Category Archives: Solar

Unknown's avatar

Virginia legislators cast a wide net on energy, hoping to land more capacity

by
Virginia's capitol building in Richmond.

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.

Unknown's avatar

Solar can save Virginia farms — if government gets out of the way

by
Photo courtesy of the American Solar Grazing Association

It’s not easy to be a farmer in Virginia. Pests, weather, uncertain markets and access to capital are a perennial problem. This year farmers have also had to contend with disruptions from President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, and an immigration crackdown that has deprived many farms of their experienced labor force. 

 And then there’s climate change and the outward creep of suburban sprawl. No wonder studies show the number of farms in Virginia continuing to shrink, and the age of farmers still in business trending steadily upward. We are losing our family farms.

 That’s why I’m baffled by the resistance to solar in many parts of rural Virginia. 

Farmers who lease part of their land for solar earn a guaranteed, stable income for 25 or 30 years, keep the property in the family, and never have to watch as a subdivision paves over the fields where they played as children. The income from a solar project will be there when a late frost means the loss of that year’s fruit crop or a scorching summer reduces the corn harvest by half.

Indeed, these days the choice is not between farming and solar; farming and solar are increasingly compatible “crops.” Sheep grazing has gotten the most attention in Virginia for its perfect synergy with solar: the sheep thrive in the shade of the solar panels and do the work of vegetation management, which otherwise would require herbicides and machinery. Elsewhere, farmers are raising cattle, poultry, grapevines and shade-loving crops under solar, in a practice collectively known as agrivoltaics.

 The combination of solar and agriculture is spreading rapidly across the country, endorsed by organizations like the American Farmland Trust. Solar sheep grazing is so popular that it has its own trade association, the American Solar Grazing Association. Here in Virginia, at least two sheep grazing companies contract with large solar developers for vegetation management. One, Gray’s Lambscaping, has over 800 sheep at solar projects, and expects to scale up to 5500 sheep by 2028. 

 Meanwhile, the conservation group Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), which typically opposes large solar projects, is demonstrating the feasibility of growing vegetables under solar panels at a community farm in Loudoun County. 

 If solar integrates so well into the agricultural economy, what is the reasoning behind the county ordinances that ban solar or limit it to only a few projects? And why, when a county doesn’t prohibit solar outright, do local leaders so frequently reject permits for projects that meet all their conditions?  

 I’ve received emails from solar haters who regurgitate misinformation about the harms of solar panels, I’ve listened to legislators wax eloquent on the subject of “protecting rural values,” and I’ve sighed in frustration at a few fellow members of the environmental community who, when it comes to it, care less about addressing climate change than about keeping viewsheds pretty. 

 Often the opposition to solar is couched in terms of defending local control of land use decisions. But too many localities use this authority, not to make sure projects are developed responsibly, but to make sure they aren’t developed at all. And to that end, they prevent landowners from using their land in the way the owners have decided they need to. The rejections don’t mean the land returns to being farmed; more likely it means the land will be sold and, quite likely, developed for housing or even – gah! – data centers. If localities cared about saving farmland, they would approve more solar.

 In the last year, the percentage of utility solar projects that receive permits from localities ticked up slightly. One possibility is that the hostility to solar is easing. That would be welcome, but I suspect the more likely reason is that solar companies aren’t pursuing projects where they expect rejection. That’s a loss all around: the localities lose out on tax revenue, their landowners lose out on income, and everyone loses out on low-cost electricity.

 The hostility to solar makes little sense to me. Conservatives who care about property rights typically favor landowners over the government, so why is solar different? To be fair, some conservatives actively support solar, such as the groups Conservatives for Clean Energy and Energy Right.

 On the other side of the political spectrum, liberals and everyone else who cares about climate change should want solar everywhere – and most do, but not all. As for solar and farming, those of any political persuasion who care about farmland preservation should favor solar over subdivisions. And anyone who cares about the farmers themselves should be spreading the gospel of solar. Agrivoltaics is just the icing on the cake that can make everyone feel they didn’t have to compromise.

The legislative response

 Legislators have struggled with this problem for several years now. Many are desperate for new clean energy projects to serve the fast-rising demand for electricity, but they’ve been unable to bring themselves to take authority away from recalcitrant localities. It’s a hard needle to thread.

