Tag Archives: General Assembly

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The bills are back in town

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Legislators cue up last year’s vetoed legislation for a new session, but leave us wanting more

Last spring Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed more energy bills than he signed, killing legislation designed to increase rooftop solar and energy storage, strengthen utility planning requirements, and make efficiency improvements more available to low-income residents. 

Now, with Abigail Spanberger set to replace Youngkin in the Governor’s Mansion and Democrats in a position of legislative strength, those bills are back.

Members of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR) met several times this fall to examine last year’s failed energy bills to determine which should get the commission’s endorsement this year. CEUR is comprised primarily of legislative leaders from the Senate and House committees that hear energy bills, so endorsements signal a strong likelihood of passage. 

But while the bills CEUR endorsed show promise, I can’t help thinking they had better be just a starting point.  

Energy affordability and making data centers pay their fair share are supposed to be the top objectives for legislators this year. That makes it interesting, and concerning, that even as CEUR went beyond the vetoed bills to endorse some small new initiatives, it didn’t propose any legislation that would either supercharge generation in Virginia or put the onus on the tech companies to solve their supply problem themselves.  

We know bills like that are coming. Ann Bennett, the lead author of the Sierra Club’s comprehensive report on the state of the industry in Virginia, was, I hope, being hyperbolic when she told me she expects “a hundred” data center bills this session. Regardless, there will be a lot of them. 

Many will be land use bills that don’t go to the energy committees, but others will tackle the central contradiction at the heart of Virginia’s data center buildout: our leaders want the industry to grow, but haven’t faced squarely the problem of where the energy will come from. 

Getting more power on the grid (or freeing up capacity)

Some of the vetoed bills returning this year will put more energy on the grid. They won’t be enough to power the data center industry, but every bit helps. This includes one of the environmental communities’ top priorities, a bill that expands the role of rooftop solar in Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). 

A new bill permitting balcony solar also got CEUR’s endorsement. Balcony solar – two or three panels that plug into a wall outlet, reducing a resident’s need to buy power – is the buzziest new idea of the year. The systems are too small to make much of a difference in megawatt terms, but by democratizing access to solar they counter the reputation of solar as a technology for rich people and will make it possible for solar skeptics to see for themselves that solar does actually work and save money.

Another CEUR initiative is a bill similar to one Youngkin vetoed that creates a carveout in the state’s renewable portfolio standard specifically for geothermal heat pumps. Like balcony solar, geothermal heat pumps don’t put electricity onto the grid, but by freeing up power for other customers it has the same effect.

 CEUR also endorsed a bill to simplify billing in the shared solar program in Appalachian Power Company’s territory, but a far more significant proposal to greatly expand shared solar in Dominion territory was deemed not ready for consideration after one of its patrons, Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, said it was still in negotiation.  

The SCC recently directed a change in the calculation of Dominion Energy’s minimum bill that industry advocates say should make the program workable for customers beyond the low-income residents who were the only ones formerly able to access it. As currently drafted, the bill would allow shared solar to increase up to a maximum of 6% of Dominion’s peak load. That gives this bill the potential to make a meaningful dent in Virginia’s energy shortfall – if Dominion doesn’t block it. 

That assumes developers can get the community solar projects permitted at the local level. 

Virginia localities are notorious for denying permits to solar projects of all sizes, a recalcitrance that has contributed to Virginia having to import fully half of the electricity consumed in the state. CEUR has now scrapped last year’s big idea of allowing solar developers to appeal local government permit denials to the SCC, after failing to persuade enough legislators to vote for it last year. All that is left of that bill is a piece that establishes a university consortium to provide research and technical assistance. 

Luckily, last year’s other major solar siting bill lives on; it codifies best practices for solar projects without removing localities’ ability to deny permits even for projects that meet the high standards. New this year, however, is a requirement that localities provide a record of their decisions to the SCC, including the reason for any adverse decision. 

It’s not the solution the industry and landowners need to bring predictability to the local permitting process, but it does ratchet up pressure on county boards that have a habit of denying projects without articulating a legitimate reason. And sure enough, imposing that modest amount of accountability was enough to get Joe Lerch from the Virginia Association of Counties to speak against the proposal at the CEUR meeting. 

VACO seems likely to lose the fight this time around, and it should. Blocking solar development leads directly to higher electricity prices for consumers across the state. Moreover, it denies even a minimum of due process to landowners who want to install solar on their property – including farmers who need the income just to hold onto their land. For VACO to insist on counties having carte blanche to reject projects, with no responsibility to justify their decision, is arrogant and an abuse of the local prerogative.

Making the most of what’s already there

Anyone who keeps up with energy news has learned more in the past year about how the grid works than most of us ever wanted to know. There is widespread agreement that grid operator PJM has mismanaged its job, keeping new low-cost generation from interconnecting and driving up utility bills for customers across the region. Unfortunately, there is little that Virginia can do by itself to fix PJM.

But one key bit of information we can use is that utilities and the grid operator build infrastructure to meet the highest levels of demand on the hottest afternoons and coldest nights of the year, leaving much of that infrastructure sitting idle at other times. A recent study showed the grid could absorb far more data center demand than it can now if it weren’t for the 5% of the time when demand is at its highest. 

The issue is framed in terms of data centers being willing to curtail operations at times of peak demand, a solution for the companies that can do it. But there is also a broader point: we don’t need as much new generation if we use what we have better. 

That’s the principle behind several bills that CEUR endorsed. The most significant of these is a bill vetoed by Youngkin last year that almost doubles the targets for short-term energy storage laid out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act and adds targets for long-duration energy storage. As currently drafted, the 2026 version also adds new fire safety standards.

But CEUR did not discuss another obvious approach to increasing storage capacity on the grid: requiring data centers to have storage on-site, replacing highly-polluting diesel generators for at least the first couple of hours of a power outage and using spare battery capacity to assist the grid at other times. If Virginia is going to keep adding data centers at the current rate, this simply has to be part of the plan. We need far more storage than the CEUR bill calls for, and tech companies, not ratepayers, should bear the cost.

CEUR’s utility reform proposals would also help Virginia’s grid get the most out of what we already have. A bill to improve the integrated resource planning process (again, vetoed by Youngkin) requires utilities to consider surplus interconnection service projects to maximize existing transmission capacity. 

CEUR also proposes to have the SCC create a workgroup to study load flexibility. Though the SCC is already doing this through its technical conferences, the proposed legislation would formalize the process and task the work group with making recommendations.

And if all else fails, under another CEUR initiative, utilities would be explicitly allowed to delay service to new customers with more than 90 MW of demand if there wasn’t the generation or transmission available to serve them, or to protect grid reliability. As a fail-safe this is both obvious and inadequate; if a utility doesn’t have that authority now, it certainly needs it — but it needs it for a customer of any size.

Helping low-income residents save money 

CEUR endorsed several proposals that could help residents save money on energy bills. Some, like shared solar, balcony solar, geothermal heat pumps and the distributed solar expansion bill, would benefit anyone willing to make the investment. 

For low-income residents, weatherization and efficiency upgrades remain the focus. Last year the governor vetoed legislation from Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax and Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico, which would have required Dominion and APCo to expand their low-income weatherization assistance to reach 30% of qualifying customers.  Sickles has already reintroduced his bill as HB2. CEUR endorsed a different recommendation from staff that the two utilities be required to extend their spending on energy assistance and weatherization programs. 

CEUR did not examine a related bill that has been reintroduced this year following a Youngkin veto last winter, establishing an income-qualified energy efficiency and weatherization task force to produce policy recommendations to ensure repairs and retrofits reach all eligible households. 

However, CEUR endorsed a bill that will require all utilities to disclose to the SCC information about electric utility disconnections, which presumably will inform the work of the task force.  

We’re going to need more

Even taken together, CEUR’s initiatives don’t fully address the biggest energy crunch Virginia has ever faced, and the rising utility bills that result. Possibly that is intentional; Democrats will continue to control the governor’s seat as well as the legislature for at least two years, giving them time to ramp up programs and see what works.

But data center development is so far outstripping supply side solutions that if legislators aren’t more aggressive this year, next year they will find themselves further behind than ever.  

As more bills are filed over the coming weeks, we are likely to see plenty of bold proposals. Hopefully, legislators now understand the urgency, and will be ready to act.

An earlier version of this article appeared in the Virginia Mercury on December 15, 2025. It has been edited to include the last two bills in the section titled “Making the most of what’s already there.”

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How Gov. Spanberger and a Democratic majority can make energy more affordable

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An aggressive legislative agenda this year will demonstrate national leadership on managing the data center buildout while delivering climate, health and economic benefits to all Virginians

Solar on schools and other public buildings reduce pressure on the grid while saving money for taxpayers. Photo courtesy of Secure Solar Futures LLC

If Virginia’s election last month was more than an unleashing of anti-Trump sentiment (and it definitely was that), it was about affordability. Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger made the cost of living the focus of her campaign, frequently mentioning high energy bills. House Democrats, whose majority has been boosted by the addition of 13 new members of their party, are also expected to focus on these bread-and-butter issues. 

In Virginia, the cause of these high bills is not hard to identify: Data centers are driving up demand well beyond the available supply, and high fossil fuel prices are pinching a state that relies on natural gas for most of its electricity. Spanberger has committed to making data centers “pay their fair share,” and both she and legislators will be looking for other opportunities to lower costs.

The bad news is that adding ever more data centers across Virginia means the upward pressure on electricity prices will continue. If the governor and legislators don’t want to kick tech companies to states with spare capacity, and if the administration of President Donald Trump continues to throttle the energy supply with its war on wind and solar, lowering energy costs in the near term likely isn’t possible. 

Even so, there is a lot that Spanberger and the General Assembly can do to protect residential consumers from these higher prices. 

Making data centers pay their fair share means more than tweaking rate structures. Several Virginia utilities have created special rate classes for large load users like data centers. The utilities will require data center operators to sign long-term contracts committing them to paying for a large percentage of the electricity and transmission they say they need, even if they don’t end up using that much or leave the Virginia market prematurely. 

These new tariffs can help protect other customers from some – though not all – of the risk involved in serving data centers, but they don’t address the “fair share” issue. The current allocation of transmission costs, with residential ratepayers picking up most of the tab for new lines that don’t benefit them, needs to change. If the SCC determines it doesn’t have authority to do that on its own, the General Assembly and Spanberger should pass legislation to make it happen. 

The harder problem is how to make residents whole for rate increases that result from data centers gobbling up all available power. The supply and demand problem has been compounded by a lot of bad decisions, with plenty of blame to go around. The federal government has driven up fossil fuel prices by allowing the export of increasing amounts of natural gas, while hindering and even blocking solar and offshore wind projects that could make up the deficit. 

Outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin is to blame for illegally pulling Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), removing the market incentive for Virginia utilities to increase investments in low-cost renewable energy instead of burning expensive fossil fuels. (His promotion of the false narrative that gas is “cheap” doesn’t help.) 

