Tag Archives: Bob McDonnell

Virginia’s amazing year in energy: gas rises, coal falls, and solar shines (but it’s still not okay to say “climate change”)

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Virginians rally in front of U.S. EPA Headquarters in Washington, DC in support of the Clean Power Plan

Virginians rally in front of U.S. EPA Headquarters in Washington, DC in support of the Clean Power Plan

Nobody laughed a few years ago when former governor Bob McDonnell dubbed Virginia the “Energy Capital of the East Coast”; we were all too astounded by the hyperbole. And today, even “Energy Suburb” still seems like a stretch. Yet, if you measure achievement by the sheer level of activity, Virginia is making a play for importance. The year’s top energy stories show us fully engaged in the worldwide battle between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Of course, while the smart money says renewables will dominate by mid-century, Virginia seems determined to drown rather than give up its fossil fuel addiction.

Coal falls hard; observers disagree on whether it bounces or goes splat. Nationwide, 2014 was a bad year for the coal industry. Coal stocks fell precipitously; mining jobs continued to decline; and the one thing electric utilities and the public found to agree on is that no one likes coal. Even in Virginia, with its long history of mining, coal had to play defense for what may have been the first time ever. So when Governor McAuliffe released the state’s latest energy plan in October, what was otherwise a paean to “All of the Above” omitted the stanza on coal. And this month, the governor proposed a rollback of the subsidies coal companies pocket by mining Virginia coal.

Of course, coal is not going quietly; Senator Charles Carrico (himself heavily subsidized by Alpha Natural Resources) has already responded with a bill to extend the subsidies to 2022.

EPA opens a door to a cleaner future, and Republicans try to brick it up. Speaking of hard times for coal, in June the EPA unveiled its proposal to lower carbon emissions from existing power plants 30% nationwide by 2030. Instead of targeting plants one-by-one, EPA proposed a systemic approach, offering a suite of options for states to reach their individualized targets.

The proposal drew widespread support from the public, but Virginia’s 38% reduction target set off howls of protest from defenders of the status quo. The staff of the State Corporation Commission claimed the rule was illegal and would cost ratepayers $6 billion. Republicans convened a special meeting of the House and Senate Energy and Commerce Committees, where they tried out a number of arguments, not all of which proved ready for prime time. The rule, they said, threatens Virginia with a loss of business to more favored states like—and I am not making this up—West Virginia. Also, Virginia should have received more credit for lowering its carbon emissions by building nuclear plants back in the 1970s when no one was thinking about carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, the Southern Environmental Law Center analyzed the rule and concluded that actually, compliance will not be hard. Virginia is already 80% of the way there, and achieving the rest will produce a burst of clean-energy jobs coupled with savings for consumers through energy efficiency.

Undaunted, Republicans have already introduced a thumb-your-nose-at-EPA bill developed by the fossil fuel champions at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The “solarize” movement takes Virginia by storm. For the last few years, solar energy has been exploding in popularity across the U.S., but Virginia always seemed to be missing the party. So it surprised even advocates this year when pent-up consumer demand manifested itself in the blossoming of local solar buying cooperatives and other bulk-purchase arrangements. “Solarize Blacksburg” made its debut in March, going on to sign up hundreds of homeowners for solar installations. It was followed in quick succession by the launch of similar programs in Richmond, Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Northern Virginia, Halifax, Floyd, and Hampton Roads.

The main reason for the solarize programs’ success was the steep decline in the cost of solar energy. 2014 saw the cost of residential installations in Virginia fall to record low prices, making the investment worthwhile to a broad swath of homeowners for the first time.

Utilities say maybe to solar, but only for themselves. Virginia still boasts no utility-scale solar, but utilities elsewhere signed long-term power purchase contracts for solar energy at prices that were sometimes below that of natural gas: under 6.5 cents/kilowatt-hour in Georgia, and under 5 cents in Texas. Compare that to the estimated 9.3 cents/kWh cost of power from Dominion Virginia Power’s newest and most up-to-date coal plant, the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Plant, and you’ll understand why Dominion has suddenly taken an interest in solar projects. Sadly, it’s own foray into rooftop solar so far stands as an example of what not to do, and a testament to why the private market should be allowed to compete.

