Tag Archives: climate change

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Report confirms Dominion’s worst-place standing on clean energy

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photo courtesy of the Sierra Club

photo courtesy of the Sierra Club

A new report from the non-profit group Ceres shows Dominion Resources, the parent of Dominion Virginia Power, winning last place among investor-owned utilities on a nationwide ranking of renewable energy sales and energy efficiency savings.

That’s left Virginians wondering how a company that talks so big succeeds in doing so little. And more importantly, what would it take for Dominion to rank even among the average?

Dominion came in 30th out of 32 in renewable energy sales, at 0.52%. On energy efficiency, it achieved 31st out of 32 on savings measured cumulatively (0.41%), and 32nd out of 32 measured on an incremental annual level (at 0.03%). Together these put our team in last place overall—a notable achievement for a utility that trumpets its solar investments and carbon-cutting progress.

To show just how awful Dominion’s performance is, the top five finishers achieved between 16.67% and 21.08% on renewable energy sales, 10.62-17.18% on cumulative annual energy efficiency, and 1.46-1.77% on incremental annual energy efficiency. National averages were 5.29% for renewable energy sales, 4.96% for cumulative efficiency savings, and 0.73% for incremental annual efficiency savings. Rankings were based on 2012 numbers, the latest year for which data were available.

In case you’re wondering, American Electric Power, the parent company of Appalachian Power Co., earned 24th place for renewable energy, with 2.65% of sales from renewables—a number only half the national average and one we might have called pathetic if it weren’t five times higher than Dominion’s. AEP’s efficiency rankings also placed it firmly in the bottom half of utilities, running 23d and 20th for cumulative and incremental efficiency savings, respectively. However, AEP earned its own laurels recently as the nation’s largest emitter of carbon pollution from power plants due to its coal-centric portfolio.

A study of the rankings reveals that Dominion’s major competition for the title of absolute worst came from other utilities based in the South. The critic’s favorite, Southern Company, nabbed 31st place on the renewable energy sales measure, but failed to make the bottom five on one of the efficiency rankings. Another southeastern utility, SCANA, achieved rock bottom on renewable energy; but like Southern, its marginally better performance on efficiency disqualified it from an overall last-place ranking.

Why do utilities in the South do so poorly? Probably because they can. Most of the poor performers have monopoly control over their territories and are powerful players in their state legislatures. Lacking in competition, they do what’s best for themselves. Possessing political power, they are able to keep it that way.

Of course, they still have to contend with public opinion and the occasional legislator who gets out of line. For that it helps to have a well-worn narrative handy, like the one about how expensive clean energy is. Dominion has found that Virginia’s leaders fall for that one readily, even though it’s false.

And so, when asked about the Ceres report, Dominion responded that Virginia wouldn’t want to be like the states that have high-performing utilities. Dominion spokesman Dan Genest told the Daily Press, “The three states — California, Connecticut and Massachusetts — the report mentions as being leaders in those categories also have among the highest electric rates in the nation. Typical residential customer monthly bills are $228.85, $206.07 and $191.04, respectively. Dominion Virginia Power customers pay $112.45.”

This would be an excellent point, if it were true. Alas, Genest’s numbers appear to be a product of a fevered imagination. According to recent data reported in the Washington Post, California’s average monthly electric bill is only $87.91, Connecticut’s comes in at $126.75, and Massachusetts’ at $93.53, while Virginia’s is $123.72. (Virginia’s numbers presumably reflect an average of bills paid by customers statewide, probably accounting for the higher figure than Genest cites for Dominion’s “typical” customer.)

That’s right: in spite of higher rates, Californians pay way less for electricity than Virginians do, in part because they have achieved high levels of energy efficiency. If you do that, you can afford to invest in more renewable energy without people’s bills going up.

This is such a great idea that it seems like it would be worth trying it here. Remarkably, this is precisely the strategy that environmental groups have been urging for years in their conversations with legislators and their filings at the State Corporation Commission. With the pressure on from global warming and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, this would seem to be a great opportunity to save money, cut carbon, and move us into the 21st century.

So go for it, Dominion. Aspire to lead! Or failing that, at least shoot for average.

 

 

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Energy Plan must prepare Virginia for hotter summers

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A version of this blogpost was previously published in theHampton Roads Virginian-Pilot on July 20, 2014

Virginians rally in front of U.S. EPA Headquarters in Washington, DC

Virginians rally in front of U.S. EPA Headquarters in Washington, DC

“Over the past 30 years, the average resident of [the Southeast] has experienced about 8 days per year at 95° or above. Looking forward, if we continue our current emissions path, the average Southeast resident will likely experience an additional 17 to 52 extremely hot days per year by mid-century and an additional 48 to 130 days per year by then end of the century.”

            —Risky Business: The Business Risks of Climate Change in the United States

This quote comes from a report issued in June by an all-star group of business and government leaders, laying out the costs involved in higher temperatures and sea level rise. The section on the Southeast is especially likely to make you want to move north and west.