 Last year members of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR) crafted a multi-part bill designed to give localities all the information they need to make rational decisions about solar permitting, while giving landowners and project developers a right to appeal adverse decisions to the State Corporation Commission (SCC). 

 That bill failed in committee, and this year only a part of it made it into a bill. House Bill 918, from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, sets up a university consortium to provide expertise and guidance, including on solar siting and permitting. 

 Meanwhile, a bill proposed last year by members of the solar industry came closer to passage than the CEUR bill did. The industry bill proposed a suite of rigorous best practices for solar, designed to reassure localities that solar facilities will be good neighbors. 

Among the best practices were farm-friendly provisions like using native pollinator plants, screening with native trees, and incorporating grazing animals or farm crops. Localities would not be allowed to ban solar outright, but would have to make decisions on the merits of each proposal. However, nothing in the bill would have required localities to approve these projects.

 The industry bill foundered last year, but this year it is back with the endorsement of CEUR. In its current form, HB 711 from Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, and Senate Bill 347 from Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, continues to preserve local decision-making, but localities that deny permits to solar projects must report their reasons to the SCC for inclusion in a public database. SB 347 has already been reported from committee and will be heard by the full Senate.

 Only one bill this year is directly aimed at helping farmers install solar. HB 1091 from Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albermarle, adds half a line to Virginia’s right-to-farm law giving farmers a right to install solar if they also use the same land for agricultural activities like grazing or crops.  The effect of Laufer’s bill is that any farmer who wants to combine solar and farming could do so without having to go get a local permit. (The right-to-farm law does not exempt farmers from other laws, so regulations governing erosion, wetland protection, etc. still apply.)

 A more modest bill, developed by PEC and carried by Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax, defines agrivoltaics and sets up an advisory panel to determine what qualifies, consider possible requirements and limitations, and make recommendations for next year. That’s encouraging, but unfortunately, the bill defines agrivoltaics specifically to exclude “solar energy generation that replaces the farmer’s primary income.”

Counterfactual definitions like this tend to cause problems. 

If a farmer has a crop failure, and the farm’s major source of income that year is solar, do they no longer qualify? It also suggests that sheep graziers in the business of using their animals for vegetation management at solar projects – i.e., agrivoltaics – could not use the industry-accepted word to describe what they do. Besides, really, don’t we want all solar projects to incorporate agriculture?

 A bill from Sen.David Marsden, D-Fairfax, would task the Department of Energy with setting up a committee of experts to develop solar siting criteria and then score the appropriateness of any proposed site for solar. There’s no indication in the bill that the criteria would include a farmer wanting to include solar among their products, but perhaps it could. However, it would not require localities to approve any projects. 

 It feels inevitable that the future of solar incorporates farming, and the future of farming may well mean incorporating solar. Whether Virginia’s leaders see this yet or not is another question, but they do have their opportunity this year.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on January 28, 2026.

Unknown's avatar

The bills are back in town

by

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.”

Unknown's avatar

Will Big Tech buy you a heat pump?

by
Sign at a dog park in Arlington, Virginia. Ivy Main

The data center boom has catapulted Virginia into a serious energy crunch. We have more data centers here than in any other state, by far, and four times as many more are expected in the next few years. Virginia utilities don’t generate enough electricity to serve them all; fully half of our power is imported from the regional grid. But now the regional grid is also running low on reserve power thanks to all the data center growth, according to grid operator PJM. 

Most proposed solutions focus on the supply side: generating more power by building new solar, wind, gas and battery storage; keeping aging power plants running that were previously scheduled for closure; and even reopening Three Mile Island, shuttered three and a half decades ago following the worst nuclear accident in US history. 

More nuanced solutions involve managing the existing generation better. Research shows that the grid could handle more data centers right now if operators ratcheted back consumption at peak times, either through installing batteries or through shifting some operations to non-peak times.

All of these approaches involve generating more power for the grid, or shifting use around to relieve grid stress at peak demand times. But there is another way to make room for new data centers: remove some existing loads. 

A national advocacy organization, Rewiring America, recently released an intriguing proposal to free up grid capacity by retrofitting homes with high-efficiency heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, solar panels and energy storage. The cumulative effect would be to reduce total demand in the residential sector, making capacity available to data centers sooner, while also saving the participating residential consumers thousands of dollars on their electricity bills.  