Virginia utilities share the blame for relying too much on natural gas and high-priced electricity imported from other PJM states. And grid operator PJM is to blame for failing to approve enough new generation, including wind and solar facilities that make up the vast majority of projects waiting for approval to interconnect.

This history leaves Spanberger with a fine mess. Keeping prices in check now requires two things that can actually be accomplished during the next four years: a greater buildout of solar generation and energy storage to get more capacity on the grid; and investments in energy efficiency and rooftop solar to take pressure off the demand side.    

Solve utility solar siting with agrivoltaics. Virginia needs more energy, and solar is the only source that can be built quickly. Yet one of the knottiest problems confronting the General Assembly in the past few years has been the rise of anti-solar sentiment in rural counties. 

Landowners who want to lease their property for solar, or even to install arrays for their own use, find themselves stymied by opposition from neighbors who don’t like the look and are able to persuade county boards to deny permits. As we’ve seen, sometimes denial of a solar permit even follows approval of an energy-sucking data center.

Last year the General Assembly came close to passing a bill that would require solar developers to implement industry best practices. Passing legislation like that this year will address the legitimate concerns of localities around controlling erosion and maintaining native plant buffers. But more can be done to make solar look and function like a normal part of Virginia’s agricultural economy.

Already, solar facilities have become integrated with agriculture, as sheep and sometimes cattle take over vegetation management and farmers learn which crops do well growing between rows of solar arrays. It’s a trend that offers benefits to the land and the community alike. Farmers are struggling; solar can provide a stable income while protecting land from permanent development and putting much-needed energy on the grid. 

Businesses are ahead of public policy on this. Virginia-based Gray’s Lambscaping manages vegetation with over 800 sheep at solar farms across the state, and the company plans to grow to over 5,000 sheep by the end of this year. Meanwhile, solar panels have proven compatible with a wide range of food crops.  

Virginia should take a leading role in expanding agrivoltaics. Virginia law already recognizes the right to farm as an exception to localities’ authority over land use decisions, and this should be extended to farmers who put solar on their land, as long as they are also using the same land for traditional agricultural practices like grazing and crops. 

Install solar on new public buildings and schools. Heck, put it everywhere.  In the past ten years or so, Virginia’s commercial solar sector has blossomed while saving taxpayers money. To date, an estimated 150 Virginia schools have installed solar panels, saving schools about 25% on their energy bills. Solar on every sunny school rooftop would add up to more than 1,000 MW of carbon-free generation. Extend the effort to the roofs of all suitable public buildings across the state, and that number can go much higher. 

Dominion and APCo have long tried to squelch competition from rooftop solar, a war that looks increasingly foolish as Virginia finds itself short on energy for all customers. Earlier this year Congress drastically accelerated the phase-out of solar tax incentives, but the savings remain available for commercial and utility-scale projects for the next two years. There is no shortage of good ideas out there to be acted upon. Spanberger and legislators should take full advantage of that opportunity to install as much solar as possible. 

Battery storage at data centers does triple duty. While solar is the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest way to generate power, it needs batteries or other forms of energy storage to make it into a 24/7 resource, and storage remains relatively expensive. For tech companies, however, the calculus makes more sense.

Data centers need backup power anyway; they typically have three layers of redundancy so that they never risk losing power when the grid goes down. Today the backup power is mostly provided by massive diesel generators, sometimes three times as many as they might actually need. Most of these have no pollution controls and are therefore not supposed to run except in emergencies and for testing and maintenance. That’s sill a lot of run time — and DEQ is proposing to make matters worse by expanding the definition of “emergency” to include scheduled outages.

Some tech companies are now installing generators with selective catalytic converters that produce fewer emissions. The catch is that these can legally be used in non-emergency situations, raising the possibility that they might be used for demand-response or peak shaving. In effect, data centers would be solving the peak demand problem with one of the dirtiest forms of energy. The cumulative effect on air quality could be worrisome, and Virginia’s carbon footprint would grow at a time when the law says it should be shrinking. 

What if, instead of diesel generators, data centers installed storage as their first line of defense against power outages, leaving diesel generators to be used only in the rare case of extended grid outages? Air quality would benefit, carbon emissions would decrease, and the data centers would have the backup power they need. The tech companies would pay more upfront but could be compensated by utilities for using their storage capability for grid services and demand response, lowering their draw from the grid at peak demand times. 

All the data centers in Virginia today use 6 gigawatts of power. That much storage would exceed the targets set in the VCEA for Dominion and APCo combined.  Even limiting the requirement to two hours of storage at new data centers would bring enough storage online quickly to eliminate the expensive demand peaks that drive the high price of energy.  

Require data center operators to source their own zero-carbon electricity. Most of the tech companies have sustainability commitments that they aren’t meeting, so it isn’t asking too much of them to put them in charge of this effort. Legislation to require this as a condition of accepting Virginia’s generous tax subsidies has been defeated for the past two years. The difference this year is that rising energy prices are now affecting everyone. 

Under this proposal, the zero-carbon electricity doesn’t have to come from Virginia, as long as it is available to customers here. Maybe the tech companies could even tap into their considerable influence with the Trump administration to make electricity more plentiful and affordable by reversing its war on solar and wind energy.

Why, after all, should Virginia residents sacrifice for the richest corporations in the world? If “paying their fair share” means anything, it should mean that data centers, not residents, bear the costs of making enough energy available to Virginia, and complying with our clean energy mandate.

Lower demand with energy efficiency and distributed solar. The gap between energy supply and demand does not have to be filled entirely through supply-side solutions. Lowering demand should also be part of the solution. Virginia utilities, Dominion in particular, have done a poor job of running energy efficiency programs. Looking on the bright side, though, that means plenty of opportunities remain.

House Democrats have already started work on this issue, with a focus on lowering winter heating costs for lower-income households. As reported in the Mercury last week, HB 2, from Farifax Del. Mark Sickles, requires Dominion and APCo to make their “best, reasonable efforts” to provide energy efficiency and weatherization to 30% of income-qualified customers by the end of 2031. HB 3, from  Del. Destiny Levere Bolling, D-Henrico, sets up a task force to study income-qualified energy efficiency and weatherization.  

These steps are okay for starters, and they would be juiced by the influx of money from RGGI carbon auctions (see next section), earmarked for low-income energy efficiency. But Dominion has repeatedly failed to meet the energy efficiency targets the legislature sets for it, and after all, why stop with 30% of low-income customers when all households could benefit from more comprehensive programs? Virginia can do much better.  

My last column discussed Rewiring America’s proposal to have tech companies pay for heat pumps, solar and batteries in the residential sector, saving money for households and freeing up capacity for data centers to come online sooner. An independent provider could run the program and verify the energy savings.  

(If the tech companies complain that an awful lot of the solutions I’m proposing come at their expense, it’s true. But the industry benefits from a state tax subsidy that has reached nearly a billion dollars per year, and will only grow further as the number of data centers doubles and triples. They can afford to give back.) 

Use RGGI for long-term affordability. Gov.-elect Spanberger has committed to seeing Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the compact of northeastern states working to lower carbon emissions by 30% by 2030. RGGI works by requiring owners of carbon-emitting generating plants to buy carbon allowances at auction, penalizing carbon-intensive generation and rewarding investments in zero-carbon facilities like wind, solar and nuclear. States collect the auction proceeds, which in Virginia are dedicated to low-income energy efficiency and climate adaptation measures.

Republicans have already renewed their attacks on RGGI, calling it a tax on energy consumers. To the extent that’s true, it’s a tax mostly paid by the largest consumers (including data centers) for the benefit of low-income residents and people most vulnerable to storms and sea level rise. Moreover, all energy consumers benefit over the longer term as low-cost clean energy increasingly replaces expensive fossil fuels. 

Beef up efficiency standards in the residential building code. Most people who buy a new home assume that modern building codes incorporate the latest standards for insulation and efficient technology. In Virginia, they do not. Buyers would be dismayed to learn that their homes are costing them more on their utility bills than they saved on a purchase price supposedly made more affordable by poorer-quality insulation and appliances. Buyers are rarely consulted on these trade-offs, and few have the expertise to question a builder’s choices. Building codes are supposed to do that job.

Unfortunately, Virginia’s Board of Housing and Community Development, which writes the code, is dominated by the homebuilding industry. The industry wants to build homes as cheaply as possible to ensure the highest profit possible on the homes it sells. Even as national model code standards have become more rigorous, homebuilders have protected their own interests by keeping weak energy efficiency requirements in Virginia’s residential building code. 

In 2021, Virginia adopted legislation requiring the board to consider and adopt energy standards “at least as stringent as” the latest national model code standards when the benefits over time to residents and the public exceed the incremental costs of construction. But the board simply didn’t do it. Will this be the year legislators realize that a board dominated by the industry it regulates won’t act in the public interest without explicit directions? 

This is Virginia’s moment. Since the passage of the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020, renewable energy and storage have only gotten cheaper, while energy efficiency opportunities remain plentiful. Coal has solidified its place as the most expensive baseload source, and fossil gas remains stubbornly expensive compared to solar. Spanberger and the Democratic majority have an opening this year to go big on clean energy. An aggressive legislative agenda this year will demonstrate national leadership on managing the data center buildout while delivering climate, health and economic benefits to all Virginians.  

This column was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on December3, 2025.

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Will Virginia step up for its rooftop solar industry?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A trifecta of solar success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s next

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Five things every Virginia candidate (and voter!) should know about energy

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What lights up your life? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Running for office requires candidates to know about topics they might never have given much thought to. Most Virginia campaigns are won or lost on hot-button issues like taxes, education, reproductive rights, guns and gay marriage, so everyone who runs for office has a position on these questions. This holds true for candidates in this year’s high-stakes races for the state’s executive branch and all 100 House of Delegates seats. 

Inevitably, though, there are topics the average candidate doesn’t completely grasp. Some are narrow and – thankfully – nonpartisan. Where do you stand on Sunday hunting? Should I-81 have more lanes? How do you feel about skill games? Will you vote to save the menhaden, whatever a menhaden is? (It’s a fish, and I encourage you to say yes.)

Other topics affect the lives of every Virginian, but they are, frankly, complicated. One of these is energy. Not only is it hard to get up to speed on energy issues, but technology is changing so rapidly that keeping abreast of developments would be a full-time job. Who would spend that kind of time on such a dreary topic?

Uh, that would be me. 

So here we go: I’m going to cover five things political hopefuls need to know about energy in Virginia before you get to the General Assembly and start passing laws that affect your constituents’ wallets and futures. And for voters, these are things you should ask candidates about before they earn your vote. 

First up:

If you are going to talk about energy, you have to talk about data centers

By now you surely know that Virginia has embraced the most energy-intensive industry to come along since the steam engine launched the Industrial Revolution. Northern Virginia hosts the world’s largest concentration of data centers, which already consume an estimated 25% of the state’s electricity, with massively more development planned. The reason isn’t vacation photos or Instagram cat videos; it’s the competition to develop artificial intelligence (AI).  