Virginia has started to focus attention on rising sea levels because they are already taking a toll on Tidewater areas, regularly flooding neighborhoods in Norfolk and eating away at the Eastern Shore. In 2013, at the behest of the General Assembly, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science produced an in-depth report on sea level rise and our options for dealing with it. The report says southeast Virginia should expect another one to two feet of sea level rise by 2040, and up to 7.5 feet by the end of the century. We have our work cut out for us, but at least we’re facing up to it.

By contrast, we have not yet begun planning for higher summer temperatures. As the Risky Business report warns, these higher temperatures will make much of the humid Southeast literally uninhabitable without air conditioning. And that has profound implications for our energy planning, starting now.

More intense summer heatwaves will place additional stress on the electric grid and cause costly spikes in power demand. Power outages, today mostly an inconvenience, will become public health emergencies unless there are back-up sources of power readily available, such as solar PV systems with battery storage distributed throughout every community.

Better building construction will be critical to keeping homes and businesses cool reliably and affordably. Since buildings last for many decades, we shouldn’t wait for summers to become deadly before we start mandating better insulation. It is vastly cheaper and more effective to build energy efficiency into a building than to retrofit it later.

This makes it especially unfortunate that the McDonnell administration caved to the home builders’ association last year and did not adopt the updated residential building codes, which would have required these kinds of improvements in new additions to our housing stock. Governor McAuliffe’s failure to reverse the decision this year remains incomprehensible.

However, the McAuliffe administration is now engaged in three planning exercises that ultimately converge around Virginia’s future in a warming world. The Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy is currently writing an update to the Virginia Energy Plan as required by statue every four years, and which must be submitted to the General Assembly this October. On a slower track, a revived Climate Commission will begin conducting its work over the course of the next year. And most recently, the Department of Environmental Quality has announced listening sessions this summer focused on the U.S. EPA’s proposed climate rules.

This timeline puts the (energy) cart before the (climate) horse. The writers of the Energy Plan will not have the benefit of the climate commission’s deliberations, and won’t know what the final EPA rules will require. With pressure from utilities, fossil fuel interests and home builders, business-as-usual thinking might prevail. That would be a mistake.

We don’t know whether the worst extremes cited in the Risky Business report will become reality, or whether the U.S. and the rest of the world will manage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the rise of the oceans and check the worst of the heatwaves. But while we hope for the best, it makes sense to plan for the worst.

And in this case, planning for the worst will also reduce the likelihood of it happening. If we improve building efficiency starting now, we will cut down on the emissions driving a Risky Business future. If our disaster preparedness includes solar panels on businesses and government buildings, we cut emissions and make the grid more resilient.

Global warming has to be part of Virginia’s energy planning from now on. It’s just too risky to ignore it.

 

 

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Now’s your chance: Virginia seeks public input on carbon rules

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Photo by Josh Lopez, courtesy of the Sierra Club.

Photo by Josh Lopez, courtesy of the Sierra Club.

On June 2 the U.S. EPA proposed a Clean Power Plan for the states, and now the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality wants to know what Virginians think about it. Starting July 22, DEQ is holding four “listening sessions” to get the public’s views:

  • Tues, July 22 in Wytheville, VA, Snyder Auditorium, Wytheville Community College, 1000 East Main Street, 5 PM to 8 PM.
  • Thurs, July 24 in Alexandria, VA, Meeting Room, John Marshall Library, 6209 Rose Hill Drive, 5 PM to 8 PM.
  • Mon, July 28 in Virginia Beach, VA, Auditorium, Virginia Beach Public Library, 4100 Virginia Beach Blvd., 5 PM to 8 PM.
  • Thurs, Aug 7 in Henrico, VA, Administration Board Room, Henrico County Govt. Center, 4301 East Parham Rd., 5 PM to 8 PM.

Depending on turnout, speakers may be limited to 3-5 minutes, though written testimony can be any length. Written comments can also be submitted to ghg@deq.virginia.gov.

The purpose of the listening sessions, according to DEQ, is to help the agency determine what comments it will file on the EPA plan, and how Virginia can implement the rules as they have been proposed.

The first question is one for the public—do we support EPA’s plan to cut carbon emissions? The answer, of course, is an emphatic yes. In fact, EPA’s proposal is too modest, and we can do better.

Carbon pollution affects everyone in Virginia: residents of coastal areas experiencing recurrent flooding and beach erosion due to sea level rise; farmers whose crops will suffer from higher summer temperatures and drought; people who have asthma or heart disease; the elderly, who suffer most during heat waves; and parents who want to leave a healthier planet for our children and grandchildren. DEQ needs to hear from all these residents.

DEQ’s second question is how we should go about cutting carbon. The EPA plan proposes a carbon budget for Virginia that would reduce our emissions by 38.5% over 2005 levels by 2030. It wouldn’t tell us how to do it, but outlines four broad categories of options:

  • Increasing the efficiency of existing coal plants to reduce carbon emissions;
  • Increasing utilization of existing natural gas-fired power plants;
  • Expanding the use of wind, solar, or other low- or zero-emitting alternatives; and
  • Reducing consumption through energy efficiency.