Yet Virginia utilities continued their hostility to customer-owned solar. Dominion put the kibosh on a bill that would have expanded access to solar energy through community net-metering, while Appalachian Power matched Dominion’s earlier success in imposing punitive standby charges on owners of larger residential systems.

Fracking, pipelines, and gas plants, oh my! Renewable energy may be the future, but the present belongs to cheap natural gas. Yes, the fracking process is dirty, noisy and polluting, and yes, methane leakage around gas wells is exacerbating climate change. But did we mention gas is cheap?

2014 saw proposals to drill gas wells east of I-95, while the Virginia government began updating its regulations to govern fracking. Dominion Power started construction on a second new gas power plant, and talked up its plans for a third. The utility giant, a major player in the gas transmission business, also got approval to turn its liquefied natural gas import terminal in Cove Point, Maryland, into an export terminal. With visions of customers dancing in its head, it also announced plans for a major new pipeline to bring fracked gas from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina—one of three proposed pipelines that would cut through the Virginia countryside and across natural treasures like the Appalachian Trail. The pipeline created an instant protest movement but gained the wholehearted approval of Governor McAuliffe.

Flooding in Hampton Roads becomes the new normal; it’s still not okay to ask what’s causing it. A cooler-than-normal year for the eastern United States gulled many landlubbers into believing that global warming was taking a breather, but meanwhile the ocean continued its inexorable rise along Virginia’s vulnerable coastline. It’s one thing to shrug off the occasional storm, said residents; it’s harder to ignore seawater that cuts off your parking lot at every high tide. 2014 will go down as the year everyone finally agreed we have a problem—even in the General Assembly, which passed legislation to develop a response to the “recurrent flooding.” But while the bill recognized that the problem will just get worse, it avoided noting why.

The public gets it, though. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that climate change was the number one topic of interest to writers of letters to the editor in 2014. And loud cheers greeted Governor McAuliffe’s announcement that he would reestablish the state’s commission on climate change, which Bob McDonnell had disbanded. As one environmental leader quipped, “People in Tidewater are tired of driving through tidal water.”

Public corruption: in Virginia, it’s not just for politicians. Everyone can agree that it was a really bad year for the Virginia Way, that gentlemanly notion that persons of good character don’t need no stinkin’ ethics laws. But we also saw plenty to prove the adage that the real scandal is what’s legal. As we learned, Virginia law allows unlimited corporate contributions to campaigns, and puts no limits on what campaigns can spend money on. So if some legislators act more like corporate employees than servants of the public, well, that’s how the system was set up to work.

But the system only works when corporations get their money’s worth from the politicians, and that quid pro quo usually comes at the public’s expense. For example, take Dominion Power’s North Anna 3 shenanigans (please). In an exceptionally bold exploitation of the Virginia Way, Dominion Power secured passage of legislation allowing it to bill customers for hundreds of millions of dollars it had spent towards a new nuclear plant that it is unlikely to build. (And the irony is that ratepayers will still be better off throwing the money down that rathole than they will be if Dominion does manage to build it.)

So as we look ahead to 2015’s energy battles, anyone wondering who the winners and losers will be needs only one piece of guidance: in Virginia, just follow the money.

Dominion’s ties to ALEC, McDonnell’s conviction, all part of one corrupt package

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Group Dominion quit ALEc image 2

Protesters gather outside the Crystal City headquarters of ALEC

A crowd of protesters gathered at the Arlington headquarters of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on September 4 to demand that Dominion Resources, the parent of public utility monopoly Dominion Virginia Power, drop its membership in the right wing “bill mill.”

On the very same day, a jury convicted ex-Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife on federal corruption charges, setting off a new round of debate about Virginia’s lax ethics laws.

The two news items sound like different topics, but in fact they are both about the corruption undermining our democratic system. The McDonnell trial, with its focus on swank vacations, golf clubs, designer clothes and other neat stuff, actually missed the bigger breach of public trust that goes on every day. This takes the form of unlimited corporate campaign contributions and gifts to members of both parties, and the influence over legislation purchased by this largesse.