After putting tax incentives in place to attract the industry 15 years ago, the General Assembly and the current governor have rejected all attempts to put guardrails on development or make data centers more energy efficient. The subsidies now cost taxpayers a billion dollars per year (and counting). Virginia asks for almost nothing in return. 

Under the best of circumstances, the skyrocketing demand for electricity would put upward pressure on energy prices. But our situation is even worse: Virginia already imports about half our electricity from other states, and the regional grid that we’re part of faces its own energy crunch. 

Grid manager PJM has been so slow to approve new generation that governors from member states, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, wrote a letter taking PJM to task and urging it to move faster. But the damage has been done. Supply is tight, electricity prices have risen, and prices will continue to rise unless and until supply catches up.

PJM has decided to fast-track new high-cost, gas-fired generating plants ahead of the cheaper renewable energy projects that make up 95% of the queue. It’s a much-criticized move and seems more likely to increase costs. Once built, fossil gas plants burn a fuel that has doubled in price just over the past year, threatening a repeat of the post-pandemic price surge that Virginia ratepayers are still paying for. And there is no relief in sight, with utilities now having to compete with a doubling of U.S. natural gas exports.

Short of unleashing all the renewable energy stuck in the queue, there is no easy way to protect Virginia residents from higher electricity costs. Dominion Energy, Appalachian Power, and at least one of the electric cooperatives have proposed special rate classes for large-load customers, but that would shield residents from only some of the costs of serving the data centers. 

Utility bills are going up. Dominion Energy is seeking hefty rate increases that would push up residential bills by an average of more than $10 per month in base rates plus almost $11 per month in fuel costs, primarily due to those higher natural gas prices. Coal-heavy APCo has seen even steeper rate increases in the past few years.

Virginia needs new legislation ensuring data centers bear the full expense and risks of serving Big Tech, and they should be required to source their own clean energy. Localities, meanwhile, must be required to evaluate the costs to all Virginians before they issue permits to data centers, including considerations like where the energy will come from, water impacts, and the siting of transmission lines.  

You can’t get from here to there without solar

Virginia wasn’t producing all of its own energy even before the data center rush, and PJM’s problems are now pushing us into a crisis. Our near-term options are limited; new data centers are breaking ground at a breathtaking rate, and only solar can be installed on the timeline needed to prevent an energy shortfall. Even if we were willing to pay for high-priced gas or nuclear plants, developers face a backlog of as long as seven years for gas turbines, and advanced nuclear is still not commercially viable. 

Fortunately, solar is not just the fastest energy source to deploy, it’s also the cheapest and cleanest. Though President Donald Trump blames rising electricity prices on renewable energy, that’s false, just one of many myths the fossil fuel industry has propagated against solar. Nor is solar unreliable, another myth. When solar is paired with battery storage, it can match the rise and fall of demand perfectly.

It’s true, however, that while the great majority of Virginians support solar energy, many rural residents oppose it on aesthetic grounds. Of course, they would also oppose nuclear reactors and gas fracking in their neighborhoods. Legislators should  be sensitive to their concerns – but having chosen to welcome data centers, Virginia leaders can’t just shrug off the need for energy.

We also have to recognize that many farmers need to lease their land for solar in order to keep the land in their family and generate stable income. This should be as important a consideration to lawmakers as the objections of people who aren’t paying the taxes on the farm. Preventing landowners from making profitable use of their land is more likely to lead to the land being sold for development than to it remaining agricultural. 

The good news is that solar panels are compatible with agricultural uses including livestock grazing, beekeeping, vineyards and some crops. Dominion Energy uses sheep instead of lawnmowers at several of its solar facilities in Virginia and plans to expand the practice. The combination is a beautiful synergy: sheep and native grasses improve the soil, and in 30 years when the solar panels are removed, the land has not been lost to development.

While there is no getting around the need for utility-scale solar projects, rooftop solar also has an important role to play. In addition to harnessing private dollars to increase electricity generation, distributed solar saves money for customers and makes communities more resilient in the face of extreme weather.

This year the governor vetoed a bill to expand the role of distributed solar in Virginia. The legislation had garnered strong bipartisan support, so it will likely pass again next year. However, lawmakers will need to go further to encourage customer investments in solar now that federal tax credits will be eliminated for residential consumers at the end of this year.  

Batteries: For all your reliability needs

The fastest-growing energy sector today is battery storage. Batteries allow utilities to meet peaks in demand without having to build gas combustion turbines that typically run less than 10% of the time. Batteries also pair perfectly with intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, storing their excess generation and then delivering electricity when these resources aren’t available.  

Battery prices have tumbled to new lows, while the technology continues to improve. Most lithium-ion batteries provide 4 hours of storage, enough to meet evening peak demand with midday solar. When renewable energy becomes a larger part of Virginia’s energy supply (it’s less than 10% now) we will need longer term storage, such as the iron-air batteries that are part of a Dominion pilot program. This year the governor vetoed a bill that would have increased the amount of storage our utilities must invest in. Given the increasing importance of batteries to the grid, the legislation will likely be reintroduced next year.

Batteries installed at homes and businesses can also play a vital role in supporting the grid. Alone or combined with distributed solar, smart meters and electric vehicle charging, customer devices can be aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) to make more electricity available to the grid at peak demand times. Dominion will be developing a VPP pilot program under the terms of legislation passed this year. 

Advanced nuclear is still in Maybeland

The enormous expense of building large nuclear plants using conventional light-water technology has made development almost nonexistent in this century. Proponents believe new technology will succeed with scaled-down plants that can, in theory, be standardized and modularized to lower costs. Many political and tech leaders hope these small modular reactors (SMRs) will prove a carbon-free solution to the data center energy problem. 

It’s hard not to think they’re kidding themselves, or maybe us. Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power plan to develop one SMR each, with Dominion shooting to have one in service in 2035. Not only is this too late to meet today’s energy crunch, but a single SMR would add less energy to the supply side than new data centers add to the demand side each year. Virginia still needs near-term solutions, which means solar and batteries. 

Industry enthusiasts believe the 2035 timeline can be shortened, while critics say SMRs may never reach commercial viability. SMRs have to be able to compete on cost with much cheaper renewable energy, including wind, solar and emerging geothermal technologies, and cost parity is a long way off. The economic case for nuclear reactors also requires that they generate power all the time, including when the demand isn’t there, so SMRs need batteries almost as much as renewable energy does.

Finally, radioactive waste remains a challenging issue, as much (or more) for SMRs as for legacy nuclear plants. The U.S. has never resolved the problem of permanent storage, so nuclear waste is simply kept onsite at generating stations. The risk of accidents or sabotage makes it unlikely that communities will accept SMRs in their midst, especially if the idea is for SMRs to proliferate on the premises of privately-owned data centers near residential areas statewide.  

A nuclear technology with less of a waste problem is fusion energy. A fusion start-up plans to build its first power plant in Virginia in the “early 2030s,” if the demonstration plant it is building in Massachusetts proves successful. While fusion would be an energy game-changer, there are so many uncertainties around timeline and cost that only an inveterate gambler would bet on it helping us out of our predicament. 

Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t make it go away

We don’t have to talk about climate change to make the case for transitioning to carbon-free renewable energy, but global warming hovers in the background of any energy debate like an unwanted guest. If you need a primer or are even slightly tempted to say you “don’t know” whether human activity is responsible because you’re not a scientist, read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s summary for policymakers. The continued habitability of the planet is too important for ignorance to be an acceptable dodge – and of course you, as a respectable candidate, would never stoop to such a thing.

Virginia codified its own action plan in 2020 with two major laws. One provides for the commonwealth to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multistate compact that uses auctions of carbon emission allowances to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels and raise money for energy efficiency and climate adaptation. After taking office in 2022,  Youngkin removed Virginia from RGGI – illegally, as a court ruled. Virginia remains outside RGGI while the appeals process continues. 

The second law is the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which creates a pathway for Dominion and APCo to transition to carbon-free electricity by 2050. The VCEA includes provisions requiring Dominion and APCo to invest in renewable energy, storage and energy efficiency and make renewable energy an increasing portion of their electricity supply. 

The VCEA contains special provisions for offshore wind, which I haven’t addressed here because  Trump is determined not to allow projects to move forward while he is in office. This is a shame, as there is bipartisan support in Virginia for this industry and the huge economic development opportunities that come with it. Still, Virginia’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project is 60% complete and will start delivering power next year. Eventually, hopefully, it will be remembered as the first of many.

The VCEA also prohibited new investments in fossil fuel plants except under certain conditions. Dominion is currently seeking permission from the State Corporation Commission to build a $1.5 billion, fossil gas-fired peaker plant, citing data center demand and a need for reliability. Local residents, environmental organizations and ratepayer advocates oppose the plant and filed expert testimony showing that solar, storage and other less expensive technologies would better serve consumers.

In what passes for a bombshell in the energy space, Dominion was forced to admit last month that it had not obtained an independent review of the bid process before selecting its own gas plant over resources offered by third-party bidders.

“No regrets” solutions are progressive and conservative

As you’ve probably figured out by now, there is no perfect power source available today. And yet we would need new generation even if we stopped data center construction cold in its tracks – which isn’t in the plans. Solar is the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest source of generation, allowing us to preserve land – and keep options open – for the future. If the data center boom goes bust, having surplus clean energy on the grid will let us eliminate dirty sources faster, while saving money. 

Who would run against that?

First published in the Virginia Mercury on September 15, 2025.

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Is it too hot for common sense?

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smokestack
Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

Maybe it’s the heat. Heat-addled brains might explain the thinking of many Virginia lawmakers that what we need to do right now is burn more fossil fuels. 

Scientists have documented the way high temperatures affect the brain, impairing cognition and causing impulsivity and trouble concentrating. And this summer is already starting out hot, which is saying something given that 2024 was the hottest year on record, bumping 2023 off its baking pedestal. Scientists say this global fever is the natural result of burning fossil fuels and driving CO2 levels to their highest in millions of years.

Since burning more fossil fuels will drive more global warming, it’s exactly the reverse of what we should be doing.  Yes, but, these state leaders respond, how else are we going to power ever more data centers? 

Northern Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and data centers are notoriously power-hungry. Without them, Virginia electricity demand would be flat, and we could easily meet our electricity needs while gradually decarbonizing along the pathway laid out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).

Instead, Virginia taxpayers subsidize some of the richest corporations in America to the tune of almost a billion dollarsevery year to entice them to rip up land in Loudoun, Prince William and other Virginia counties instead of Atlanta or Dallas. In return, the tech companies keep construction workers busy, underwrite their host counties’ finances, make life miserable for nearby residents, raise everyone’s power bills, drain our rivers and aquifers and pollute our air with enough diesel generators to light up a major city.  

Virginia legislators obviously consider this a fair deal, because that’s what they keep voting for. Whether their constituents agree is another question; the evidence says they don’t.

For anyone just getting up to speed on data center issues, the Virginia Sierra Club’s new report, “Unconstrained Demand: Virginia’s Data Center Expansion and Its Impacts” (to which I contributed), covers the current state of data center development in Virginia and the problems that come with it. Fun fact: More than half of all the nation’s energy consumption attributed to data centers occurs in Virginia. 