We may be able to do all of these, but the third and fourth categories offer the big opportunities. Virginia lags behind other states on energy efficiency, has so little solar that the industry trade groups haven’t bothered to track it, and has no wind power at all. As a result, we have a lot of low-hanging fruit to go after. So EPA’s 38.5% is readily achievable if we refocus our energy policies to support energy efficiency and zero-emission energy sources like solar and wind.

This is hardly a new theme, though the EPA plan gives it new impetus. For years environmental groups have argued to the State Corporation Commission, utilities and the legislature (and anyone else who will listen), that a sound energy policy for Virginia should include substantial investments in energy efficiency, solar and wind. That combination offers the most bang for the buck and provides the most benefit to Virginians in the way of clean air, jobs and business opportunities.

It’s been a hard sell; Virginia utilities make more money when they sell more power, so they don’t like efficiency measures that lower demand, and the SCC has always favored “cheap” energy, no matter what it costs us. EPA’s plan can help us overcome these barriers if Virginia adopts the right policies. These could take the form of an energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) and a law giving teeth to our renewable portfolio standard (RPS). Alternatively or in addition, we could join a regional cap-and-trade system that effectively puts a price on carbon, such as the northeast’s very successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

If any of these are to become a reality, it will take public demand to make it happen. Even with carbon taking center stage now, there is room for utilities to carry us in the wrong direction. Dominion Virginia Power sees carbon regulation as an opportunity to develop nuclear power at ratepayer expense, in spite of the costs, the risks, the shortage of cooling water, and the lack of any long-term plan for radioactive waste. Expensive central power stations, heavily subsidized by the public but comfortably familiar to executives and lucrative for shareholders, remain Dominion’s top choice.

With Dominion using its cash and clout liberally in Richmond, its preference for more gas and more nuclear will carry greater weight with decision-makers than such an approach deserves. So if the public wants anything else, it had better speak up—and now’s the time to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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.

 

 

 

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Dominion won’t explain ties to anti-clean energy “bill mill” ALEC

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Dominion Resources, the parent of Dominion Virginia Power, held its shareholder meeting today in Cleveland, Ohio. Unhappy Dominion shareholders have introduced many resolutions over the years seeking to reform aspects of the company’s business practices, from buying mountaintop-removal-mined coal to exposing investors to risks from climate disruption. Although Dominion routinely challenges the resolutions, seeking to keep them off the ballot, this year half a dozen resolutions made it through the legal obstacle course to be voted on. One of the resolutions, submitted by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, called on Dominion to disclose its financial support for the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council, which works to defeat and roll back renewable energy and climate initiatives across the country. The resolution prompted guest blogger Seth Heald, in Cleveland today for the shareholder meeting, to offer this commentary.  

Dominion's coal-fired Chesterfield Power Station, on the James River, has been driving climate change since 1952. Photo credit Ed Brown, Wikimedia Commons.

Dominion’s coal-fired Chesterfield Power Station, on the James River, has been driving climate change since 1952. Photo credit Ed Brown, Wikimedia Commons.

In the past week or so communities across Virginia staged Earth Day festivals and other events to raise environmental awareness and support environmental protection. Virginia’s largest electric utility, Dominion Virginia Power, had tables or booths at a number of these events, touting the company’s environmental record.

The utility’s parent corporation—Dominion Resources, Inc.—attempts to defend the company’s environmental practices on its website. Chief environmental officer Pamela F. Faggert explains “[e]nvironmental awareness is the responsibility of each Dominion employee. It is woven into the fabric of our culture ….”

What you won’t find on Dominion’s website or in its Earth Day handouts is any mention of its work to undermine environmental protections through its financial contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council, widely known as “ALEC.” ALEC has been described as “a corporate bill mill.” It brings together corporations and state legislators and comes up with “model legislation” for the legislators to introduce back home. Sometimes state legislatures pitch in with their own additional financial support. A report on ALEC’s influence in Virginia, issued by the group Progress VA, states that between 2001 and 2010, Virginia spent over $230,000 of taxpayers’ money to send legislators to ALEC conferences “to meet with corporate lobbyists behind closed doors.” The report notes that more than 50 bills drawn from ALEC sources have been introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in recent years.

ALEC gained notoriety recently because of its sponsorship of “stand your ground” laws, such as the one in Florida connected to the Trayvon Martin shooting death. According to The Guardian, more than 60 corporations withdrew from ALEC after that connection was publicized.

ALEC’s proposed energy and environmental legislation reliably favors corporate polluters’ interests over the environment. An ALEC model resolution intended to stymie efforts to address climate change expressed the goal of “prohibiting EPA by any means necessary from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, including if necessary defunding EPA greenhouse gas regulatory activities.” As reported in the Virginian-Pilot, a Virginia delegate introduced this resolution in the House of Delegates after it was presented to him by the coal industry. A different ALEC resolution called for opposition to “all Federal and state efforts to establish a carbon tax on fuels for electricity and transportation.” A list of ALEC model legislation is available at http://www.alecexposed.org/.