Dominion Power has spent decades and many millions of dollars building its influence in Richmond this way, to the point where most legislators don’t bother pursuing a bill if the utility signals its opposition. That’s why Virginia has not followed so many other states in requiring its utilities to invest in energy efficiency, wind and solar. Economic arguments, jobs, electricity rates—all these are talked about in committee, and all are irrelevant to the fate of a bill. The only relevant question for legislators is, “What does Dominion think?”

What Dominion thinks, though, is not about what’s good for its customers, but what’s good for its own bottom line. And this is where ALEC comes in. Dominion Virginia Power’s president, Bob Blue, sits on an ALEC committee with representatives from the climate-denial group Heartland Institute, the Koch-funded anti-environment group Americans for Prosperity, and that most oxymoronic of lobby shops, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Their purpose is to craft model state bills that protect fossil fuel profits and attack all efforts to regulate carbon emissions.

Dominion provides a straight shot from ALEC’s back-room bill-brokering to Virginia’s statute books, trampling environmental protections along the way and giving the lie to Dominion’s façade of environmental responsibility. No wonder so many of last week’s protesters were Dominion customers who objected to the utility using the money it charges them for electricity to pay its ALEC dues.

We see the result every year in the General Assembly, as bills drafted by ALEC pop up all over the place without attribution. In addition to attacking clean energy, ALEC bills oppose worker protections and minimum wage initiatives, promote stand-your-ground bills like the one at issue in the Trayvon Martin case, and of course, undermine the kinds of clean-government efforts that would reduce the influence of corporations—like campaign finance reform.

And because the voters are the only people who could prove more powerful than corporations—and the only ones who might ultimately cut off the corporate cash flow—ALEC works to undermine voting rights as well.

In the wake of the McDonnells’ convictions, Virginia legislators are once again mumbling about tightening up the rules on gifts. The discussion is half-hearted; the pay for their work is paltry and the hours are long, so they aren’t anxious to give up the perks.

But it’s too late for half-measures. Elected officials are going to have to subject themselves to a ban on gifts, and the prohibition should extend to ballgame tickets, golf getaways and sit-down dinners. The loophole that currently allows campaign funds to be used for personal use must also be closed to avoid an end-run around the gift ban.

But until we turn off the corporate cash spigot, our democracy will still have special interests, not voters, calling too many shots.

Governor McAuliffe gets his chance on energy and climate

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Virginia Sierra Club activists Tom Ellis and Ann Moore. Photo by Ivy Main

Virginia Sierra Club activists Tom Ellis and Ann Moore. Photo by Ivy Main

2014 is shaping up to be an exceedingly interesting year for energy policy in Virginia. The rewrite of the Virginia Energy Plan, the re-establishment of the Governor’s Climate Commission, and EPA’s just-proposed carbon rule create three separate pathways that will either intersect to form a coherent and coordinated state policy, or will take us into a chaotic tangle of competing agendas.

Add in the myopia of the State Corporation Commission and the control of the General Assembly by utility and coal interests, and we’ve got an unpredictable plotline here. All you energy watchers are going to want to stock up on popcorn for this show. Or better yet, become a player—read on to find out how.

First there’s the energy plan. Virginia law requires a new iteration every four years, with this year’s due October 1. To help with the work, Governor McAuliffe appointed the Virginia Energy Council two weeks ago. The Council consists primarily of energy industry members, with only one environmental representative and no consumer advocates. (Although come to think of it, that might be because Virginia doesn’t have any consumer advocates. But still.)

The Council will be working with the staff of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, which has already begun holding “listening sessions” and accepting comments to get input from the public. The next one will be held tonight, June 17, in Annandale, Virginia. Get there early and sign up for a speaking slot. Other locations include South Boston on June 19, Abingdon on June 24, Norfolk on June 26, and Harrisonburg on July 1.

