alone.
Reached on maternity leave, LeVere Bolling had this to say: “Across our Commonwealth, high utility bills are forcing Virginians to choose between essentials like groceries and medication and keeping their home at a safe temperature during hot summers and cold winters. Virginia has the 10th least affordable residential energy bills in the country. Over 75% of Virginia households have an energy burden higher than the 6% affordability threshold.” She added that the governor’s veto represents a “missed opportunity to address the pressing energy needs of Virginia’s most vulnerable communities.”
Electric vehicles
The governor offered a substitute for a bill intended to support electric vehicle charging. As passed by the General Assembly, Shin’s HB 2087requires Dominion and APCo to file detailed plans to “accelerate transportation electrification,” including for rural areas and economically disadvantaged communities. It also allows the utilities to file proposed tariffs with the SCC to supply the distribution infrastructure necessary for EV charging stations.
The utilities are also authorized to develop their own fast-charging stations, but only at a distance from privately-owned charging stations, with the SCC determining the proper distance. This provision responds to the request of gas station chains like Sheetz that say they want to expand their EV charging options, but don’t want to face unfair competition from utilities that can rate-base their investments.
The governor’s amendment would prohibit Dominion and APCo from owning EV charging stations at all; in addition, it would allow retail providers of EV charging stations to buy electricity from any competitive service provider. However, the amendment repeals the section of code that allows the utilities to recover costs of investments in transportation electrification.
According to Steve Banashek, EV legislative lead with the Virginia Sierra Club, that “negates the purpose of the enrolled bill.” The amendment, he told me in an email, “removes the requirement for utilities to file for tariffs to support implementation of EV charging and to plan for transportation electrification growth via the IRP process, which is critical for speeding up the transition to electric transportation.”
As for the prohibition on the utilities owning charging stations, Banashek noted that there are areas of the state where private businesses aren’t likely to do it, including in those economically disadvantaged and rural communities. If we don’t want these areas left behind, either the utilities have to step up, or the state does.
Apparently, however, Youngkin doesn’t intend for the state to do it either. Along with his amendments to Shin’s bill, the governor also vetoed HB 1791 from Sullivan, creating a fund to support EV charging in rural areas of the state.
Energy storage
The need for more energy storage seems like it would be one area of bipartisan consensus. Batteries and other forms of energy storage are critical to filling in the generation gaps for low-cost, intermittent forms of energy like wind and solar.
But storage is also required to make full use of baseload sources like nuclear that either can’t be ramped down at times when there is a surplus of energy being produced, or where doing so makes it harder to recover the cost of building the generation. (The already-high projected cost of electricity from small modular nuclear reactors becomes even higher if you assume they don’t run when the power isn’t needed.)
Sullivan’s HB 2537 increases the energy storage targets for Dominion and APCo, and includes new targets for long-duration energy storage. Unfortunately, Youngkin’s substitute language repeals the entire section of code that includes Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard as well as even the existing storage targets. It’s another bit of anti-VCEA flag-waving that won’t help anyone.
Just in case you thought Youngkin might be adhering to conservative free market principles with some kind of consistency, I note that he signed HB 2540 and SB 1207 from two Republicans, Del. Danny Marshall of Danville and Sen. Tammy Brankley Mulchi of Clarksville, which provides a $60 million grant to a manufacturer of lithium-ion battery separators.
I asked Sullivan for a comment on the governor’s action on his bill. He replied, “The Governor’s ridiculous ‘recommendation’ on HB 2537 was disappointing, but hardly surprising. This was not an amendment; he deleted everything – everything – having to do with energy storage, and turned it into a one-sentence bill which would repeal the entire Clean Economy Act.”
Moreover, wrote Sullivan, “HB 2537 was the most closely and extensively negotiated bill among stakeholders that I’ve been involved with since the VCEA. It had broad support – including from Dominion – and should have easily fit into the Governor’s ‘all of the above’ energy strategy and his economic development goals, since it would have brought all sorts of business, jobs, and companies to the Commonwealth.”
Sullivan concluded, “Needless to say, we cannot agree to the amendment. We’ll easily pass this bill next session, and I suspect Governor Spanberger will sign it.”
Sullivan may be right that it will take a new administration before Virginia gets serious about meeting its energy challenges – if it does even then – but this session needn’t have ended in a partisan stalemate and near-zero progress. Most of the bills the governor vetoed or gutted were passed with the help of Republicans, making Youngkin’s actions less of a rebuke to Democrats than to the members of his own party who were simply trying to do their job. The results, sadly, are bad for everyone.
This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on April 1, 2025.
UPDATE May 8: As expected, the General Assembly rejected the governor’s destructive amendments to the bills described. The governor then vetoed all but one. The exception is HB2346 from Hernandez and SB1100 from Hashmi, establishing a pilot program in Dominion territory for virtual power plants (VPPs). That one has been signed into law, along with Tran’s HB2266.
Power for the People VA 