The nonprofit watchdog Center for Media and Democracy reports that Dominion Resources has participated on ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture task force. A 2010 “roster” of people on that task force (obtained by the group Common Cause and posted online) includes Dominion executive Robert Blue, who currently is Dominion Virginia Power’s president. Blue and other Dominion executives served alongside Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute—an extremist group notorious for its support of climate-science denial and comparing those who “still believe” in climate science to mass murderers.

Also on ALEC’s environment task force roster serving alongside Dominion executives were representatives of the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC (affiliated with Koch Industries and the Koch brothers), the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (a coal-industry group that lobbies against carbon-emission restrictions), and the Koch-backed right-wing, anti-environment group Americans for Prosperity.

ALEC has been linked to sponsorship of recent efforts to block or roll back state legislation that promotes renewable energy. ALEC has also backed efforts to water down laws requiring disclosure of fracking chemicals, and efforts to block federal regulation of toxic coal-ash storage sites. (Federal regulation, had there been any, might have served to prevent the recent Duke Energy coal-ash spill in North Carolina, which flowed downstream into Danville, Virginia.)

You simply can’t square these anti-environment positions with Dominion’s professed corporate culture of environmental awareness, supposedly woven into the company’s very fabric. No wonder Dominion keeps quiet about its ALEC involvement.

At Dominion’s May 7 shareholder meeting I asked the company’s chairman and CEO, Thomas Farrell, II, why Dominion participates in ALEC and what the company gets from that participation. Farrell clearly didn’t want to say much. His entire answer was “We see value in it and that’s why we participate.”

EPA records reveal that Dominion is the largest emitter of carbon-dioxide pollution in Virginia. Meanwhile Virginia’s Hampton Roads area, where many Dominion customers live, is one of the most vulnerable places in the nation to harm from climate change caused by carbon emissions. Virginia continues to suffer from the recent Duke Energy spill of toxic coal ash into the Dan River.

ALEC’s efforts to block environmental protections harm all Virginians, indeed all Americans. The people of Virginia—Dominion’s customers—should press Dominion to work to reduce its carbon emissions sharply rather than waxing poetic about its environmental “culture” while quietly supporting groups like ALEC that seek to block efforts to address climate change.

Seth Heald is vice chair of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, and is also a Dominion Resources shareholder. He is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Energy Policy and Climate program at Johns Hopkins University.

 

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More bills to watch

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photo credit: Amadeus

photo credit: Amadeus

The bills keep coming. Again, this is hardly a comprehensive list, just the ones I’ve had a chance to think about. By the way, renewable energy fans may want to head to Richmond on January 30, when many of the House bills will be taken up in a long afternoon session of the House subcommittee on energy. Members of the public are usually permitted to testify.

Another renewable energy tax credit bill. Senator Norment has now filed SB 653, a companion bill to HB 910. This caps the overall total of tax credits that can be claimed at $10 million annually. As previously noted, it’s encouraging to have powerful Republicans supporting this bill. One complication, however, is that Senate Finance, which will hear Norment’s bill, has adopted a policy that makes it very difficult to pass new tax credit legislation, preferring grants instead. Tax breaks for renewable energy have proven extremely effective in other states and at the federal level in building the industry and creating jobs, but I wouldn’t object to grants. With Norment one of the leading senators on the Finance committee, we will hope he navigates this wisely.

Crowdfunding. Currently securities laws prevent private companies from accepting investments from people who are not “accredited” investors, otherwise known as rich folks. The purpose is to protect unsophisticated investors from hucksters, but it has the effect of preventing companies from engaging in creative crowdsourced financing for things like solar projects. An “invest in Virginia” bill, HB 880 (Yost) and SB 351 (Edwards), would loosen the rules for Virginia citizens investing in Virginia companies.

Ending HOA bans on solar. Since 2008, homeowner associations haven’t been able to impose new bans on solar panels, though they can impose restrictions on size and placement. However, HOA rules that were adopted prior to 2008 can still include total bans. SB 222 (Petersen) would nullify these bans. A similar bill passed the General Assembly two years ago, only to be vetoed by Governor McDonnell in the belief that it interfered with existing contracts. But many other states have overridden HOA solar bans as a matter of public policy; Virginia should do likewise. So far, Senate Commerce and Labor agrees, as the bill was passed out of committee today on a unanimous vote. (One caveat: what passed was a substitute, and I haven’t seen the changed language.)

Solar gardens. HB 1158 (Surovell) would allow “virtual” net metering of solar energy, making it possible for someone to subscribe to part of the output of a solar project and get credit on their utility bill for that amount. This approach would support huge growth in the solar market and has tremendous grassroots appeal; not surprisingly, the utilities are completely opposed to it.

Advantaging natural gas. Appalachian Power seems to want to build a new natural gas plant in Virginia at customer expense, and doesn’t want the State Corporation Commission to scrutinize the plan too carefully. HB 1224 (O’Quinn) makes an end run around the SCC’s standard operating procedures by declaring such a plant in the public interest and telling the SCC to “liberally construe” the provisions of the law to approve it. You have to wonder: if a natural gas plant is such a great idea, why does the SCC have to be coerced into approving it? And why shouldn’t a wind farm get the same treatment?