The existing energy plan, created under Governor McDonnell, is the sort of “all of the above” hodgepodge that you’d expect from a process where you bring in a bunch of energy company executives and say, “Have at it!” I’d be concerned that the same fate awaits the new one, but for a couple of new factors: the reboot of the Governor’s Commission on Climate Change and the looming threat of EPA’s carbon rule. (Making this the first time ever that I’ve welcomed anything I called a looming threat.)

The Climate Commission was supposed to have launched by now, and if it had, I might have been able to say something definite about how it will interact with the Energy Council. Unfortunately, Governor McAuliffe got a little sidetracked by something you may have heard about: the political chaos that ensued when a certain Democratic senator resigned his seat and threw the Senate into Republican hands under suspect circumstances in the middle of a battle over the Governor’s signature initiative.

(In fairness. the senator’s backers insist he acted only out of the purest self-interest and not because he’d been bribed, there being a legal difference. Still, from now on anyone who screws over a large number of friends at once will be said to have “Pucketted” them.)

As you may remember, Governor Kaine established the first Governor’s Commission on Climate Change back in 2007 to study the effects of global warming on Virginia and to make recommendations on what to do about it. The commission issued a well-thought-out report replete with excellent suggestions. The report was put on a shelf and admired for a while, until Governor McDonnell found out about it. He acted swiftly, taking down the Commission’s web page lest anyone think he believed in rising sea levels and flooding and predictions about the dire consequences of global warming—you know, the sort of thing you can actually see going on now in Hampton Roads, the second-largest metropolitan area in Virginia.

Governor McAuliffe, on the other hand, not only “believes in” climate change and the risks it poses to Virginia, but also believes there are huge job and growth opportunities to be had by taking action in response. He has made it clear he does not want his commission to start from scratch, but rather to pick up where the Kaine commission left off.

McAuliffe’s Energy Plan must also take account of carbon emissions in a way the McDonnell plan never tried to. On June 2, EPA issued a proposed rule to address carbon pollution from existing electric generating plants, intended to reduce overall emissions nationwide by 30% by 2030. Although the rule won’t be final for a year, and states will then have as long as two years to implement it, and there will be lawsuits trying to block it from ever being implemented—still it means no one can ignore carbon now.

If you want to weigh in on the carbon rule, EPA will be holding hearings around the country, including in Washington, DC on July 30, or you can email your comments.

The proposed rule is not simple. Each state has been given a carbon budget for all its electric generating plants combined, expressed in pounds per megawatt-hour, and arrived at by some still-rather-opaque notion of what a given state is capable of. The cleanest states are thought to have policies in place to get even cleaner, so their targets are more ambitious than those of the dirtiest states. The dirty, coal-intensive states, having done so little to clean up in the past, are thought incapable of making a whole lot of progress now, and so are rewarded by being graded on a curve. Interestingly, it is not the clean states crying foul, but the dirty ones.

Virginia’s carbon target falls in the middle, but achieving it will require improvements of 37.5% over 2012 levels. This sounds harder than it is, given that we have several natural gas plants under construction that will presumably count towards lowered emissions as they dilute the coal in the state’s power mix. EPA also assumes that existing plants can operate at higher efficiencies that will reduce emissions per unit of energy produced.

The carbon rule also contains what seems to be a freebie of 6% of existing nuclear power, a provision intended to encourage the continued operation of nuclear plants that still have time remaining on their licenses but are no longer economic. In Virginia’s regulated market, our nuclear plants don’t have to compete on the open market and so aren’t in danger of being shut down for economic reasons, but apparently we get the freebie anyway.

Beyond that, however, the carbon rule will clearly put a thumb on the scale in favor of energy efficiency and carbon-free power sources. The EPA is right to think we have plenty of those to call on. A few years ago, ACEEE released a study showing Virginia could readily achieve energy efficiency savings of almost 20% cost-effectively, and much more if we really rolled up our sleeves. Since then, the few utility programs that have addressed energy efficiency have barely moved the needle. This means the low-hanging fruit still clings there, only now it’s really, really ripe.