Oh, and the tech companies are going to pay for it. 

I am reminded of a delightful sign I once saw announcing the coming of the best dog park ever, to be paid for by cats, itself a satire of a certain president’s pledge to build a border wall paid for by Mexico. But, I notice, neither the cats nor Mexico have sent checks yet. Will Big Tech?

Rewiring America thinks so, if the policies are in place to aggregate and verify the household energy savings into a marketable package, and if buying the package means a data center can come online faster and more cheaply. Upgraded appliances and rooftop solar can be installed in a matter of weeks, compared to the many years that may be required to permit and build new generation and transmission. 

Note that the proposed program would not include households that replace gas, propane or oil furnaces with heat pumps. That kind of upgrade results in greater, not less, residential electricity demand, making it counterproductive when the point is to shrink residential electricity usage. 

Replacing electric furnaces with heat pumps would also mainly address the grid’s winter peak, not its summer peak, though the Department of Energy maintains that heat pumps use less energy for cooling than stand-alone air conditioners.

Researchers focused on replacing electric resistance heat with heat pumps because that one swap produces the biggest efficiency bang for the buck. An electric furnace is cheap to install but expensive to use; the reverse is true of a high-efficiency heat pump. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that the conversion would save the average family $1,170 per year on its electricity bill. NREL calculates that heat pumps are cost-effective enough to pay for themselves in under 5 years.

According to Rewiring America, “If hyperscalers paid for 50 percent of the upfront cost of installing heat pumps in homes with electric resistance heating, they could get capacity on the grid at a price of about $344/kW-year — a similar cost to building and operating a new gas power plant, which currently costs about $315/kW-year.” (By my math, it’s an extra 10%, which might be acceptable to a power-hungry tech customer as a sort of rush fee.)

The report repeats the calculations for other technologies. Ductless heat pumps would replace baseboard electric heat. Heat pump water heaters would replace conventional electric water heaters. Solar panels paired with battery storage could displace electricity the home would otherwise draw from the grid.

Further capacity could come from home batteries. The report posits, “If every single-family household in the U.S. installed a home battery, and those with a suitable roof installed a 5 kW solar system (about 11 solar panels), they could collectively generate 109 GW of increased capacity on the grid.We assume that households charge the battery off-peak, either from the grid or from rooftop solar, and they discharge the battery during peak periods to reduce the household’s contribution to peak demand.” 

The researchers estimate that a mass purchasing program could squeeze costs of solar and storage down by 40%, primarily through reduced customer acquisition costs and cheaper permitting. Then the data center operators would pay 30% of this lower cost. By buying solar and storage at this now much-reduced price, households would get electricity at about a 30% discount off utility rates, while the tech companies would be able to buy capacity at a cost comparable to that of building a new gas plant. 

You’ll notice the proposal assumes tech companies pay only a portion of the costs for the residential upgrades, so residents still face upfront costs – 50% of the cost of heat pumps, 70% of a hopefully-lowered price for solar and batteries. Rewiring America calculates that residents will come out ahead under all scenarios, while the data centers will pay only a little more than they would otherwise have to pay, buying capacity they might not otherwise be able to get. 

Because Virginia has so many more data centers than anywhere else on earth, Rewiring America calculates that all of these investments would meet only 25% of our projected new data center demand. Other states could do much better, fully meeting projected new demand across most of the country and even exceeding it in about half the states. Virginia would presumably stand to benefit from surplus capacity in other PJM states. 

Obviously, these calculations describe a best-case scenario, and I have my doubts about whether the uptake would be anywhere near what they believe is possible. Still, even capturing just a portion of the efficiency potential Rewiring America believes is there would relieve some of the pressure on the grid. 

But is there really that much low-hanging efficiency fruit in Virginia? If the NREL data that the researchers use is correct, more than 300,000 single family homes in Virginia have electric furnaces. Yet electric furnaces are notoriously inefficient and expensive to operate, and heat pumps have been around for decades. Our utilities have been running energy efficiency programs for years that are supposed to help residents save energy. Can there really be that many single-family homes that have not converted to heat pumps yet?

I consulted Andrew Grigsby, a home energy efficiency expert who is currently the energy services director at Viridiant, a nonprofit focused on sustainable buildings. Grigsby shared my doubts about the accuracy of NREL’s estimate of the number of homes with electric resistance heat, saying it was at odds with his experience. He also felt that an efficiency program would save more energy at less cost by targeting improvements to the needs of each home, instead of supplying a blanket solution.