Fracking public lands. HB 915 provides that no permit or lease for oil and gas exploration or drilling on public lands can prohibit the use of fracturing. Really? Why would you prevent a state agency and the Governor from determining the scope of a permit? If the agencies are doing their job protecting public lands (I know, a big if), surely this prohibition ought to make it less likely, not more likely, that permits would be issued. That makes this bill a bad idea no matter whose side you’re on.

Attempts to nullify federal law. Two bills from Bob Marshall, HB 140 (multi-state coal compact) and HB 155 (interstate offshore energy compact) would replace existing federal laws and regulations with state control. Only the first bill is blatantly unconstitutional. The second, an attempt to supplant federal authority over waters beyond three miles out from shore, wouldn’t take effect without “consent” of Congress, so it might be merely a total waste of everyone’s time and an affront to our good sense. Delegate Marshall evidently regards the Constitution as a mistake. The rest of us can only be embarrassed for his constituents.

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Energy bills to watch in 2014

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photo credit: Amadeust

photo credit: Amadeust

Every year, hundreds of energy bills are fed into Virginia’s sausage-making machine, but little of interest to clean energy advocates makes it out the other end. Utilities and coal companies largely control the outcome, thanks to their generosity in funding legislators’ campaigns, and they do not share our desire for change.

Yet the start of each new Session, like the new year itself, always produces hope and excitement about the possibilities at hand. 2014 is no exception. There are a lot of bills here worth watching, and even rooting for. The list below is not comprehensive, and new bills keep coming in while existing ones get amended faster than I can keep up with, so take this summary only for what it’s worth today.

One point worth noting is that many of the most promising bills come from Republicans. Renewable energy and energy efficiency, once identified with progressives, seem to have gone mainstream in Virginia. Well, why not? In addition to lowering our carbon footprint and helping residents save money, they make business sense and create jobs.

How to look up a bill: The links in this article will take you to the summary page for a bill on the website of Virginia’s Legislative Information Service. The bill summary is not guaranteed accurate and does not change even if the bill language changes substantially, so always follow the links to the latest version of the bill to read the text. The summary page also shows what committee the bill has been assigned to; following the links will show you who is on the committee, when it meets, and what other bills have been assigned.

Investment tax credit. The bill with the potential to do most for renewable energy in Virginia is HB 910 (Villanueva), which would provide tax credits for renewable energy projects. The top priority this year for the solar industry, the bill would go a long way towards helping renewable energy compete in a state that still shells out millions of dollars every year in coal subsidies. A companion bill from a Senate Republican is also expected but has not been filed as of the time of this posting. The combination would be a powerful statement of support from a party that has not always been a friend to renewable energy.

In a bid to create broad support, HB 910 is not limited to emission-free projects like wind and solar. It would be hugely unfortunate if a few large biomass projects were to gobble up the credits, so we hope the patrons will commit to making any necessary fixes in future years if that happens.

Expanding net metering. Three-quarters of utility customers can’t take advantage of solar energy because their property isn’t suitable for solar panels. HB 879 (Yost), HB 906 (Krupicka) and SB 350 (Edwards) would allow customers in multifamily housing to participate in shared renewable energy systems, a limited form of community net metering. The bills would also allow something called “municipal net metering,” under which local governments could build a single renewable energy facility and attribute the energy from it to multiple meters on property owned by the locality. In addition to solar, these projects could include wind, landfill gas or gas from aerobic or anaerobic digesters.

Although these three bills look to be the same right now, I’m told they may be changed so that one House bill deals with multifamily housing and the other with municipal net metering.

Defining solar panels as pollution control equipment. SB 418 (Hangar) is primarily a useful workaround to address a tax problem that is holding back solar power purchase agreements. Odd as this sounds, currently third-party-owned solar systems are subject to local tax as manufacturing equipment. In many jurisdictions where solar PPAs have the most potential to help churches, schools, and other non-profits go solar, the tax is so high as to make the projects impossible to finance. Many localities want to help solar but are paralyzed by fear of opening a Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences. To solve the problem, SB 418 would extend to solar panels a tax exemption currently available to landfill gas projects and wood mulching equipment. Beyond helping PPAs, the legislation would also exempt solar equipment from state sales tax, which would make solar systems more affordable to all solar customers.

RPS bills. Several bills seek to improve Virginia’s pathetic voluntary renewable portfolio standard law by restricting the kinds of energy or credits that can be used to meet it. None of them would make the RPS mandatory, so they can’t deliver the kind of robust market in renewable energy credits (RECs) that supports the wind and solar industries in other states. For the most part, they aim for small fixes that could cue up stronger bills in future years, and reduce the consumer rip-off that characterizes the current RPS.

