Tag Archives: gas plant

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Hey Dominion, what’s up with the gas plants?

by
Dominion Energy headquarters, Richmond, VA

Flush with success after the SCC ignored legal deficiencies and approved the company’s plan for a large gas peaker plant in Chesterfield, Dominion Energy is pushing its luck with a proposal for a massively bigger gas combined-cycle plant.

The 3,000 MW facility slated for Cumberland County would be Dominion’s biggest fossil fuel plant ever, the size of three nuclear reactors. And unlike the Chesterfield plant, which is designed to run only intermittently, Dominion expects the new one to run most of the time. 

With Chesterfield, Dominion argued that a peaker plant was needed for reliability. You know the refrain: the sun doesn’t always shine, the offshore wind won’t always blow, batteries might run out of juice. That argument doesn’t fly for a combined-cycle plant, but the company still waves the banner of reliability. For Cumberland, though, it just says growing demand means it needs the power.  

The demand part is true. Every time Dominion revises its projections for future demand, the number goes higher. The obvious reason is the data center boom, though Dominion generally avoids saying so. It cites electric vehicles, building electrification and new manufacturing, trying to create a “we’re all in this together” vibe. 

But energy efficiency has largely kept pace with those kinds of higher usage. When the SCC pushed Dominion to separate data center demand from total demand, it became clear that residents and non-data center businesses aren’t the drivers. We are just the ones paying the consequences.

Why should we residents be stuck with 30 years of paying for a honking-big, fracked-gas-burning, climate-change-driving monstrosity whose sole purpose is to feed the tech companies’ competitive drive for the most advanced chatbots?  

Indeed, there are all kinds of reasons why the SCC should say no, including the unfairness, high cost, illegality and – to use a technical term – stupidity of building another plant to burn fossil fuels.

 The new plant proposal uses different technology from the Chesterfield project but comes with similar problems. 

Both carry the weight of environmental injustice. Just last year Cumberland County approved construction of a mega-landfill over strong opposition from the rural, historically Black community. Residents had hoped the county would instead lean into its rich history to promote “tourism not trash.”Layering on a massive gas plant in an area that is already about to be burdened with one of the largest landfill projects in the state surely raises issues of equity and fairness.

The SCC showed little interest in those problems in the Chesterfield case, and may well ignore them in Cumberland. If so, maybe it will be more persuaded by the economic argument.

Only a couple of years ago, developers had mostly stopped investing in new gas generation for the simple reason that combined-cycle plants are expensive to build and can’t compete against cheaper renewables on a dollars-per-megawatt-hour basis. 

(By contrast, peaker plants are cheap to build but inefficient and much more expensive to run, so they only get fired up for short periods when demand peaks and power prices are at their highest. That’s a role batteries increasingly fill at less cost.)

As recently as 2024, only 4% of new electric generation in the U.S. came from fossil fuels; almost all the rest came from solar, batteries and wind. This was partly because federal tax incentives made wind and solar more attractive in the Biden era, but the data shows that even without subsidies, renewable energy remains the most cost-competitive form of generation.   

A couple of things have changed since then. The onslaught of power-hungry data centers overwhelmed the ability of electric grids to keep generation in balance with demand. At the same time, the Trump administration erected one barrier after another to the wind and solar projects that would most quickly and cheaply bring the balance back. Instead, it is aggressively supporting fossil fuels and weakening pollution limits. 

For a utility needing more power at any cost, suddenly gas plants are back on the table. But for the people who have to live with them and pay for them, a gas plant will be an ongoing liability.

Wind and solar exploded in popularity not just because they don’t pollute the air, but also because they have no fuel cost. You build them once, and you know your power price for the next 25-30 years. Fossil gas, on the other hand, carries a price beyond the capital cost of building the plant, but you don’t know what that price will be. Even with a robust domestic supply, gas prices gyrate wildly.

When Dominion proposes building a gas plant, it makes a guess about what the price will be in the future. There is no penalty for the company in guessing too low. If prices go up unexpectedly, it’s the ratepayers who foot the bill. The SCC can’t tell Dominion to eat the extra cost; by law, fuel costs are passed directly through to consumers. 