But he also refuted my assumption that most of the low-hanging fruit should have been picked by now. “Virginia has 100,000 homes (at least) where three hours work and $50 in materials would reduce heating/cooling costs by 25%  — via fixing the obvious, massive duct leakage,” he said in an email.

This doesn’t mean Rewiring America’s approach wouldn’t save energy; rather, it supports the conclusion that there is a massive opportunity for energy efficiency savings that Virginia hasn’t fully tapped into. 

Legislators have tried. The VCEA set efficiency targets for Dominion and APCo, and the SCC followed up with further targets. APCo has consistently met its goals, Dominion has not. A review of Dominion’s sad little list of programs available to homeowners suggests that the problem is a lack of ambition, not a lack of opportunity.

An aggressive, third-party operated efficiency program would complement the Virtual Power Plant (VPP) pilot program that Dominion is developing in accordance with legislation passed in the 2025 session. The VPP’s goal is to shift some consumption to off-peak times, while the Rewiring America proposal would reduce overall consumption. 

Both seek to achieve time-shifting through incentivizing residents to invest in home batteries, their only area of overlap. But whereas the VPP legislation set only 15 MW as its baseline target for home batteries, the Rewiring America proposal could incentivize much more, along with the solar systems to charge them.

The problem remains how to get tech companies to pay for it. My contact at Rewiring America, senior director of communications Alex Amend, pointed me to approaches being undertaken in other states. Minnesota legislation requires data centers to contribute between $2 million and $5 million annually toward energy conservation programs that benefit low-income households. Georgia Power is expected to file a large load tariff that, says Amend, includes pathways for off-site, behind-the-meter solutions.

Here in Virginia, though, both APCo and Dominion, as well as some co-ops, have already submitted large-load tariff proposals to the SCC as part of their rate cases. None of the proposals include incentives for demand reductions anywhere, much less the residential sector. Indeed, given Dominion’s track record on efficiency, the SCC would have to take the initiative to meld a large load tariff for data centers with the VPP program and aggressive home efficiency investments. 

The SCC has announced plans to hold a technical conference on Dec. 12 to examine data center load flexibility. Rewiring America hopes to participate to lay out its proposal in more detail. 

Then maybe we’ll see if the cats will pay for the dog park.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on November 10, 2025.

Unknown's avatar

How Trump’s deal with Big Oil is raising your energy bills

by
smokestack
Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

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. 

At a later fundraiser, he also promised to approve new natural gas exports, in spite of warnings from critics that these exports would drive U.S. prices higher – which is exactly what happened.

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.

Unknown's avatar

Will Virginia step up for its rooftop solar industry?

by
Visitors to a net-zero energy home in Vienna, Virginia learn about solar as part of SunDay, a national celebration of solar energy, on September 21, 2025. Photo courtesy of Meredith Haines.

For solar energy, 2025 is the best of times and the worst of times. It’s the fastest growing energy source in the world and the largest source of new power capacity additions in the U.S. for the fifth year in a row. Even in the absence of tax subsidies, solar is the cheapest source of new electricity in Virginia, and indeed almost everywhere. 

Yet the congressional Republican budget law’s early termination of tax incentives for solar, together with the Trump administration’s determined efforts to restore fossil fuel dominance, make these dark days for the solar industry. The EPA is relaxing pollution standards for power plants and refusing to enforce regulations, and the same law that cut clean energy credits provided tens of billions of dollars in tax subsidies for drilling and mining activities. (What, did you think they wanted to level the playing field?)  

As a result, analysts project a sharp drop-off in solar installations in the coming years, posing a challenge to energy reliability and affordability. With data centers driving up the demand for electricity, the loss of tax credits for solar will mean higher costs for our utilities, and therefore higher utility bills for customers. Virginians who worry about high electricity bills should be very unhappy with the rollback of these incentives. 

How the rollbacks could push solar forward (at least for now)

Ironically, though, the coming end of tax credits has goosed the U.S. solar market in the near term. The industry has never been busier, as companies scramble to get projects completed in time to qualify for the tax credits before they expire. With careful planning, solar developers will be able to stretch tax credit eligibility to cover projects for a few more years, softening the blow for consumers. 