Of these, HB 1061 (Surovell) is the solar industry favorite. It would create the beginnings of a solar REC market here even within the framework of the voluntary RPS. This “Made in Virginia” bill would require Dominion Virginia Power to meet a portion of its voluntary target with renewable energy certificates representing distributed generation produced in Virginia, or by contributions to the state’s voluntary solar resource fund, which provides loans for solar projects. The State Corporation Commission would be tasked with the job of creating a system for registering and trading Virginia-based renewable energy certificates (RECs).

HB 881 (Yost) similarly sets up a system of renewable energy certificate registration and tracking at the SCC. It also eliminates the double and triple credits that the RPS currently gives to certain types of energy, only grandfathering in some wind RECs that Appalachian Power had already contracted for.

SB 498 (McEachin) makes a number of changes to the voluntary RPS to put it on a stronger footing going forward. It limits a utility’s ability to satisfy the goals with purchases of low-quality RECs like those from old hydroelectric dams and landfill gas, and ensures that most future purchases of energy and RECs will represent high-quality resources like wind and solar. It does not, however, include a carve-out for Virginia distributed generation. A similar bill last year received the blessing of Dominion but died in the face of opposition from the Virginia Alternative and Renewable Energy Association, arguing for the interests of the producers of crappy RECs.

Delegate Alfonso Lopez spent much time and effort over the past year trying to broker a deal between the utilities, environmental groups and renewable energy companies to produce a modest consensus bill. The result, HB 822, would seem to be a testament to how little consensus there is; it includes only a two-year limit on banking RECs for use in future years and the elimination of double credit for energy from animal waste. (I’m guessing the animal waste people weren’t at the table.) It also strengthens existing wording about the RPS serving the public interest, which may help utilities get SCC approval for expenditures to meet the targets.

On-bill financing for energy efficiency. Advocates of clean energy say the best way to get homeowners and businesses to weatherize buildings and install efficiency upgrades is to let customers pay the cost through their utility bills, often out of the energy savings they reap.  HB 1001 (Yancey) would require electric utilities to offer on-bill financing for energy efficiency measures. The bill would be stronger if it included gas utilities and did not insist on a five-year payback period, which is too short a time for many weatherization measures, but it’s still a great start.

Service districts. HB 766 (Bulova) adds energy and water conservation management services to the list of items that can be owned and maintained by local service districts. This adds a new tool for local governments to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, allowing payments to be made via local property tax bills.

Virginia Commission on Energy and the Environment. The Virginia Energy Plan is due to be updated in 2014, and boy, does it need it. Anyone who has ever tried to make sense of the plan has probably given it up as a hopeless hodgepodge of contradictory ideas. Anything you like, it’s in there. Anything you don’t like is in there, too, and none of it means anything because the provisions for the most part have no teeth. HB 818 (Lopez) hopes to turn this mishmash into a coherent plan for Virginia’s energy future by creating a new legislative commission to perform a comprehensive review of the energy landscape.

Price stability. HB 808 (Lopez) adds consideration of long-term price stability to the factors that utilities and the State Corporation Commission must look at when evaluating a proposed new electric generating facility. This would help to level the field for renewable energy, since fuel prices for fossil fuels are highly volatile and largely unpredictable over the full 30-year design life of a facility, whereas wind and solar are famously price stable.

Consideration of the environment. In a case decided last summer (PUE-2012-00128), the State Corporation Commission essentially interpreted the Virginia code to eliminate its own role in protecting the environment when it approves electric generating facilities. HB 363 (Kory) beefs up the code just enough to make it clear the SCC still has a job to do even when state agencies have issued all the relevant permits. The bill requires the SCC to consider matters not covered by permits, such as carbon emissions and the overall effect of electric generation facilities on the health and welfare of residents.

Dealing with climate change. Hampton Roads is facing a crisis as sea level rise combines with sinking land to swamp low-lying coastal areas with every major storm, a problem predicted to get steadily worse over the course of the century. SJ 3 (Locke) and HJ 16 (Stolle) establish a Recurrent Flooding Planning Committee to examine ways to respond. It’s a good bill, but really, it’s weird to address recurrent flooding with no mention of what’s causing it. Dealing with recurrent flooding in Hampton Roads without talking about climate change is like addressing the obesity epidemic without mentioning diet and exercise. Why kid ourselves?

Carbon Dioxide Emission Control Plan. Speaking of kidding ourselves, SB 615 (Carrico) would establish a commission with the job of limiting carbon emissions without limiting the sources of those emissions. Indeed, the bill would be more accurately titled the Carbon Pollution Continuance Plan. It’s too bad to see legislators fighting to keep coal plants running full-tilt when we have better, cleaner, and cheaper options—ones that don’t put us on a course to make “recurrent flooding” a daily occurrence.

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Can carbon sequestration save Virginia’s coalfields?

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Mountaintop removal coal mining

Mountaintop removal coal mining

Many elected officials who care about the stark challenges confronting America’s coal-producing regions today are pinning their hopes on carbon capture and sequestration. This technology takes carbon dioxide out of power plant emissions and stores it underground. Since coal is the number one emitter of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas primarily responsible for heating the planet, carbon sequestration might be the only way to continue our use of coal in a world increasingly worried about climate disruption.