Add in offshore wind (which can provide about 10% of state energy needs just from the initial lease area that Dominion Power bought rights to), some land-based wind (a few more percentage points) and solar energy (estimated to be able to produce 18-25% of our demand), and we know we can blow right through the EPA target.

As we also know, though, Dominion CEO Tom Farrell has his heart set on a new nuclear plant, which would suck up all the money that might otherwise go to renewables and dampen the utility’s interest in efficiency. Given nuclear’s high cost, the need for taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies, and the public safety risks involved, the free market isn’t on his side. But with captive ratepayers and the legislature on the company payroll, Farrell’s dream remains a possibility in Virginia.

As I say, it’s going to be an interesting year.

 

 

 

McDonnell administration set to fail Virginians on building codes

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Everyone agrees that cutting energy waste is the most cost-effective way to meet our energy needs while reducing reliance on fossil fuels. And making new buildings efficient from the start is the surest way to achieve energy savings. Energy efficiency is the Mom-and-apple-pie part of our energy policy. Who could oppose it?

The Home Builders Association of Virginia, for one. They would rather build cheap housing than efficient housing, even when high utility bills turn cheap housing into expensive housing.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying from the home builders, the Board of Housing and Community Development (BHCD) has backed away from the national model building code provisions that would have improved the efficiency of Virginia residences by as much as 27.4%, according to a U.S. Department of Energy analysis. And, the McDonnell administration has signed off on the weak regulations. Virginia’s Department of Housing and Community Development has proposed a watered-down code that is currently open to public comment until September 29.

The McDonnell administration prides itself on fiscal prudence and its love for the business community. Here is a case where fiscal prudence demands tough love. A watered-down code means money wasted.

The model code provisions would have required higher “R” values in ceiling and wall insulation, resulting in homes that cost less to heat and cool. It would also have required builders to check for leaks mechanically, rather than just eyeballing it, to catch air leaks while they can still be fixed. The code that Virginia is set to pass jettisons these improvements, and others.

It’s cheaper for builders to skimp on insulation and not worry about air leakage, but the result is a home of lower quality and value. Owners and tenants end up having to pay more to keep warm in winter, and cool in the summer. These higher utility costs paid by occupants quickly eclipse the savings to builders.

What’s more, the cost of fixing defects later is much greater than building the house right to start with. Drafty houses are a classic example of the need for strong building codes, because sealing and insulation aren’t visible to buyers, and trying to add them later is difficult and expensive.

Customers who are buying brand-new homes have the right to expect a quality product. Virginians should tell the Department not to waste this opportunity to improve our housing stock for years to come.

A strong building code will also reduce Virginia’s reliance on fossil fuels and help low and moderate-income residents in one of the most cost-effective ways possible. Housing built for the low-end market is particularly vulnerable to poor construction. Buyers usually don’t know where corners have been cut, or don’t care because they plan to rent out the buildings and won’t themselves shoulder the high utility bills.

Some builders do cater to sophisticated buyers with homes that meet higher standards, but the vast majority stick only to what the code requires. Utility bills consume a disproportionate share of the income of residents with low and moderate incomes, and can also be a particular burden for seniors and others on fixed incomes. The failure to keep pace with the national model code means a missed opportunity to help homeowners across the state, as well as future owners and tenants.

The more rigorous model code standards would result in some additional upfront cost to buyers, but the Department of Energy calculates that savings on utility bills would more than cover the additional payment on a mortgage. Over 30 years, the average consumer would see more than $5,000 in savings.

Unfortunately, the pressure from the home builder lobby has resulted in a proposal with greatly weakened provisions that mean most new homes will remain unnecessarily expensive to heat and cool.

Virginians should not have to live with leaky, inefficient homes. The Department of Housing and Community Development should restore and adopt the full 2012 model building code standards, to improve our housing stock now and for the future.

Greenwashing Virginia’s renewable energy law, part 3: you can’t clean ugly

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If you’ve been following the woeful tale of Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard, by now you know it hasn’t produced a single electron of wind or solar power in the commonwealth, nor is it ever likely to. Fellow citizens, what is to be done?