That puts a special burden of leadership on our lawmakers. If we allow data centers to undermine our sustainability efforts here, we can only expect a race to the bottom in other states. As Virginia goes, so goes the nation. 

And yet we haven’t heard much outcry from Virginia leaders against the plans of our largest utility to build new generating plants powered by fracked gas. Dominion Energy laid out its plans in its 2024 integrated resource plan as well as a proposal for a 944 megawatts of gas combustion turbines in Chesterfield now pending before the State Corporation Commission. 

Dominion and its allies say more gas is needed for reliability, which could make it allowable under the VCEA. Indeed, “reliability” is a word that fossil fuel advocates frequently toss down like a trump card (in the unpresidential sense but with the same lack of thoughtful analysis). The claim is suspect. Fussing about reliability when your state ranks 24th in the nation for renewable energy is like worrying about the taxes you’ll owe if you win the lottery: we should be so lucky. 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Republican legislators are explicit in wanting to see the VCEA repealed and more gas plants built. Democrats defend the VCEA’s goals, but worry about the challenges of implementation and the effect on electricity rates. They all cite data center demand as the reason they contemplate backsliding on clean energy.

I wish I could say that our rich and powerful tech companies were aggressively championing carbon-free energy for their data centers in Virginia, but they are not. I attended a meeting of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation where legislators were hashing out the problems of too much demand and too little supply. Representatives from the Data Center Coalition stood in the back of the room, observing but refusing to engage. Out of sight, they successfully lobbied against any bills that would slow the data center boom, force them to absorb more of its costs, or require them to source their own clean energy. 

Publicly, many tech companies tout their commitments to decarbonization. Amazon says it even met its goal to run its operations entirely on renewable energy. Yes, and I’m the Queen of Sheba. In fact, these companies are in a fierce competition to develop artificial intelligence as fast as possible. They’d like carbon-free power, but really, they’ll take whatever energy they can get wherever they can get it, and even among the industry’s best actors, climate now takes a back seat. 

Yet the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos would not be significantly worse off if forced to meet their climate commitments. Virginia leaders know – or at any rate, they have been exposed to the information, which I realize is not the same thing – that building new fossil gas generating plants is not just bad for the planet but more expensive than pursuing carbon-free alternatives.

Oh, I know, Congress just yanked back the federal tax incentives that helped make wind and solar as cheap as it is, one of the myriad ill-considered elements of the big beautiful debt bomb Republicans adopted against everyone’s better judgment. (Apparently heat affects spines as well as brains.) With passage of that bill, developers will need to have begun construction on new facilities by this time next year in order to qualify for the existing tax credits. 

There will be a mad rush to get construction underway immediately for facilities in the development pipeline. Thereafter, projects on the margin won’t get built. But others will, because even the loss of federal subsidies won’t destroy solar’s competitive edge against most new-build gas. 

Even so, utilities and their customers will pay higher prices for unsubsidized new renewable energy – as well as for existing fossil fuel generation that will command higher prices in the coming supply crunch. The Clean Energy Buyers Association estimates that commercial electricity costs in Virginia will be about 10% higher after the phase-out of federal incentives. 

A years-long backlog for orders of gas turbines will further squeeze energy supply and drive up prices for fossil power. On the plus side, the lack of available turbines will make fast-to-deploy solar not just the better option, but sometimes the only option.

I’ve never understood the conservative love affair with fossil fuels, when today’s clean technology is cleaner, cheaper and quicker to deploy. Trump would like to crush wind and solar altogether, which would eliminate 90% of the power capacity waiting to be connected to the grid and catapult the U.S into a serious energy crisis. In addition to much higher power prices, observers warn we would likely see a loss of data centers and other energy-intensive industries to parts of the world that are not on a mission to kill low-cost clean energy. 

Well, that would be one way to rid Virginia of the data center scourge.

Fortunately, the worst attacks on solar in Trump’s budget bomb did not survive, but the bill should nonetheless serve as a wake-up call for Virginia leaders. With little time left to secure federal clean energy incentives, our utilities need to acquire all the solar and storage they can right now. With or without data centers, locking in as much fuel-free generation as possible while it’s available at a discount is a prudent move to avoid the coming shortages and escalating costs of energy.

As for the tech companies, lawmakers should embrace the simplest approach to this problem, which happens also to be the one that spares ordinary Virginians from bearing the costs of the data center buildout: shifting responsibility for sourcing electricity onto the companies themselves, and requiring that they live up to their climate claims by making the power they buy carbon-free. 

It’s an approach other states can follow, holding Big Tech to the same responsibility no matter where they put their data centers. Certainly the tech titans can afford it; they just won big with massive tax cuts that our poorest residents will pay for. 

No doubt they will complain. Everyone would like somebody else to pay for what benefits them. But Virginians can’t afford to subsidize Big Tech, and we don’t want to. 

As for those legislators who think we should continue to do it anyway – well, all I can think is, it’s got to be the heat.

This article was originally published on July 8, 2025. On July 7, President Trump signed an executive order directing cabinet members to find more ways to hobble wind and solar energy, including directing the Secretary of the Treasury to interpret “beginning of construction” in a way that requires “a substantial portion” of a facility to have been built in order to qualify for tax incentives, counter to current regulation.

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

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This year’s General Assembly session notably failed to produce legislation addressing the widening gap between electricity demand and supply in Virginia. Legislators shied away from measures that would address the growing demand from data centers, but they also couldn’t bring themselves to improve the supply picture by supporting landowners who want to host solar facilities. By the time the session ended, a mere handful of bills had passed that could improve our ability to meet demand.  

Still, the initiatives that did pass offered positive steps forward on energy efficiency, distributed generation, interconnection of rooftop solar, energy storage, EV charging and utility planning. In addition, two data center-related bills passed requiring more planning and transparency during the local permitting process and tasking utilities with developing a demand response program to relieve some of the added burden on the grid.

Sadly, however, Republican Gov. Glen Youngkin decided to use his powers of veto and amendment to water down or scuttle the limited (and mostly bipartisan) progress legislators made. The only two data center bills were effectively killed, as were most energy bills – some by veto, others by amendments that made them worse than no action at all. 

There’s nothing very subtle going on here. The governor loves data centers and isn’t about to limit their growth, regardless of the consequences to residential ratepayers and communities. He’s also stuck in a rut of attacking the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which prioritizes low-cost renewable energy over legacy fossil fuels. He won’t be in office when the chickens come home to roost in the form of an electricity shortfall and skyrocketing rates, but he’s setting up his party to cast blame on the liberal climate agenda.   

Data centers

The General Assembly failed to pass legislation that would have shifted responsibility for sourcing clean energy onto the data center operators. The only bill to pass that even makes energy a consideration in the siting of data centers is HB 1601, sponsored by Del. Josh Thomas, D-Gainesville. In addition to site assessment provisions at the permitting stage, it requires the utility serving the facility to describe any new electric generating units, substations and transmission voltage that would be required.

Limited as these provisions are, the governor proposed amendments to further weaken the bill, then added a clause requiring that for the bill to take effect, it has to be passed all over again in 2026. That’s a veto by another name. 

SB 1047 from Sen. Danica Roem, D-Manassas, requires utilities to implement demand-response programs for customers with a power demand of more than 25 MW, a way of  relieving grid constraints during times of high demand. The governor vetoed the bill, deeming it unnecessary. 

The only data center-related bill that did get the governor’s approval is one of questionable utility. HB 2084 from Del. Irene Shin, D-Herndon, merely requires the SCC to use its existing authority during a regular proceeding sometime in the next couple of years to determine whether Dominion and Appalachian Power are using reasonable customer classifications in setting rates, and if not, whether new classifications are reasonable. The SCC seems to be doing this already anyway, but maybe this lets our leaders claim they are doing something to protect residential ratepayers. Plus, they can now call it a bipartisan effort!

Utility reform

 With Virginia fixed on a collision course between growing demand for energy from data centers and our leaders’ refusal to support low-cost solar to provide the power, it is more important than ever that our utilities engage in transparent and comprehensive planning through the integrated resource plans (IRPs) filed with the State Corporation Commission. Over the course of last fall, the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation hammered out what I think is truly good legislation to ensure Dominion and APCo present the information the SCC and the public need to be sure our utilities are making the decisions that will improve our energy position and put the needs of ratepayers ahead of corporate profits. 

In vetoing SB 1021 from Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, and HB 2413 from Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Dumfries, the governor offered this muddled statement: “The State Corporation Commission has the expertise and the authority to make requirements and changes to the integrated resource plan process. The Virginia Clean Economy Act is failing Virginia and those that champion it should stop trying to buttress this failing policy. But rather should be focused on procuring the dependable power needed to meet our growing demand through optimizing for reliability, affordability, and increasingly clean power generation.”

We get it: Johnny One-Note doesn’t like the VCEA. He said that already. But right now, APCo isn’t filing IRPs at all, and the SCC has been so frustrated with Dominion’s filings that it didn’t approve the last one, and demanded a supplement to the most recent one even before it was filed. Clearly the SCC could use a little help here.  

Distributed energy sources

Advocates for small-scale solar were more successful this year than their colleagues who focus on utility-scale projects. Bipartisan majorities seemed to agree that if we can’t or won’t site large solar farms, at least we should make it easier to put solar on rooftops and other small sites close to users.

Sadly, however, only one bill survived the governor’s scrutiny relatively unscathed, though it’s an important one for customer-sited solar. HB 2266 from Del. Kathy Tran, D-Springfield, resolves the interconnection dispute that has stalled commercial solar projects in the 250 kW to 3 MW size range, which includes most rooftop solar on schools. Tran’s bill requires the SCC to approve upgrades to the distribution system that utilities say are needed to accommodate grid-connected solar, a safeguard that will prevent the utility from larding on costs. The utility must then spread the costs across all projects that benefit from the expanded capacity. 

Youngkin’s proposed amendment rearranges the language a bit and places it into a new section of code, but does not otherwise change it. He then adds a provision in the tax code to make grid upgrades tax-deductible. I would have thought they would be anyway, as business expenses, but it can only be helpful to spell it out.  

Unfortunately, that’s it for the good news. 

HB 1883 from Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Charlottesville, and SB 1040 from Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Richmond, contain several provisions aimed at increasing the amount of distributed solar in Virginia. Among other things, the legislation increases the percentage of Dominion’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) obligation that must be met with renewable energy certificates (RECs) from behind-the-meter small solar projects, a change that would make rooftop and other distributed solar more profitable for homeowners and businesses. 

HB 1883 also increases to 3 MW from 1 MW the size of solar projects that could qualify for this favored category. Additionally, for the first time it would give all residential ratepayers the right to use power purchase agreements (PPAs) to install solar with no money down, and would increase the amount of electricity Dominion would build or buy from solar facilities on previously developed project sites. To give the market a chance to ramp up, Callsen’s bill excuses Dominion from having to meet its REC obligations from Virginia projects for an additional two years, pushing that date from this year to 2027. 