And in the long term, the solar industry feels confident that the technical and cost advantages of renewable energy will win out in America as they continue to do abroad. Politics and policy aside, utility-scale solar is the cheapest, cleanest and fastest-to-build electricity source available in most of the U.S. The technology continues to push efficiencies up and costs down, while protecting Americans from the pollution and fuel costs of coal and gas. With energy storage technologies following the same price trajectory as solar, it is hard to imagine the U.S. willingly turning its back on clean energy for long.

In Virginia, of course, utility solar still faces rural resistance. But having embraced data centers, Virginia will have to find the energy to power them, and price has a way of winning out. 

While the solar industry overall will survive, the loss of federal tax credits is landing hard on the segment that serves homeowners and businesses. The economic case for distributed solar has never been a slam-dunk in Virginia, given the higher costs involved. Now the question is whether it can remain even a reasonable investment.

The Virginia solar industry has grown a lot in the past decade and now includes 199 companies employing close to 5,000 workers, almost double the number employed in coal mining. I haven’t seen numbers specific to distributed solar, but installing solar on rooftops is more labor-intensive than utility solar. More importantly, these jobs tend to be local to Virginia, and most don’t require a college degree. 

Distributed solar is also important to our energy supply and resilience. Sunny rooftops could potentially supply as much as 20% of Virginia’s electricity, yet less than 3% of Virginia homes have solar now, leaving plenty of room for growth. Rooftop solar is also a vital component of community resilience; when batteries are added to solar, buildings can remain powered during storms and other events that take down the wider grid. And of course, solar and batteries can form the basis for virtual power plants that support the grid and reduce the need for utility investments. 

A trifecta of solar success

Three policies have enabled the industry to succeed here, and all three have been subject to attack. The first, of course, is the federal tax credits, which allow owners of solar arrays to recover 30% of project costs through their tax returns. For residential customers, availability of this credit will now expire at the end of 2025. 

The good news is that structuring residential solar installations as leases or power purchase agreements puts projects under a more favorable provision that gives commercial owners of solar panels until July of 2026 to begin construction. This won’t work for everybody, and residential power purchase agreements are currently legal in Virginia only for low-income customers, but it does offer some breathing room. 

The second policy critical for rooftop solar is a Virginia program that lets owners of solar arrays earn money from the sale of solar renewable electricity certificates (SRECs) associated with the electricity they put onto the grid. The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) requires Dominion Energy Virginia to buy SRECs to meet a small fraction of its renewable energy purchase obligation. Customers with solar who choose to sell their SRECs can offset some of their costs this way, making solar more affordable. (Since SRECs represent the “bragging rights” to solar – the legal right to claim you are powering your home or business with solar – not everyone wants to sell theirs.)

Customers and industry members say, however, that the Virginia SREC market is neither robust nor transparent. The price that Dominion pays for SRECs would have to be substantially higher to overcome the loss of federal tax credits. Some advocates have floated the idea of asking the tech companies to support the distributed solar market through voluntary SREC purchases, which could raise SREC values and help localities build more solar on schools and other public buildings.

A bipartisan-backed bill that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed this year would have increased the percentage of Dominion’s electricity that must come from distributed solar generation. This would have incentivized more rooftop solar and possibly resulted in higher SREC prices through the normal economics of supply and demand. But so far there is no plan to set a floor on SREC prices.

The third supportive policy for distributed solar is net metering, which ensures that customers of Dominion and Appalachian Power get credited at the retail rate for surplus electricity they supply to the grid. Customers pay the utility only for the net energy they purchase. While this doesn’t make rooftop solar cheaper, it does mean customers don’t actually lose money on their surplus generation, as they would without net metering.

Dominion and APCo have tried repeatedly to undermine net metering, so far without success.

The State Corporation Commission recently rejected a proposal from APCo to replace one-for-one credits with a payment system valuing distributed solar at the utility’s avoided cost for energy – about one-third of retail. The effect on customers would have been severe, making it impossible for most new buyers to recoup the cost of solar panels. In rejecting APCo’s proposal, the SCC cited expert analyses showing that the value of customer-sited solar to the grid and the public equals or exceeds the retail cost of energy. 