Let’s review what happened in last year’s legislative session, when word got out that Dominion Power was meeting the state’s renewable energy goals by buying cheap renewable energy certificates from decades-old projects involving dams, trash and wood—and collecting tens of millions of dollars annually as a “bonus” for doing so. Outraged environmentalists pushed for a reform bill that would let utilities collect this bonus from their customers only if they invest in new, Virginia-made wind and solar projects—essentially, what we thought the law was about in the first place.

It was a well-crafted, solid, common-sense bill. It died without even a hearing.

But meanwhile, Governor McDonnell got two bills passed that actually made the law worse. The first one said that in addition to energy from old dams, trash and wood, utilities can meet our goals by purchasing renewable energy certificates generated by universities showing they’ve done some research into renewable energy.

Research is an admirable activity. Most of us approve of research. We approve of universities, too. But even when you put universities and research together, not a single electron of energy flows into anyone’s home. Under what possible theory does it qualify as renewable energy?

Also newly qualifying, thanks to the governor, are certificates representing an industrial process used by a Virginia corporation called MeadWestvaco. This also won’t put energy on the grid, but it creates a brand-new income stream for MeadWestvaco, paid for by utility customers—though not by large industrial users like MeadWestvaco itself, which got themselves exempted from paying for the added cost to utilities of renewable energy.

Lobbyists, my friends, are worth every dime of their inflated paychecks.

No doubt this clever bill will stimulate the creative juices of other corporations to figure out how they, too, can feed at the renewable energy trough. As a service to anyone wondering how to get their ideas into law, I note that MeadWestvaco gave $75,000 to Bob McDonnell’s campaign for governor and his inaugural committee. This is what we call the Virginia Way.

After these two bills passed, Governor McDonnell announced he had taken important steps to promote renewable energy. Advocates of renewable energy promptly asked him not to do us any more favors. Heading into the next session, we’re gravely concerned that he wasn’t listening.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli offered a different approach: repeal the RPS law, or at least repeal the bonus utilities get. Mr. Cuccinelli is more famous for attacking the credibility of climate scientists than for embracing renewable energy, but with the environmentalists’ reform bill dead, the Sierra Club ended up supporting the AG’s bill rather than see the consumer rip-off continue.

But that bill failed, too, though it got several votes from Cuccinelli allies in the House, some of whom are pretty sure that if renewable energy succeeds, the United States will become a failed socialist state occupied by blue-helmeted U.N. troops. (If you think I am making that up, check out some Virginia Tea Party websites.) It is safe to conclude that votes for the AG’s bill were not votes for renewable energy.

Cuccinelli’s bill shared the same fatal flaw as the reform bill: Dominion Power opposed it. In case you haven’t caught on by now, Dominion almost always gets its way in the legislature, and it sure isn’t going to allow either the AG or the Sierra Club to take away its free money.

The upcoming session could be interesting. Mr. Cuccinelli is running for governor next year, which makes him the leading Republican in the state, with all due respect to Bob “Lame Duck” McDonnell. This fall Cuccinelli issued a report critical of Virginia’s appalling RPS, and has signaled he plans to go after the bonuses again.

Which is more powerful for Republicans, political allegiance or Dominion’s campaign cash? Which matters more to Democrats, renewable energy or Dominion’s campaign cash? Which matters more to Governor McDonnell, his party or his tight relationship with Dominion’s CEO (not to mention the campaign cash)? Not surprisingly, legislators are begging Dominion and the AG’s office to work something out together so they won’t have to pick sides.

Concerned that a “compromise” may serve political ends but leave the public out in the cold, environmental groups plan to bring their own citizen’s army to Richmond in support of reform. They’d like to see a compromise that lets Dominion keep its bonus payments by earning them with Virginia-made wind and solar. It’s so little to ask–yet, based on past years’ experience, it may still be too much to hope for.

Which brings us to the third option for outraged citizens. Buy Dominion stock. Seriously, if the company is going to wind up on top every time, you may as well get in on the profits.

Maybe you can use your dividends to buy solar panels.