Among all those changes, the only one the governor liked is the idea of softening the requirements around REC purchases. His proposed amendment would make all REC compliance voluntary for four years. Effectively, Virginia would have no renewable energy requirements until 2028, undercutting solar development of any size. His preferred version scraps all of the provisions of Callsen’s bill, leaving no provisions to support solar development and replacing them with an open attack on the VCEA. 

I checked in with Callsen by email to get her reaction. She responded, “We sent the administration bipartisan legislation that protects ratepayers, gives Virginians more options for solar on our homes and businesses, and saves rural land. Rather than sign HB 1883 into law,” Callsen wrote, “the governor used this opportunity to attack the Clean Economy Act from 2020. Instead of looking at the past, our Administration should look around; we have a developing energy crisis and are reliant on importing energy to meet our needs.”

The governor also offered a destructive amendment to HB 2346 from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, and SB 1100 from Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, legislation establishing a pilot program in Dominion territory for virtual power plants (VPPs), which aggregate customer solar and storage resources and demand response capabilities. Although VPPs don’t by themselves add electricity on the grid, they allow time-shifting and other efficiencies that make it easier for utilities to meet peak demand without having to build new generation. The payments utilities make to customers for this service can justify customers’ investments in things like solar, battery storage and smart appliances.  

Instead of improving on the pilot program, however, the governor’s amendment scraps it and calls for the SCC to convene a proceeding to talk about VPPs. On the plus side, Youngkin suggests that the conversation include Appalachian Power as well as Dominion, and consider allowing the service to be provided by either the utilities or third-party aggregators, the latter being the favored approach of many industry members. Still, the amendment pushes off any hope of a program for at least another year, until the SCC has made its recommendations. Since it would have been feasible to both start a pilot program this year and have the SCC consider parameters for a broader program in the future, it’s hard to see the governor’s amendment as a step forward. 

When I asked her for a comment, Hashmi did not mince words, saying it was “incredibly disappointing” that Youngkin chose to offer a substitute instead of signing the legislation.

“This legislation was the result of several months of conversation among a variety of stakeholders, including our utility companies, energy partners, and environmental groups. The Virtual Power Plant has the promise of helping Virginia meet the goals of our increasing energy demands. The Governor’s substitute shows that he is not serious about responding to the growth of Virginia’s energy needs,” Hashmi wrote.

Other solar bills drew outright vetoes, including Mundon King’s HB 2356, establishing an apprenticeship program to help develop a clean energy workforce. The bill requires participants to be paid prevailing wages, a provision that was a certain veto magnet for Youngkin, whose veto statement reads, “This bill will increase the construction costs which will ultimately be passed along to ratepayers, raising costs for consumers.”

Another bill that drew an outright veto was HB 2037 from Del. David Bulova, D-Fairfax. His bill would allow local governments to include in their land development ordinances a requirement that certain non-residential applicants install solar on a portion of a parking lot. 

The governor vetoed it because, he said, it would be expensive for developers, and if it weren’t, they would do it without having to be told. (It’s a strange objection. Does he not understand the whole concept of government acting in the public good? Well, maybe not; see the veto.)

Also vetoed was Shin’s HB 2090, changing the rules around multifamily solar. Admittedly I was not crazy about this bill; although it allows solar facilities to be placed on nearby commercial buildings instead of being restricted to the multifamily building itself, it also imports the requirement for minimum bills that has made other shared solar programs in Virginia unworkable for all but the low-income customers who are excused from the minimum bills. 

Maybe the trade-off would have opened new opportunities for apartment buildings serving low-income households, which would make it a plus on balance. But among his objections to HB2090, the governor noted that excusing low-income customers from high minimum bills would shift costs onto other customers. 

Energy efficiency

The governor vetoed SB 1342 from Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond, and HB 2744 from Del. Mark Sickles, D-Franconia, that would have pushed Dominion and APCo harder to provide energy efficiency upgrades to low-income homes, setting a target of 30% of qualifying households. 

He also vetoed SB 777 from Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, and HB 1935from Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Richmond, which would have established a task force to address the needs of low-income customers for weatherization and efficiency upgrades. The governor said it isn’t needed. 

If you notice a pattern here when it comes to helping low-income households with their energy burden, you are not alone. 

Reached on maternity leave, LeVere Bolling had this to say: “Across our Commonwealth, high utility bills are forcing Virginians to choose between essentials like groceries and medication and keeping their home at a safe temperature during hot summers and cold winters. Virginia has the 10th least affordable residential energy bills in the country. Over 75% of Virginia households have an energy burden higher than the 6% affordability threshold.” She added that the governor’s veto represents a “missed opportunity to address the pressing energy needs of Virginia’s most vulnerable communities.”

 Electric vehicles

The governor offered a substitute for a bill intended to support electric vehicle charging. As passed by the General Assembly, Shin’s HB 2087requires Dominion and APCo to file detailed plans to “accelerate transportation electrification,” including for rural areas and economically disadvantaged communities. It also allows the utilities to file proposed tariffs with the SCC to supply the distribution infrastructure necessary for EV charging stations. 

The utilities are also authorized to develop their own fast-charging stations, but only at a distance from privately-owned charging stations, with the SCC determining the proper distance. This provision responds to the request of gas station chains like Sheetz that say they want to expand their EV charging options, but don’t want to face unfair competition from utilities that can rate-base their investments.

The governor’s amendment would prohibit Dominion and APCo from owning EV charging stations at all; in addition, it would allow retail providers of EV charging stations to buy electricity from any competitive service provider. However, the amendment repeals the section of code that allows the utilities to recover costs of investments in transportation electrification.  

According to Steve Banashek, EV legislative lead with the Virginia Sierra Club, that “negates the purpose of the enrolled bill.” The amendment, he told me in an email, “removes the requirement for utilities to file for tariffs to support implementation of EV charging and to plan for transportation electrification growth via the IRP process, which is critical for speeding up the transition to electric transportation.” 

As for the prohibition on the utilities owning charging stations, Banashek noted that there are areas of the state where private businesses aren’t likely to do it, including in those economically disadvantaged and rural communities. If we don’t want these areas left behind, either the utilities have to step up, or the state does.  

Apparently, however, Youngkin doesn’t intend for the state to do it either. Along with his amendments to Shin’s bill, the governor also vetoed HB 1791 from Sullivan, creating a fund to support EV charging in rural areas of the state.  

Energy storage

The need for more energy storage seems like it would be one area of bipartisan consensus. Batteries and other forms of energy storage are critical to filling in the generation gaps for low-cost, intermittent forms of energy like wind and solar. 

But storage is also required to make full use of baseload sources like nuclear that either can’t be ramped down at times when there is a surplus of energy being produced, or where doing so makes it harder to recover the cost of building the generation. (The already-high projected cost of electricity from small modular nuclear reactors becomes even higher if you assume they don’t run when the power isn’t needed.) 

Sullivan’s HB 2537 increases the energy storage targets for Dominion and APCo, and includes new targets for long-duration energy storage. Unfortunately, Youngkin’s substitute language repeals the entire section of code that includes Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard as well as even the existing storage targets. It’s another bit of anti-VCEA flag-waving that won’t help anyone.  

Just in case you thought Youngkin might be adhering to conservative free market principles with some kind of consistency, I note that he signed HB 2540 and SB 1207 from two Republicans, Del. Danny Marshall of Danville and Sen. Tammy Brankley Mulchi of Clarksville, which provides a $60 million grant to a manufacturer of lithium-ion battery separators. 

I asked Sullivan for a comment on the governor’s action on his bill. He replied, “The Governor’s ridiculous ‘recommendation’ on HB 2537 was disappointing, but hardly surprising. This was not an amendment; he deleted everything – everything – having to do with energy storage, and turned it into a one-sentence bill which would repeal the entire Clean Economy Act.”

Moreover, wrote Sullivan, “HB 2537 was the most closely and extensively negotiated bill among stakeholders that I’ve been involved with since the VCEA. It had broad support – including from Dominion – and should have easily fit into the Governor’s ‘all of the above’ energy strategy and his economic development goals, since it would have brought all sorts of business, jobs, and companies to the Commonwealth.”  

Sullivan concluded, “Needless to say, we cannot agree to the amendment.  We’ll easily pass this bill next session, and I suspect Governor Spanberger will sign it.” 

Sullivan may be right that it will take a new administration before Virginia gets serious about meeting its energy challenges – if it does even then – but this session needn’t have ended in a partisan stalemate and near-zero progress. Most of the bills the governor vetoed or gutted were passed with the help of Republicans, making Youngkin’s actions less of a rebuke to Democrats than to the members of his own party who were simply trying to do their job. The results, sadly, are bad for everyone.

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on April 1, 2025.

UPDATE May 8: As expected, the General Assembly rejected the governor’s destructive amendments to the bills described. The governor then vetoed all but one. The exception is HB2346 from Hernandez and SB1100 from Hashmi, establishing a pilot program in Dominion territory for virtual power plants (VPPs). That one has been signed into law, along with Tran’s HB2266.

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Facing data center sprawl and an energy crisis, Virginia legislators leap into action. Nah, just kidding.

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This was supposed to be the year the General Assembly did something about data centers. Two years ago, it crushed the first tentative efforts to regulate construction, choosing instead to goose the pace. Last year it again killed all attempts at regulation, punting in favor of a study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). 

JLARC’s report was released in December to a soundtrack of alarm bells ringing. Unconstrained data center growth is projected to triple electricity demand in Virginia over just the next 15 years, outstripping the state’s ability to build new generation and driving up utility bills for everyone. On top of the energy problem, the industry’s growth is taxing water supplies and spawning billions of dollars’ worth of transmission infrastructure projects needed to serve the industry.

Yet the most popular strategy for addressing the biggest energy crisis ever to face Virginia is to continue the status quo – that is to say, to keep the data center sprawl sprawling. Of the two dozen or so bills introduced this year that would put restrictions on growth, manage its consequences, or impose transparency requirements, barely a handful have survived to the session’s halfway point this week. 

The surviving initiatives address important aspects of local siting, ratepayer protection and energy, though they will face efforts to further weaken them in the second half of the session. Even if the strongest bills pass, though, they will not rein in the industry, provide comprehensive oversight or address serious resource adequacy problems. 

HB1601 from Del. Josh Thomas, D-Gainesville, is the most meaningful bill to address the siting of data centers. It requires site assessments for facilities over 100 MW to examine the sound profile of facilities near residential communities and schools. It also allows localities to require site assessments to examine effects on water and agricultural resources, parks, historic sites or forests. In addition, before approving a rezoning, special exception or special use permit, the locality must require the utility that is serving the facility to describe any new electric generating units, substations and transmission voltage that will be required. Existing sites that are seeking to expand by less than 100 MW are excluded. HB1601 passed the House 57-40, with several Republicans joining all Democrats in favor. 

SB1449 from Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, is similar to HB1601 but does not include the language on electricity and transmission lines. SB1449 passed the Senate 33-6. 