Indeed, this spring, for the second time just this decade, Dominion told the SCC it needs to raise bills to cover past fuel costs that were higher than it planned. In this case, it wants collect from us more than a billion dollars. Paying off the full amount over one year would add $22 to the monthly electricity bill of the average residential customer. 

This “average” customer is said to use 1,000 kWh per month. Those of us with heat pumps use much more than that in the winter months, so $22 can become a multiple of that. This amount will appear on top of the fuel charges that already make up about 25% of generation charges on residential bills.

But given the pain a hike of this magnitude would cause to residents, not to mention the outrage that would result, Dominion proposes instead to spread the cost out over several years. This is what it did in 2023 to recoup $1.2 billion in excess fuel costs racked up in 2021-22. According to the “deferred fuel charge” on my bill, we are still paying off that debt. 

Fool us once, fool us twice, and are you really willing to go along with Dominion’s claim that fossil gas will be an inexpensive, reliable and desirable fuel source over the next 30 years while we pay off this project, with interest?

And then there’s the fact that building a gigantic new plant to burn fracked gas is politically stupid. Global warming doesn’t factor into the Trump administration’s energy “planning,” such as it is, but climate action was a priority for the previous administration and is going to be one for future administrations. Global warming isn’t going away; it’s getting worse, and wishing away reality is not a long-term strategy. 

Moreover, future leaders will have to deal with the fact that clinging to an extraction economy has left the U.S. behind our geopolitical rivals on implementing advanced technologies like solar (where China dominates), offshore wind (China again), electric vehicles (there again, China) and storage (do I even need to say China?). 

I’d rather bet the U.S. won’t continue down this path of self-destruction. If and when our leaders course-correct, attention will revert back to building out our supply of clean energy, with greater urgency to make up for lost time. That’s where Virginia’s focus should be. 

The General Assembly meant for the Virginia Clean Economy Act and our participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to future-proof our power supply and deter Dominion from sinking its customers’ money into ill-conceived fossil fuel plants. 

“Reliability” isn’t supposed to be a get-out-of-jail-free card. Dominion has to meet energy efficiency targets, satisfy environmental justice requirements and prove that there aren’t cost-effective clean energy options available. It can’t do it.

Of course, Dominion didn’t meet those conditions when it proposed the Chesterfield peaker plant, and the SCC approved it anyway. But we have to stop digging our carbon hole sometime. Let it be now.

A version of this article appeared in the Virginia Mercury on May 20. 2026.

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Is the SCC rethinking Dominion’s gas plant?

by
Dominion Energy headquarters, Richmond, VA

When the State Corporation Commission approved Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposal to build a new, 944 MW gas peaker plant on November 25, it looked like the end of a long, drawn-out battle over the future of fossil fuels in Virginia.

The approval seemed to signal that for now, at least, the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) would not stand in the way of new gas-burning turbines in spite of their high greenhouse gas emissions. According to the SCC’s order, the surge in power demand from data centers had triggered a reliability exception to the VCEA’s ban on new fossil fuel construction.  

Then suddenly, on December 16, the SCC granted the Southern Environmental Law Center’s (SELC) motion to reconsider the decision the commission had rendered just weeks before,  suspending approval of Dominion’s plan. What the heck?

The SCC did not limit what it intends to reconsider, suggesting it will look anew at each of the four issues SELC raised. Since those issues cover pretty much everything about the gas plant’s approval, it’s impossible to guess what is going on. 

Certainly, there are many reasons to criticize the initial approval of the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center (CERC), beyond its climate impacts. The majority-Black community where the plant would be located suffered for decades from exposure to toxic air pollution spewing from the huge coal plant on the site. Closure of the coal plant had brought a welcome respite. Residents fear they will once again serve as a sacrifice zone for decades to come, in spite of environmental justice protections written into the VCEA.

In addition, Dominion had gamed the planning process so thoroughly that this alone might have caused the SCC to reject the proposal. Dominion had gone ahead and put in an order for the gas turbine even before soliciting proposals from third parties to address reliability concerns, as the law requires. On top of that, the company told the SCC that an independent third party had reviewed the options, which was false. 

 Dominion, it turned out, never had any intention of awarding the project to anyone but itself or of considering alternatives that didn’t involve fossil gas. How could the SCC reward such malfeasance?