Virginia’s newly-elected governor, Terry McAuliffe, has high hopes for carbon sequestration. McAuliffe is confronting a problem that confounded his predecessors: how to deal with the continuing economic decline of southwest Virginia’s coal-producing counties. But, enthusiastic as he is about new technology, McAuliffe should be skeptical of suggestions that carbon sequestration offers a solution to Virginia’s coal decline. It does not.

This decline has been going on for decades. It predates the recession and the Obama presidency and tighter regulations aimed at protecting public health. It predates the explosion in natural gas fracking that has made gas cheaper than coal. Coal employment in Virginia has steadily dropped and is now below 5,000 workers, less than half of what it was in 1990. The best coal seams have been mined out, exacerbating the problem that Virginia coal is more expensive to mine than coal from other states. To get at the remaining seams as cheaply as possible, coal companies increasingly resort to mountaintop removal, destroying vast tracts of the Appalachians with explosives and giant machines (but very few workers). Even if carbon capture and storage proves successful, coal employment in the commonwealth won’t recover.

We aren’t the only Appalachian state facing this problem, but others are tackling it head-on. Kentucky, facing an even steeper decline in its coal-producing areas, has launched a bipartisan effort to help the region move beyond coal. This doesn’t mean they are happy about it, but they are willing to look facts in the face.

In Virginia, on the other hand, the response for some years has been to throw money at the coal companies and hope for the best. Virginia taxpayers shell out millions of dollars every year to corporations that mine Virginia coal. Legislators keep renewing the coal subsidies even though a 2011 review by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee concluded they aren’t effective.

If throwing money at coal companies can’t halt the slide in Virginia coal, it’s hard to see how carbon sequestration technology could do it, even if the government were to pay for it. And given the environmental destruction involved in mountaintop removal mining, prolonging the end of the coal era in Virginia shouldn’t be anyone’s priority.

The start of a new administration offers a chance for a new strategy. Admittedly, it won’t be easy. The challenge of bringing new industries to a remote and mountainous region is a tough one, and support for coal still remains high in the area. Why, then, insist on confronting cold reality?

Because it has to be done.

Terry McAuliffe campaigned on jobs, and has given every indication he means it. Given his background, connections and talents, he is in as good a position as any governor in recent times to take on the challenge of helping southwest Virginia diversify its economy. He can work with the legislature to redirect the millions of dollars currently going to ineffective coal subsidies into tax credits for jobs in new industries and support for projects like home weatherization that create jobs and make a difference in people’s lives. He can challenge the entrenched interests, twist arms, enlist allies, recruit businesses, use the media—in short, make this a priority. The residents of the coalfields deserve as much.

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Why standby charges are bogus

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Utilities want solar owners to pay for grid access. Photo credit: NREL.

Utilities want solar owners to pay for grid access. Photo credit: NREL.

Rooftop solar energy makes up a tiny fraction of the total electricity produced in America, but already utilities worry about a day when large numbers of their customers won’t need them any more. As renewable energy costs continue to tumble and the technology of battery storage improves, many residents and businesses may abandon their power utility to go it alone or form microgrids within their communities to control their own power.

Some utilities understand that this is the future and are looking for ways to turn these trends to their advantage. Others are doing everything they can to protect their turf, and progress (and the environment) be damned. They figure they can’t wind up on the wrong side of history if they stop history from happening.

Hence the attempt to throttle solar while it’s still little. Caps on system sizes, caps on total amounts of distributed generation, prohibitions against third-party power purchase agreements, restrictions on net metering: all of these are efforts to keep solar too small to matter, and too small to achieve the economies of scale that could lead to an upending of the central utility model.

The latest effort to squelch solar is through standby charges: fees imposed on net metering customers that compensate the utility for “standing by,” ready to sell grid-produced energy at night and on cloudy days. In 2012 in Virginia, Dominion Virginia Power won the right to charge customers with large residential systems (10-20 kilowatts) up to $60 per month—a charge that destroyed this market segment. This summer Dominion pressed its advantage, indicating in a submission to regulators that it will likely seek more standby charges on a broader class of solar customers.

Note that Virginia has less than 15 megawatts (MW) of solar installed across the state. Dominion Power alone has around 19,000 MW of coal, gas and nuclear. So the notion that net metering by solar customers has any perceptible effect on the grid or other customers is silly. The point of Dominion’s stand-by charges is to stifle the solar market, not cover costs.

This same debate played out this year in Arizona, which saw its solar industry install 719 MW in 2012—still a tiny percentage of that state’s total energy supply, but one that is growing fast enough to warrant the discussion. Last week the public utilities commission agreed to allow Arizona Public Service Company (APS) to charge its residential solar customers an average of $5 per month. The utility treated the ruling as a win, and indeed the charges might eventually add up to enough to cover APS’s attorney fees in the case. That’s more than can be said about Dominion’s standby charges.