Typically, when the House and the Senate each pass similar but different bills, they each try to make the other chamber’s bill look like theirs, then work out the differences in a conference committee. If that happens here, the House will amend SB1449 to conform it to HB1601 before passing it. The Senate might amend the House bill to match its own. In this case, however, Ebbin’s bill never had the language on electricity and transmission. It’s possible the Senate will recognize that HB1601 is better and pass it as is rather than watering it down to match SB1449; otherwise, the bills will have to go to conference.

Only two ratepayer protection bills passed.  SB960 from Sen. Russet Perry, D-Leesburg, is the better of the two. It requires the SCC to determine if non-data center customers are subsidizing data centers or incurring costs for new infrastructure that is needed only because of data center demand; if so, the SCC is to take steps to eliminate or minimize the cross-subsidy. The bill incorporates a similar measure from Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Westmoreland. It passed the Senate by a healthy 26-13, but leaves the question of why those 13 Republicans voted against a bill designed to protect residential customers from higher rates. 

Over in the House, HB2084 from Del. Irene Shin, D-Herndon, started out similar to Perry’s bill but was weakened in committee to the point that its usefulness is questionable. It now merely requires the SCC to use its existing authority during a regular proceeding sometime in the next couple of years to determine whether Dominion and Appalachian Power are using reasonable customer classifications in setting rates, and if not, whether new classifications are reasonable. It passed the House 61-35. Hopefully the House will see the wisdom of adopting SB960 as the better bill, but again, these could end up going to conference.

The only data center legislation related to energy use to have made it this far is SB1047 from Sen. Danica Roem, D-Manassas. It requires utilities to implement demand-response programs for customers with a power demand of more than 25 MW, which could help relieve grid constraints. It passed the Senate 21-17.

The data center industry and its labor allies were successful in killing all other data center initiatives, including the only bills that dealt with the energy issues head-on. This included legislation that basically called on the industry to live up to its sustainability claims. SB1196, Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville and HB2578, Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, would have conditioned state tax subsidies on data centers meeting conditions for energy efficiency, zero-carbon energy and cleaner back-up generators. Sullivan’s bill also set up pathways for data center developers to meet the energy requirements and work towards cleaner operations.

None of this mattered. Republicans were united in their determination not to put anything in the way of continued data center sprawl, and they were joined by a number of Democrats who were persuaded that requiring corporations to act responsibly threatens construction jobs. HB2578 died in subcommittee, with Democrats Charniele Herring and Alfonso Lopez joining Republicans in voting to table the bill. SB1196 was never even granted a committee hearing. 

Yet the idea of adding conditions to the tax subsidies is not dead. Senator Deeds put in a budget amendment to secure the efficiency requirements that had been in his bill. His amendment takes on a House budget amendment requested by Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, that extends the tax subsidies out to 2050 from their current sunset date of 2035, with no new conditions whatsoever. 

It seems like a reasonable ask for the tech industry to meet some efficiency requirements in exchange for billions of dollars in subsidies and the raiding of Virginia’s water and energy supplies. Indeed, the industry could have had it worse. Senator Stuart had introduced a bill to end the tax subsidies Virginia provides to data centers altogether. Alas, like several other more ambitious bills intended to bring accountability to the data center industry, it failed to even get a hearing in committee.  

Now, maybe Virginia will get lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you look at it – and the data center boom will go bust. The flurry of excitement around China’s bid to provide artificial intelligence at a fraction of the cost of American tech joins other news items about efficiency breakthroughs that could mean the tech industry needs far fewer data centers, using far less energy and water. That would be good for the planet, not to mention Virginia ratepayers, but it would leave a lot of empty buildings, upend local budgets, and strand potentially billions of dollars in new generation and transmission infrastructure. A little preparation and contingency planning would seem to have been the wiser course.  

Failed bills.

Most bills to regulate data centers never made it out of committee, but the problems of data center sprawl and resource consumption will only increase in coming years. In addition to the energy legislation from Senator Deeds and Delegate Sullivan, here are other bills we may see come back again in another form. 

SB1448 from Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Westmoreland, would have required any new resource-intensive facility (defined as drawing more than 100 MW or requiring more than 500,000 gallons of water per day) to get a permit from the Department of Environmental Quality. DEQ is to permit the facility only “upon a finding that such facility will have no material adverse impact on the public health or environment.” The impacts are broadly defined and include transmission lines and cumulative impacts from multiple facilities in the same area. The bill reported from Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources but was then sent to Finance and Appropriations, never to be heard from again. 

A bill from Del. Thomas would have required localities to change their zoning ordinances to designate data centers as industrial uses and to consider changes in how they evaluate data center siting, especially around noise impacts. HB2026 was tabled unanimously in subcommittee. 

HB2712 from Del. Ian Lovejoy, D-Manassas, would have authorized a locality that is weighing a permit application for a data center to consider factors like water use, noise and power usage, and to require the applicant to provide studies and other information. It lost on a bipartisan subcommittee vote. 

Lovejoy’s HB1984 would have required data centers to be located at least one-quarter mile from parks, schools and residential neighborhoods. It was killed on an 8-0 subcommittee vote. 

A third Lovejoy bill, HB2684, would have required Dominion to file a plan with the SCC every two years to address the risk that infrastructure built to serve data centers might become stranded assets that other customers would be left paying for. It was never docketed. 

A bill that did not mention data centers but originated with local fights over the siting of transmission lines needed to serve them was Roem’s SB1049. It would have prohibited new overhead transmission lines unless the SCC determined that putting them underground was not in the public interest. It lost in a 4-11 vote in committee.  

This article (minus the section on failed bills) was published in the Virginia Mercury on February 10, 2025.

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Distributed solar bills move forward, while progress on siting utility solar stalls out

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Photo credit Norfolk Solar.

Virginia’s desire to be a leader on clean energy has faced numerous challenges over the past few years, coming from many different directions. Landowners who want utility-scale solar on their rural property face increasingly hostile county boards, with no provisions for relief. 

School systems, local governments and commercial customers that want solar on their buildings have been blocked by expensive new interconnection requirements imposed by Dominion Energy. And the clock is ticking on net metering, the program that gives customers with solar panels a one-for-one credit on surplus electricity they feed back into the grid. 

The solar industry is used to struggling for every foothold it gets in Virginia, but these new challenges come at a particularly bad time. With data center growth creating huge pressures on our electricity supply, Virginia needs more clean energy in every size range, and needs it now. Any coherent approach to meeting demand has to include removing unnecessary barriers to both utility-scale and distributed solar. That both are facing more barriers, rather than less, suggests the state still hasn’t figured out what it takes to be an energy leader.  

None of the legislation at the General Assembly this year addresses this fundamental failing head-on, but several bills took on some of the barriers. In particular, bills focused on rooftop solar and other distributed generation have made it to halftime in decent shape.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of bills designed to bring more utility-scale solar to Virginia, including siting legislation developed by the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR) and carried by Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, and Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville. The legislation sought to tackle the biggest obstacle to unleashing gigawatts of clean, low-cost energy across Virginia: local governments that deny permits to solar and energy storage facilities, acceding to neighbors who don’t want to have to look at solar panels where they once saw fields and forests. (Anti-solar fossil fuel front groups don’t help matters either.)  

On the House side, Sullivan’s HB2126 was killed in a subcommittee vote. Senate Bill 1190 made it to the Senate Floor but was defeated when two Democrats, Senators Russet Perry and Lashrecse Aird, joined with all Republicans in siding with localities that did not want to cede any part of their authority over land use. The bill would have pressured local governments, but it did not strip them of authority. They would have been required to include in their comprehensive plans targets for energy production and energy efficiency (the latter an interesting addition). In evaluating specific projects, localities would have had to consider advisory opinions that would be issued by a new interagency panel of experts recruited from Virginia universities. Perhaps of greatest import, localities would no longer have been allowed to adopt ordinances that ban all projects outright or place unreasonable restrictions on them, or deny permits “without a reasonable basis.”

The Senate bill “incorporated” (by which is meant, it jettisoned the provisions of) another solar siting bill from Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Woodbridge, and a separate piece of legislation from Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Richmond, that would have prescribed rigorous best practices for utility solar projects.

Over in the House, however, a companion to VanValkenburg’s bill from Del. Candi Munyon King, D-Dumfries, HB2438, passed the chamber 48-46. The bill came from the solar industry itself, proposing to adopt the highest standards for itself. So why wasn’t the vote unanimous? Go figure.

Bills advancing small-scale solar move forward

Legislation promoting distributed generation did not go through the CEUR pipe, but these bills show some wear and tear of their own.  A loose-knit group of advocates under the banner of the Equitable Solar Alliance came in with a package of three bills, all of which remain alive after favorable committee votes. 

HB1883, from Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Charlottesville, increases the tiny carve-out for distributed solar that is part of Dominion’s obligation to buy renewable energy certificates in compliance with Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard. The bill has been pared down since it was introduced but still makes several changes benefiting behind-the-meter solar and battery storage systems under 3 MW.  The distributed generation carve-out, currently 1% of the renewable standard target, will get bumped to 3% in 2026 and 5% in 2028, with further changes possible later if the the State Corporation Commission (SCC) decides on it. Third-party power purchase agreements, which had been restricted to commercial projects, will now be available to residential customers. And whereas currently only projects smaller than 1 MW can earn up to $75 per renewable energy certificate, the bill now makes that amount available for projects up to 3 MW. (Certificates for larger solar projects are effectively capped at $45 per certificate.) 

Callsen’s bill also raises to 600 MW, from 200 MW currently, the target for solar on previously developed sites. It also specifies that 65% of distributed projects qualifying for the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s 1,100 MW target for solar under 3 MW should be developed by non-utility providers.  

HB1883 passed the House unanimously. Its Senate companion, SB1040from Valkenburg, made it through committee without Republican support but passed the Senate 26-14. 

Two other bills, HB2346 from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, and SB1100 from Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, establish a pilot program for virtual power plants (VPPs), which aggregate customer solar and storage resources and demand response capabilities. In concept, a VPP allows a utility to pay customers to let it make use of these capabilities, enabling it to meet peak demand without having to increase generation. (If you are familiar with programs in which your utility pays you to let it cycle your air conditioner off for a few minutes at a time on hot summer days, you have the idea.) VPPs are becoming popular in other states as a way to subsidize customers’ investments in things like battery storage, while reducing utility costs and saving money for all ratepayers. 

The original hope for this legislation was ambitious: a vision of energy democracy that would reshape the way utilities interact with residential and commercial customers and make the most efficient use of new technologies like electric vehicle charging and smart appliances. The financial benefits to customers could even be enough to offset the costs of investments like home batteries, potentially offering a way for rooftop solar to remain affordable even if the SCC guts Virginia’s net metering program. 

But, this being Virginia, the legislation making its way through committee calls only for pilot programs that utilities design and largely control, although they will be voluntary for participants. After 2028, however, the SCC may create permanent programs. SB1100 passed the Senate 22-18. HB2346 passed the House 71-27.