The VCEA prioritizes the security and reliability of the power supply even over its carbon-cutting and cost-saving goals, but there are conditions attached to approving new power plants, intended to make new fossil fuel generation something of a last resort. SELC and other environmental groups had made a strong case both that Dominion failed to meet those conditions, and that there were non-fossil fuel alternatives that could provide reliability at less cost.

But if Dominion’s gaming of the process should have sparked outrage at the SCC, it also succeeded in putting the regulators in a difficult position. The mere suggestion of a future with rolling blackouts if a power company doesn’t get its way would cow any public utility commission, let alone one in a state facing an unprecedented surge in demand.  

That explains the SCC’s order approving a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) for the gas plant Dominion swears is its only viable option. What, then, explains the about face on December 16, less than 24 hours after receiving the motion to reconsider?  

Four possible errors

In its motion, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), representing Appalachian Voices, the NAACP and Mothers Out Front, argued that the SCC erred on four points around environmental justice, the cost of the gas plant compared to alternatives, the burden of proof on reliability and the legal mechanism for cost recovery. 

If the SCC were to agree with any of the first three arguments, the result would require new analysis, and might even send Dominion back to the drawing board. Agreement on the fourth point, however, would only change how Dominion charges ratepayers for the cost of the project. It would require the company to put the cost into base rates instead of a new rider, making CERC potentially less profitable for the company.  

This last point looks like something of a legal slam-dunk. A provision in the VCEA allows rate recovery through a rider only when a utility has met its energy efficiency targets – something all parties agree Dominion has not done. 

SELC also alleged that the commission failed to ensure the development of CERC “does not have a disproportionate adverse impact on historically economically disadvantaged communities,” another statutory requirement. The SCC’s original order addressed the point but appears to have misread this section of the law. That fact alone would justify a reconsideration of the November 25 order, though it would not alter the core of the decision to approve a CPCN for the gas plant.   

SELC’s other three points put CERC in greater jeopardy, if the SCC agrees. 

The commission’s environmental justice analysis consisted mainly of a judgment that a gas plant would be less harmful to the surrounding Black and Hispanic community than the coal plant that was formerly on the site. This may or may not be true, but that’s not the standard. On the contrary, a minority community that has suffered decades of pollution shouldn’t be first in line for the next polluting project to come along. That “disproportionate” impact is precisely what the VCEA and the Environmental Justice Act prohibit.

If the SCC were to side with the local community on this point, it wouldn’t stop Dominion from building a gas plant, but it would require the company to find a new location.  

The two final arguments attack the decision that a large gas peaker plant is the right remedy for a looming energy crisis. SELC contends that Dominion didn’t prove the cost of the gas plant is reasonable, citing the company’s deeply flawed process for considering alternatives and its failure to include fuel cost data. SELC also complains the SCC didn’t require Dominion to prove that its claimed threat to reliability could only be satisfied with a fossil fuel plant, but had merely taken the company’s word for it. 

These are accurate complaints about Dominion’s flawed process and strained analysis, and compelling reasons to reject Dominion’s plan — but they were just as compelling on November 25, when the SCC issued its order granting the CPCN.  

Indeed, the SCC had to both close its eyes and grasp at straws to reach the conclusions it did. For example, a footnote in the SCC’s order cites a Dominion witness’ testimony for the proposition that a Sierra Club witness had agreed a gas plant would be needed eventually. The commissioners did not take the time to find and review the Sierra Club’s testimony, which would have shown the Dominion witness had mischaracterized the evidence. Indeed, the Sierra Club’s modeling showed an alternative portfolio of clean resources would provide more energy than CERC at less cost. 

But apparently, gaming the process, ignoring the law and mischaracterizing the evidence are all things Dominion is willing to do to get an expensive fossil fuel plant approved in the face of the rigorous conditions set by the VCEA. 

On December 29, the SCC set a date of January 23 for Dominion to reply to the issues raised by SELC in its motion for reconsideration; presumably the commission will then set a date for a new hearing on those issues. The timeline could push a final decision on CERC out beyond the end of this year’s legislative session, making the interplay of politics and policy all the more interesting.

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury.

Update: After all that, in February the SCC decided not to make any changes to its order. Environmental groups are taking the matter to court.