Meanwhile the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has gotten into the act, drafting a model resolution insisting that net metering customers should have to pay their “fair share” of utility costs through measures like standby charges. Not incidentally, Dominion Power is a member of ALEC and sits on the energy and environment task force next to the fossil fuel shills from Heartland Institute.

But the “fair share” argument is bogus. Utilities weren’t set up to ensure Americans all paid their “fair share” of the costs of the electric grid. If they were, there would still be mountain communities without power today. Residents of cities and towns subsidized the cost of running power lines to far-flung rural homes inhabited by people who could never have afforded their “fair share” of this infrastructure.

Even today, city dwellers pay more than their “fair share” of transmission costs to subsidize people like me who live in leafy, sprawling suburbs and less-populated parts of the state. Anybody voting for an ALEC-style resolution about “fair shares” had better be willing to stick it to suburban and rural consumers.

There are other ways electricity rates aren’t “fair.” Dominion’s residential rates are structured so people who use less electricity pay more per kilowatt hour than those who use more—again, making it roughly a transfer of wealth from urban apartment dwellers to those with larger or less efficient homes elsewhere. The utility’s goal is to encourage the use of electricity, and compete more effectively with the gas company for heating. People paying their “fair share” just doesn’t enter into it.

And while we’re at it, if we were serious about subsidies we’d slap a tax on electricity made from fossil fuels to reflect the costs they impose on society. Asthma, heart disease, mercury poisoning, groundwater contamination, and of course, the dumping of carbon into the atmosphere—these are all costs of fossil fuel that ought to be included in power bills to make sure everyone is paying their “fair share.” People who install solar panels deserve a thank-you for their service to society, not standby charges based on bogus “fair share” claims.

The argument for standby charges is, pure and simple, an attempt by entrenched monopolies to block competition. The “fair share” argument is a red herring from utilities that don’t want a fair fight. And with good reason: they’re going to lose.

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The Keystone XL Pipeline: Game over?

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NASA scientist James Hansen famously warned that if the Keystone XL pipeline gets built, it’s “game over” for the climate. That dire warning lit a fire under the feet of activists, who rightly argue that Canada shouldn’t be producing the dirty, carbon-intensive tar sands oil, and the U.S. shouldn’t enable the climate destruction by building a pipeline to get the oil out of North America. But stopping Keystone won’t stop global warming, and building it won’t make environmentalists throw in the towel. If this is a game, we are pawns as well as players, so we can never walk away.

Frankly, it’s hard to understand right-wing enthusiasm in the U.S. for a pipeline benefiting a Canadian company extracting Canadian oil intended for the world market. In spite of all the talk about jobs, it will employ only a few thousand workers temporarily, and not in the areas of the country where unemployed construction workers live. Moreover, building it requires the government to seize private property from unwilling landowners to benefit a private interest—usually the sort of thing that makes Republicans go ballistic.

I might add that the environmental damage being done to thousands of square miles of Canadian arboreal forests and lakes is staggering—but Republicans have long since made it clear that they do not consider despoiling nature a drawback when there is energy to be had and profit to be made. (If you are a Republican and you bristle at this, see if you can name a recent oil, gas, or coal mining project your party has opposed for environmental reasons. I can only name one, and that doesn’t get beyond “sort of.” See the Tennessee Conservative Union’s ad opposing mountaintop removal coal mining, now that a Chinese company wants to do it.)

Some would argue that the climate case against Keystone is overstated. Tar sands oil is “only” 14-24% more carbon intensive than conventional oil, if you ignore a nasty byproduct called petroleum coke that adds to the total carbon footprint. Yet surely if the reverse were true, and the carbon footprint of tar sands oil were less than that of conventional oil, it would be hailed as some kind of a planet-saving fuel. Incremental changes are what got us into this mess in the first place.

If Keystone represents evil, though, it has plenty of company, and there is blame enough to go around. Canadians are developing tar sands oil because the worldwide demand for petroleum is high and growing, there is money to be made meeting the demand, and there is no one who will make them stop. The harm done exceeds the profit to be made, but most of the harm is borne by people in other countries.

That makes the case against the pipeline mostly a moral one, and moral arguments don’t get much respect these days. Yet when the State Department or the Washington Post urges that if we don’t build the pipeline, the Canadians will just find other ways to get the oil to market, the proper response should be outrage. Their position is the moral equivalent of justifying buying stolen goods on the theory that if you don’t do it, the thieves will just find a fence somewhere else.

Admittedly, lots of people would buy stolen goods if there weren’t a law against it; for such people, morality is most successful when immorality gets you arrested. And there isn’t a law against tar sands oil; Canada is the only country with jurisdiction, and it prefers to look away.

Americans also have a little problem that we do, indeed, buy a lot of stolen goods. As the world’s biggest oil consumers, we have a credibility problem. On the other hand, if we don’t set the standards, who will? And if we don’t start here, then where?

Keystone or no Keystone, the fight against climate change will go on, because our lives and our children’s lives depend on it. It’s not a game we can stop playing—but we sure shouldn’t make it even harder for ourselves to win.