The third bill in the package, HB2356 from Del. Candi Munyon King, establishes an apprenticeship program to help develop a clean energy workforce, and requires participants to be paid prevailing wages. This bill is more politically divisive than the first two, and it passed the House only on a party-line vote. A companion bill passed the Senate on a party-line vote as well. With Republicans unified in opposition, we are likely to see amendments or a veto from the governor. 

A couple of other bills seek to address the costs of interconnecting small-scale solar facilities, including those on schools and government buildings. After Dominion Energy changed its rules in late 2022, customers found the cost of connecting solar facilities to the distribution grid was suddenly so high as to make it impossible to pursue projects in the affected size range.

HB2266 from Del. Kathy Tran, D-Springfield, requires the SCC to approve upgrades to the distribution system that are needed to accommodate grid-connected solar — a safeguard designed to prevent the utility from larding on costs. The utility must then spread the costs across all projects that benefit from the expanded capacity. This strikes me as a pretty elegant solution to the interconnection muddle. HB2266 passed the House 57-41. 

 SB1058 from Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, originally would have simply exempted public schools from interconnection costs. It was amended to look like Tran’s bill and then passed the Senate 21-18.

Finally, a bill from Del. David Bulova, D-Fairfax, would allow local governments to include in their land development ordinances a requirement that certain non-residential applicants install solar on a portion of a parking lot. HB2037 passed the House on a 64-32 vote and will now go to the Senate Committee on Local Government. 

This article was originally published in the Virginia Mercury on February 3, 2025. It has been updated to reflect the most recent General Assembly votes.

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Data centers be damned, Virginia can still meet its climate goals

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Virginia's capitol building in Richmond.

Following the General Assembly’s failure either to rein in the explosive growth of power-hungry data centers or to remove obstacles to increasing the supply of renewable energy in Virginia, a lot of people are wondering where we go from here.  

Dominion Energy Virginia’s answer, as described in its 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), is “build more fossil fuels.” The utility is pushing forward plans to build new methane gas generating units in Chesterfield. Dominion argues that although its IRP calls for dramatically increased carbon emissions, it sort of complies with the Virginia Clean Economy Act anyway because the VCEA has an escape clause when reliability is at risk. 

Dominion does not acknowledge that its own actions contribute to the problem. To be fair, though, it’s a huge problem, and even if our utilities were on board with the VCEA’s carbon-cutting agenda, we would need stronger legislative policy than we have now. Rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is an important priority that Democrats are rightly pursuing, but the need for action goes much further. 

Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, convened meetings the week before last to hear from utilities, industry members, environmental groups and others to get suggestions on ways to reform the VCEA. The interest groups met separately, and members of one group were not allowed to attend other group sessions to hear what those stakeholders had to say. The meetings were closed-door and confidential, with the express purpose of preventing a nosy public from learning anything through Freedom of Information Act requests. 

That secrecy makes me queasy, so I declined the invitation to attend the environmentalists’ session. I’d have cheerfully jettisoned my scruples, though, if I could have been in the utility session to hear what Dominion’s lobbyists were whispering in the senator’s ear. Alas, that was not on offer. 

But Marsden is asking the right questions, and of course, I always have answers, even when no one is asking. In my view, Virginia can stay on track to carbon neutrality by adopting four basic principles: data centers must pay their own way, both literally and carbon-wise; solar must be easy to build and interconnect; utilities must not build new fossil generation for “reliability” before exhausting non-carbon solutions; and efficient buildings must be added to the strategy.

Let’s start with the elephant outgrowing the room.

Data centers are sucking up all the energy

Without action, data centers will soon overtake residential customers to become Dominion’s largest category of customer. Already, they are driving the utility’s decision-making, as we saw from Dominion’s IRP. This year, the General Assembly deferred action to address the energy crisis until it sees the results of a study being undertaken by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). 

It now appears that study won’t be published before the 2025 session convenes, and in fact there does not appear to be a deadline of any kind. Yet we already know enough about data center energy demand and its consequences for everyone else that legislators will be derelict in their duty if they put off all action until 2026.

The General Assembly must choose from three options if it still cares about the energy transition: stop the growth of the data center industry in Virginia, put the onus on data centers to source their own clean energy from the grid, or dramatically increase renewable energy generation and power line construction.  

Lawmakers show no desire to stop all data center growth, but as I’ve urged before, they can and should establish a joint state-local task force to choose appropriate sites for growth based on energy and transmission availability, water resource adequacy and good-neighbor factors, like distance from residential communities and parkland. 

Legislators should also require data centers to meet industry-best standards for energy efficiency, use alternatives to diesel generators for backup power and source carbon-free energy from facilities located on the grid that serves Virginia. They could buy this power either on their own or through a specially-designed utility tariff, as long as it meets all of their needs on a 24/7, hourly basis. In no case should other customers see higher electricity bills for infrastructure that’s only needed because of data centers.

These measures will take time to put in place, yet data center development is proceeding apace while the General Assembly takes its nap. There is no avoiding Virginia’s need for a lot more carbon-free generation, pretty much right away. A couple of small modular nuclear reactors ten years from now aren’t a solution.

Don’t expect climate leadership from Dominion

Dominion’s fossil-heavy IRP marked a sharp break away from the climate report that the company released just months before, which projected solar dominating the grid by 2040. Whether the IRP should be dismissed as political pandering to a conservative governor, or taken in earnest to mean the utility has thrown in the towel on renewable energy, is something of a Rorschach test for Virginia leaders. 

When Dominion releases its 2024 IRP this fall, we may get more clarity about what the company really thinks. More likely, we will still be left guessing. Dominion has a long history of playing to both sides to get what it wants, and what it wants is profit.   

There’s nothing wrong with a company making a profit, of course, as long as the company isn’t also allowed to make the rules it plays by. Asking Dominion’s lobbyists to help make energy policy is like recruiting burglars for a task force on crime prevention. 

Make it easier to build solar

While Virginia counties vie with each other to attract data centers, some are notably less keen on solar farms. Sprawling developments of windowless warehouses that suck power? Yes, they say. Grassy fields lined with rows of solar panels that produce power? No. Such is the horror with which some people view solar that localities have adopted moratoriums, acreage caps and other limits designed to keep projects at bay. The result is that an already-slow process for siting solar projects is getting even slower, more unpredictable and more expensive. 

Lawmakers rejected legislation this year that would have allowed the State Corporation Commission to overrule local permit denials. Yet it seems doubtful whether, in a Dillon Rule state like ours, local governments actually have the authority to enact blanket prohibitions and caps on specific kinds of land use. Legislators may want to ask the attorney general to clarify this point rather than waiting for landowners to challenge in court a locality’s refusal to let them put solar panels on their property. 

If the AG (or a court) rules these barriers illegal, localities would have to go back to evaluating the merits of project applications on a case-by-case basis — hardly a bad result. But it would be wiser and more orderly to pass legislation spelling out under what circumstances a local government may reject a solar project, and what the landowner’s recourse should be. 

New gas plants are the wrong solution for reliability

Though Dominion’s 2023 IRP didn’t win approval from the SCC, Dominion is going ahead with plans to build new methane gas combustion turbines in Chesterfield. Given that these “peaker” plants generate dirty power at a high price, Dominion should not be permitted to build gas combustion turbines if other alternatives are available. 

Which they are. Demand-response programs, advanced grid technologies and batteries charged by renewable energy are superior to gas peakers for reasons of cost, air quality and climate impact. 

Dominion is building some large batteries and testing long-duration battery storage technologies (and of course, Virginia already has the largest pumped storage facility in the world), but our utilities have not even begun to tap the potential of batteries in homes and businesses. Subsidizing the purchase of batteries by homeowners and businesses in exchange for the ability to draw on the batteries for peaking power, as some utilities do, would also build resilience into the grid and address power outages more cheaply than burying lines.

Imagine: If data centers had installed batteries instead of the 11 gigawatts of diesel generators at Loudoun and Fairfax County data centers, Virginia would already have more battery storage capacity than any country in the world.

Let everyone build solar 

The VCEA calls for 35% of its solar target to be satisfied by third-party developers. The purpose of this set-aside is two-fold: to attract more private capital, and to use competition to keep a lid on prices. Unfortunately, the SCC accepted Dominion’s argument that 35% should be read as a ceiling as well as a floor, to the detriment of ratepayers and solar developers. With Dominion now reneging on its solar commitments, it’s more important than ever that private developers be allowed to step in. One bill in the 2024 session would have corrected this problem by explicitly making 35% the minimum. The General Assembly should adopt that measure. 

Fix interconnection

Possibly the most inexplicable failure of the General Assembly this year was failing to pass legislation to resolve the dispute between Dominion and commercial customers over interconnection requirements. The onerous requirements that Dominion adopted in December of 2022  — imposed even in the face of a contrary SCC ruling — have wreaked havoc on plans by local governments to put solar on public buildings and schools. That is fine with Dominion; though the goal of the new requirements was to acquire upgraded distribution infrastructure at no cost to itself, its monopolistic lizard brain is equally satisfied with the result of shutting down competition from small solar companies. 

Legislators should not accept this result, though. The General Assembly adopted net metering years ago because encouraging residents and businesses to go solar is good for the economy and makes communities more resilient. Support for distributed renewable energy is even written into the Virginia Code as official policy. 

And distributed solar is hugely popular. Indeed, the very people who oppose utility-scale solar projects almost inevitably argue that society should maximize rooftop solar instead. In this they are at least half right: If we are really going to meet the energy challenge ahead of us, the very least we can do is milk every kilowatt-hour from sunshine falling on rooftops.

Customers have always paid to interconnect their solar to the utility’s grid. The dispute between Dominion and its customers is about whether Dominion can insist they pay the entire cost of expensive new fiber-optic wire and other cool technology that could make the distribution grid better for everyone, but which any one customer can’t afford. These upgrades could enable not just more solar but also electric vehicle charging in our communities, vehicle-to-grid technology and programs allowing utilities to make use of customers’ battery storage. But if the technology really is that valuable (a determination that should be made by the SCC, not Dominion), then getting it shouldn’t depend on how deep a customer’s pocket is — especially when that customer is a local government and, therefore, effectively, the Virginia taxpayer.

This year’s interconnection bill would have allowed a utility to recover the costs of these grid upgrades from ratepayers, with SCC oversight. Even Dominion would have been better off with the bill, something it would have recognized if its lizard brain weren’t in charge at the time. The General Assembly should pass the bill.

An untapped three gigawatts of energy are waiting off our coast

Dominion’s 2,600 megawatt Virginia offshore wind project is due to begin construction this year, but it is not the only game in town. The Kitty Hawk offshore wind area situated off North Carolina can deliver up to 3,500 megawatts of energy through a cable that will come ashore at Virginia Beach. All that is holding up the project is the lack of a customer.  Offshore wind is more expensive than solar, but we have a lot of power-hungry data centers who could pay a clean energy tariff that would include Kitty Hawk wind. 

Maximize efficiency in buildings 

Possibly the best piece of energy legislation to pass this year was the bill that directs local governments and schools to build to higher efficiency standards and incorporate renewable energy, as appropriate. The language could have been even stronger, but as it is, it will deliver significant cost savings for taxpayers.