Dominion has also filed a proposal to gut net metering in its territory. Its replacement program differs from APCo’s, yet it too results in a greatly reduced compensation rate. The SCC has not ruled on Dominion’s request yet, but it’s hard to see how Dominion could succeed where APCo failed.

Net metering is the rock that Virginia’s rooftop solar industry is built on, so the SCC’s decision preserving the program was critical to the industry’s very survival. Net metered solar will also remain an appealing hedge against rising electricity rates for many people. Still, there is no getting around the fact that losing the 30% tax credit is the kind of blow that can send an industry off a cliff.  

What’s next

What can the industry, or policy-makers, do to counteract the loss of tax credits?

The most obvious step is for the General Assembly to once again pass legislation increasing the requirement for utility SREC purchases (and this time with the governor signing the bill). The bill has other good provisions, like making residential power purchase agreements legal beyond the low-income market, and these will also help the industry. 

Virginia should also consider adopting a streamlined permitting protocol for onsite solar, as states like Florida have done. Some Virginia localities have already adopted automated permitting software, such as SolarAPP+, a free platform developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Permitting in some other localities, however, reportedly remains so arduous that it adds significantly to costs and delays in installing rooftop solar. 

Speaking of permitting, Virginia could pass a law like Utah’s to allow so-called balcony solar, plug-in solar panels that don’t require professional installation. The kits still require national certification before they can hit the market, however. 

Virginia could devote some emergency preparedness funds to onsite solar and storage at schools and senior centers to make local communities more resilient. These microgrids would save on energy costs for taxpayers and ensure people have a place to go that still has power when the larger grid is down. 

Utilities could once again be tasked with funding solar on low-income housing, as they did in response to Republican-sponsored legislation passed in 2019. Localities could be allowed to require solar panels on parking lots in some new developments, as provided in a bill the governor vetoed this spring. Legislation to increase goals and funding for solar on closed landfills, coal mines and other brownfields would also bring more solar to places where everyone agrees it is welcome. 

Finally, our Department of Energy has done a very good job supporting solar energy through both Democratic and Republican administrations. It could now be asked to convene meetings with the solar industry to plan a pathway to solar on more homes and businesses. They could start with a program of government-backed advertising and outreach to educate more consumers about the value of solar, its cost, and how to hire trustworthy installers. Customer acquisition is one of the biggest costs for solar companies, so reaching potential customers will reduce costs.   

Meanwhile, what can the average resident do? Talk to your elected leaders and candidates and get them to put in pro-solar bills and support the legislation you want to see. If Virginians want more home-grown clean energy,  we need to make it happen.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on September 25, 2025. It has been updated to correct the date by which construction must commence in order to qualify for federal tax credits.

Unknown's avatar

In Puerto Rico, customers are helping to keep the lights on. Could a Virginia program do the same?

by

 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.

If you have questions, please contact virtualpowerplant@dominionenergy.com. 

Unknown's avatar

The war on woke…energy?

by


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown's avatar

Utility efforts to undermine rooftop solar meet stiff opposition from Virginia customers

by
Photo courtesy of Solarize Blacksburg

Virginia’s investor-owned utilities thought 2025 would be the year they put an end to net metering – and with it, rooftop solar installers’ modest competition with their monopoly.. The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) removed many barriers that residents and businesses installing solar panels under the state’s net metering law had faced, but it also called for the State Corporation Commission to reevaluate the program, beginning right about now. 

 Not surprisingly, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power are seizing this opportunity to push for changes that would undermine the economic calculus supporting customer-owned solar.  

Since at least 2007, Virginia law has required that customers of Dominion and APCo who have solar panels on their property be credited for surplus electricity they supply to the grid at the same retail rate they pay for electricity. The credit is applied against the cost of the electricity the customer draws from the grid at times when the panels aren’t generating, reducing what they owe on their electric bill. 

But now that they have the chance, both utilities have filed proposals to end net metering. Both essentially propose to charge new solar customers the full retail rate for the electricity they draw from the grid (with Dominion using a more complicated half-hour “netting”), but compensate them for electricity fed to the grid only at the utility’s “avoided cost,” or what it pays to buy electricity from other generators. By law, existing customers and new low-income customers with solar would be unaffected.

APCo calculates avoided cost as the wholesale cost of energy and capacity, plus transmission and ancillary services, for a total of less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, a homeowner with solar panels would now pay the full retail rate of about 17 cents/kWh for electricity drawn from the grid, while being credited at less than one-third that amount for electricity put back on the grid. 