Offshore oil drilling in Virginia: undead and ugly

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Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

Drilling for oil off Virginia’s coast is once again a possibility, popping up like a zombie when we thought it was dead (again). As the New York Times reported, “Efforts are focusing on Virginia because the public, politicians in both parties and energy companies all favor opening the waters to drilling.”

It will be news to many members of the Virginia public that we favor drilling off our coast, but there’s no doubt that oil companies are itching to open the Atlantic coast to drilling rigs, and plenty of Virginia politicians make it a talking point. Senators Warner and Webb are on board, as is Senator-elect Tim Kaine. Most famously, Governor McDonnell came into office dreaming of the highways he would build when his tanker ship came in.

For oil companies, Virginia is the thin edge of the wedge. Our share of federal waters is quite small because of the odd way that boundary lines are drawn. Virginia is targeted mainly as a means of cracking the line of resistance created by other eastern states. It’s a shame so many of our politicians are eager to help in the cracking.

It used to be that when Democrats and Republicans agreed on something, that improved the odds of it being a good idea. These days, it often just means they are taking money from the same corporations. Money alone may not buy a politician’s votes, but it most certainly buys lobbyists access to politicians, and access has a way of producing votes. So perhaps the surprise is not how many politicians have jumped on the drill-baby-drill bandwagon, but how many have not.

Some naysayers, including Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Fairfax), point out that drilling off our coast is opposed by the U.S. Navy, which uses most of Virginia’s leasing area for its operations. These include testing air and surface missiles and bombs, which traditionally don’t pair well with oil rigs and tankers. (On the other hand, the Navy supports offshore wind farms, which would be located away from operations.)

Other legislators, like Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Newport News) oppose drilling because of the environmental hazards, and the danger posed to fishing and tourism.

Of course, no politician will admit to being unconcerned about the environment, including the ones who are very obviously unconcerned about the environment. This is why they say they support “environmentally safe offshore oil drilling.” The phrase is so familiar that we have come to take it for granted, but it actually bears some thinking about. Saying he supports “safe oil drilling” suggests a politician has in mind another kind of oil drilling–the unsafe kind–that he would not support.

But you’d be hard-pressed to find any restrictions on the drilling industry that the drill-baby-drill crowd supports. These politicians considered offshore drilling “environmentally safe” right up to the day millions of barrels of oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Drilling methods haven’t changed since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and oil spills have continued to occur in the Gulf and elsewhere.

So let’s put in a plug for Truth in Advertising. Politicians, if you think extra American oil is worth the occasional catastrophic oil spill, then say so. Pretending there will never again be another Deepwater Horizon makes you look out of touch with reality, and the fact that a significant proportion of the voters are also out of touch with reality is not an excuse.

If you’re okay with drilling, tell us your Plan B for Virginia: how you would deal with the effects of a spill that fouls our coastline, kills wildlife, and contaminates everything that lives in the ocean, over an area that could be hundreds or thousands of square miles. If winds and tides spread the contamination onto Assateague Island or into the Chesapeake Bay, what’s your plan?

The folks in our commercial and fishing industries, and all the people who live and work in beach towns, should hear you talk about how confident you are in their ability to get by for a season on government handouts; if there’s longer-lasting damage, how maybe they can move to Northern Virginia and work in retail. I’m sure you can make it sound appealing.

And if you can’t, then maybe it’s time to kill the drilling zombie for good. You may be taking money from oil companies, but your job is to look out for Virginia.

Virginia, Energy Suburb

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Today marks the start of the third Governor’s Conference on Energy in Virginia, which means it is the third year of the Governor’s Confusion of Virginia with some other state, because he is once again promoting the slogan, “Virginia, Energy Capital of the East Coast.”

The first year, nobody said anything. He was a new governor, and it didn’t seem polite to point out the error. Rookie mistake, the conference attendees told each other. Someone will clue him in.

The second year, the slogan reappeared, and we were dumbfounded. People nudged each other and said, “You tell him.” “No, you tell him.” We drew straws, but apparently whoever got the short straw welched. And now, after three years, well, it would be really, really awkward to point out that while the slogan is charming, it is not exactly factual.