Dominion’s approach instead pegs avoided cost to what it pays for solar generation and associated renewable energy certificates (RECs) bought from certain small producers under power purchase agreements, an average of about 9.5 cents/kWh. Dominion’s residential rate currently averages about 14 cents/kWh, but would go up to more than 16 cents if its latest rate increase request is granted.

The VCEA gave APCo the first swing at the piñata. APCo filed its proposal in September, and the SCC will hold an evidentiary hearing on May 20. Dominion only filed its petition last week, and no hearing date has been set yet. 

Not surprisingly, APCo’s proposal generated fierce opposition from advocates and solar installers. They point out that it’s hard enough to make the economics of home solar work with net metering at the retail rate; slashing the compensation for electricity returned to the grid by more than one-third, as Dominion proposes, or two-thirds, as APCo wants, would make solar a losing proposition for most homeowners. Maybe economies of scale and other factors would allow the market for commercial solar to survive under Dominion’s program, though Dominion’s insistence on confiscating customers’ RECs won’t make anyone happy.

If solar owners definitely lose under APCo’s plan, advocates say other ratepayers don’t necessarily win. A homeowner’s surplus generation travels only the short distance to the nearest neighbor, lessening the need for the utility to generate and transmit power to meet the neighbor’s demand. Since the utility charges that neighbor the regular retail rate for the electricity, without having to bring it from somewhere else, the utility saves on transmission costs. On top of that, the surplus solar comes in during the day, when demand is typically higher than at night and electricity is more costly, making solar more valuable to the utility. Plus, it is clean and renewable, and the customer bears all the cost and risk of the investment.

Utilities do not share this rosy view. By their way of thinking, solar customers use the grid as free energy storage and backup power, without paying their fair share of grid costs. Not only does this deprive the utility of revenue, but those grid costs now have to be spread out among the remaining customers. This, they say, creates a cost shift from solar owners to everyone else. 

More than a decade ago, Virginia took tentative steps towards resolving the dispute, with the Department of Environmental Quality setting up a stakeholder group to work towards a “value of solar” analysis. The process was never completed — the utilities walked away from the table when it appeared the results weren’t going to be what they wanted, and the group’s work product did not include numeric values or policy recommendations. 

Virginia is hardly alone in navigating these clashing narratives. 

Other states and regulators have arrived at very different conclusions as to the “correct” value of distributed solar to utilities, ratepayers, and society as a whole. States like Maryland kept net metering after a value of solar analysis concluded the benefits outweighed the costs. On the other hand, California famously ended its net metering program in 2022 when solar comprised almost 20% of electricity generated in the state and created a mid-day surplus without enough storage to absorb it; at the time, 45% of that solar was distributed. That same year, however, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed an unpopular bill that would have phased out net metering in the state.

The experience of other states, combined with an abundance of research and analysis conducted over the years, gives the SCC a lot to work with as it considers the fate of net metering for APCo’s customers this year, and later for Dominion’s.

Countering the arguments of the utility’s hired witnesses, solar industry and environmental organizations have weighed in on the APCo docket with testimony from experts with nationwide experience. The experts pointed out a range of errors and omissions in the utility’s work product. They also presented their own benefit-cost analyses demonstrating a value for distributed solar in excess of the retail price of electricity, using tests often applied to energy efficiency and demand-response programs.

Perhaps even more significantly, SCC staff also filed an analysis that found many of the same problems with APCo’s proposal, including failures to comply with statutory requirements. The staff report did not include a quantitative analysis, but it urged the importance of considering benefits that APCo had ignored. Like the intervenors, staff recommended the commission reject APCo’s plan and retain its net metering program as it is, at least for now.  

Although the staff report would seem likely to carry weight with the commissioners, it’s never easy to predict what the SCC will do in any case before it. But in Virginia, unlike California, distributed solar makes up vanishingly little of total electric generation. Even taking the utilities’ arguments at face value, it seems foolish to upend this small but important market to remedy a perceived harm that is, at least for now, more theoretical than real. 

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on May 8, 2025.

Unknown's avatar

With vetoes and destructive amendments, Youngkin acts to deepen Virginia’s energy woes

by

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.