In factual terms, Virginia isn’t an energy capital, or even an energy major city. If Governor McDonnell were to call Virginia the Energy Suburb of the East Coast, that would be closer to the truth. We’re a bigger importer of electricity than any state except California. Of course it’s not like we’re importing our electrons from a hostile foreign nation. West Virginia isn’t suddenly going to cut us off if we don’t release their political prisoners.

And really, you might think there is something to be said for letting other states foul their own air with power plants while sending the electrons over to us. It’s like outsourcing manufacturing to China; they get the jobs and the pollution, we get cheap electronics that we toss in our landfills every time there’s an upgrade. In the case of out-of-state power plants, we get the electricity to run the cheap electronics.

But since emissions from power plants sneak across state lines and head straight for anyone who happens to be breathing, we are getting the pollution as well as the electrons, and all we’re losing to other states is the jobs. To a governor, losing jobs to other states is the Worst Thing Ever. If you are a governor, your highest priority is luring businesses to your state instead of to the state next door, to keep up with whatever luring that state is doing to get business away from your state. The governor with the most jobs wins.

So Governor McDonnell has been trying very hard to develop energy projects in Virginia. His signature plan was to open our coast to environmentally safe offshore oil drilling, with Congress cutting Virginia in on the royalties so we could fund our transportation priorities without taxing ourselves. But while Congress was still giggling at the revenue-sharing proposal, an environmentally safe offshore oil rig exploded and sent 5 million barrels of environmentally unsafe crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, shutting down the fishing industry and fouling several hundred miles of Louisiana shoreline.

Our governor did not blink. He is not a man to learn from mere actual events. Nonetheless, he turned his attention to other projects that could still make Virginia an energy leader. After all, McDonnell is an “all of the above” man, so in addition to oil, he likes nuclear, coal and natural gas. These haven’t worked out so well, either. The Energy Information Agency has since announced that the price tag for new nuclear now exceeds that for solar energy. Since Virginians regard solar as a luxury for wine-sipping liberal urbanites, that can only be a bad sign for nuclear.

And then there’s coal. McDonnell came into office a champion of coal, in proportion to the amount of campaign money he received from coal and coal-burning utilities. You cannot accuse the man of disloyalty. When some critics tried to suggest that taxpayers should not be shelling out $45 million per year in handouts for coal mining, he took umbrage. He also took more money. All that give and take did nothing to prevent the coal industry in Virginia from continuing its long decline.

This leaves natural gas. One of the panels for this year’s conference is titled, “What do we do with all this natural gas?” There isn’t an exclamation point at the end of the question, but there should be. Nationally, gas fracking has saved energy’s Old Guard, just when it looked like fossil fuels were washed up. The old energy guys are ecstatic. It’s not like they would ever have admitted that God’s carbon gifts might be finite, but there was an ugly shadow looming for a while that has backed off. They are hoping they can shove it into a closet with other difficult ideas, like groundwater pollution, global warming, ocean acidification and sea level rise.

From Governor McDonnell’s perspective, the only problem with Virginia being the Fracking Capital of the East Coast is how little shale gas we have, compared with Pennsylvania and New York. Still, a few counties in the western part of the state could host drilling rigs if they chose, along with the round-the-clock truck traffic, land disturbance, noise, and inevitable spills of contaminated wastewater. For some reason, they’ve rejected the idea. Look for legislation this year to take away their right to refuse.

Meanwhile, what can our governor do to make Virginia a leader on energy? There’s only one area left untried: renewable energy. We could build wind and solar facilities in Virginia, adding jobs without pollution. We know we have the resources and the businesses eager to build if the state wants them.

Until 2008, our annual energy conference was known as the Commonwealth of Virginia Energy and Sustainability Conference (COVES). Governor McDonnell discarded  “sustainability,” and since then the conference has offered less and less to interest wind and solar businesses. Yet there’s no law saying the only way to become the Energy Capital of the East Coast is by burning coal and gas.

At least, there isn’t yet. I shouldn’t give the governor any ideas.