In fact, local governments will now build to better standards than most homeowners get for themselves when they buy a house.  That’s because Virginia’s residential building code is pathetically behind the times when it comes to energy efficiency. Home buyers and renters would save more than enough money on utility bills to cover the upfront cost of better housing construction, but builders won’t voluntarily meet higher standards because it reduces profits. That should not be acceptable. 

Legislation passed in 2021 directed the Board of Housing and Community Development to consider amendments that would strengthen the building code. BHCD, which is dominated by builder and real estate interests, simply ignored the law. The matter is now in litigation (and the governor is trying to weaken the code even further), but the General Assembly could resolve the matter by directing BHCD to adopt efficiency measures at least as strong as the national standards set by the International Building Code Council (itself under fire for allowing builder interests to weaken efficiency standards), and to allow local governments to adopt stronger “stretch codes” to help residents save even more money and energy.

Going further, new and renovated buildings should be required to use electricity in place of methane gas, oil or propane for heating, cooling and appliances wherever practicable. Though building electrification increases electricity consumption, electricity is a more efficient technology than burning fossil fuels in the home, so it contributes to lower energy costs for residents and a smaller carbon footprint for the state overall. 

It’s a shame the General Assembly settled for simply not going backwards this year, but it is a good sign that Marsden and others are not waiting for next year to consider ways to get us back on the carbon-cutting wagon. With the climate clock ticking, we have no more time to lose.

A version of this article appeared in the Virginia Mercury on April 29, 2024.

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Virginia climate advocates find progress requires more than a Democratic majority

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Virginia's capitol building in Richmond.

Climate advocates felt hopeful last fall when Democrats won control of both the Senate and House with promises to protect the commonwealth’s climate laws, including the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and the Clean Car Standard. It seemed possible the General Assembly might pass much-needed initiatives modest enough to avoid a veto from a Republican governor.   

Apparently not. Democrats did fend off attacks on the VCEA and Clean Cars, and killed a lot of terrible bills. Through the budget process, they’re trying to require Virginia’s renewed participation in the carbon-cutting Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. But Gov. Youngkin won’t even get his shot at most of the priority bills from the environmental community. Of the bills that did pass, most were so watered down as to make their usefulness questionable. A few bills died even when they went unopposed. Some successful bills seem likely to add to Virginia’s energy problems rather than help solve them.

A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of Dominion Energy, which took a bipartisan drubbing in the 2023 session, but was back this year stronger than ever like a plague that surges when we let our guard down.

But that’s only half the story. As a party, Democrats seemed to have simply lost interest in the fight. Climate change may be an urgent issue in the rest of the world, but in Virginia, a lot of lawmakers seem to think they already checked that box. 

Two steps forward

In the spirit of optimism, let’s start with the positive highlights of the session, though admittedly they were more like flashlight beams than floodlights.

Most consequential for the energy transition is legislation establishing a statewide green bank, a requirement for accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for clean energy projects. The House and Senate versions are different and will go to a conference committee. A show of opposition from Republicans in both chambers could attract a veto, but most governors welcome free money.

Similarly, new legislation directs the Department of Energy to identify federal funding available to further the commonwealth’s energy efficiency goals. 

Another encouraging piece of legislation updates and expands on existing energy efficiency requirements for new and renovated public buildings, a category that would now include schools. Provisions for EV charging capabilities, resilience measures, and onsite renewable energy and storage are included. The measure attracted only a couple of Republican votes, so it may be at risk of a veto.

Another change will bring sales of residential rooftop solar within the consumer protections that apply to other contractors. Virginia’s Board for Contractors will be required to issue regulations requiring relevant disclosures.

The net metering law that supports customer-sited solar will now include provisions for the leasing of solar panels and the use of batteries under a measure that is not expected to draw a veto. A solar facility paired with a battery of equal capacity will be exempt from standby charges, and the customer may use the batteries in demand-response and peak-shaving programs. Though none of the bill’s provisions were controversial, Dominion exacted a price in the form of a line directing the SCC to “make all reasonable efforts to ensure that the net energy metering program does not result in unreasonable cost-shifting to nonparticipating electric utility customers.” Our utilities hope this will undermine the current full retail value for net metered solar when the SCC considers the future of net metering in proceedings later this year and next year. 

A bill to require the Board of Education to develop materials for teaching students about climate change passed mainly along party lines. 

Another bill allows, but does not require, local governments to create their own “local environmental impact funds,” to assist residents and businesses with the purchase of energy efficient lawn care and landscaping equipment, home appliances, HVAC equipment, or micro mobility devices (like electric scooters). Almost all Republicans voted against it, so modest as it is, it may draw a veto.

Both chambers have agreed to request the SCC form a work group to consider a program of on-bill financing for customer energy projects such as renewable energy, storage and energy efficiency improvements. The SCC will also be asked to study performance-based regulation and the impact of competitive service providers. Dominion will now also have to assess the usefulness of various grid enhancing technologies in its Integrated Resource Planning at the SCC.

Efficiency advocates had high hopes for a bipartisan measure they dubbed the SAVE Act to strengthen requirements for Dominion and APCo to achieve energy efficiency savings and to make it easier for efficiency programs to pass SCC scrutiny. Unfortunately, the final legislation does almost nothing, with most improvements pushed off to 2029.  

A bill passed that designates each October 4 as Energy Efficiency Day. (I said these were small victories.)

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Finally, in a rejection of one of the more inane initiatives of the governor’s regulation-gutting agenda, both Houses overwhelmingly passed legislation preventing changes to the building code before the next regular code review cycle. I imagine the governor will have to veto the bill, and Republican legislators will then be caught between party loyalty and a duty to govern intelligently, but any way you look at it, eggs are meeting faces.

Two steps back 

Failure to pass a bill might seem to leave matters where they are, with no winners or losers. Inaction in the face of climate change, however, means we lose time we can’t afford to waste.

Inaction can also have devastating consequences in the here and now. Solar projects on public schools and other commercial properties in Dominion Energy’s territory have been delayed or outright canceled for more than a year due to new rules imposed by Dominion in December of 2022 that raised the cost of connecting these projects to the grid exponentially. Legislation promoted by the solar industry and its customers would have divided responsibility for grid upgrades between the customer and the utility, while giving Dominion the ability to recover costs it incurred. Through its lobbyists’ influence on legislators, Dominion killed the bills not for any compelling reason, but because it could. 

Dominion’s obfuscations and half-truths often work magic when the subject is technical. But of all the votes taken this year on energy bills, this one actually shocks me. No one listening to the committee testimony could have misunderstood the significance of the legislation, affecting dozens of school districts and local governments. In desperation, the solar industry offered amendments that (in my opinion) would have given away the store, to no avail.  

A cross-check of votes and campaign contributions shows the legislation failed due to the votes of committee members who happen to accept large campaign contributions from Dominion. This dynamic tanked a number of other climate and energy bills as well, and underlines why utilities must be barred from making campaign contributions.  

Dominion’s influence also killed a priority bill for the environmental community that would have required the SCC to implement the Commonwealth Energy Policy, slimmed down SCC review of efficiency programs to a single test, increased the percentage of RPS program requirements that Dominion must meet from projects of less than 1 megawatt, and increased the percentage of renewable energy projects reserved for third-party developers. Two other bills that were limited to the Commonwealth Energy Policy provision also failed.

Dominion’s opposition was also enough to kill a bill designed to expand EV charging infrastructure statewide, especially in rural areas, in part by protecting gas station owners who install electric vehicle charging from competition by public utilities. Sheetz and other fuel retailers testified that they want to invest in charging infrastructure but won’t take the risk as long as Dominion can install its own chargers nearby. The reason is that using ratepayer money allows a public utility to undercut private business. Other states have dealt with this by prohibiting utilities from getting into the EV charging business. Here, the retailers asked for 12 miles between themselves and any utility-owned chargers. Dominion opposed the bill, and the fuel retailers lost in subcommittee. A second bill that would have created an EV rural infrastructure fund passed the House but could not get funding in the Senate. 

Bills in both the House and Senate would have required most new local government buildings to include renewable energy infrastructure, especially solar. The House bill, though unopposed, was killed by Democrats in Appropriations because a fiscal impact statement erroneously said it might cost something, in spite of bill language exempting situations where the improvements would not be cost-effective. Then the same committee felt tradition-bound to kill the Senate bill when it came over, although that bill carried no fiscal impact concerns and it was by then clear that killing the House bill had been a mistake. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but also of mindless rules.  

Moving along: all of the bills that would have put limits on the ability of localities to bar solar projects in their jurisdictions failed, as did legislation that would have given solar developers essentially a right to appeal an adverse decision to the SCC.

None of the many bills supporting customer choice in electricity purchasing passed. Legislation to allow localities to regulate or ban gas-powered leaf blowers also failed, as did a bill that would have required Dominion and APCo to reveal how they voted in working groups advising grid operator PJM. This bill passed the House but, like so many others, it died in the heavily pro-utility Senate Commerce and Labor committee.

Two steps sideways?

Community solar, known as shared solar in Virginia, staggered a few steps forward, or maybe just sideways. Readers will recall that the Dominion program authorized in 2020 has proven a success only for low-income customers who don’t have to pay the high minimum bill Dominion secured in the SCC proceeding that followed enactment.  

Trying to make the program work for the general public was the goal of legislation that advanced this year but may or may not help. As passed, the compromise language offers an opportunity to expand the program a little bit and to take the argument about the minimum bill back to the SCC with a different set of parameters.  

In addition to modifying the program in Dominion territory, shared solar now has a modest opening in Appalachian Power territory under a similar bill. Again, the final bill offers far less than advocates hoped, and it lacks even the special provisions for low-income subscribers that make the original Dominion program work at all. Like Dominion, APCo fought the bill, though unlike Dominion, APCo’s rate base has been shrinking, so losing customers to alternative suppliers is a more legitimate concern. 

(At least for now. All APCo needs to do to reverse the decline is to lure a couple of data centers from up north. Data centers are such energy hogs that they would swamp any losses from shared solar, and residents of NoVa would be glad to forgo a few. Or for that matter, a few dozen.) 

Other new measures garnered support from many in the environmental community, but don’t really move the needle. One allows geothermal heat pumps, which reduce a building’s energy demand but don’t generate electricity, to qualify under Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). Another allows an old hydroelectric plant to qualify for the RPS, a move that adds no new renewable energy to the grid but means the electric cooperative that gets the electricity from the plant can now sell the renewable energy certificates to Dominion and APCo.

Lying down and rolling over

In the face of the single greatest threat to Virginia’s — and the nation’s — energy security and climate goals, the General Assembly’s leaders chose to do nothing. In fact, doing nothing was their actual game plan for data centers. A quick death was decreed for legislation requiring data centers to meet energy efficiency and renewable energy procurement requirements as a condition of receiving state tax subsidies. Also killed were a bill that sought to protect other ratepayers from bearing the costs of serving data centers, and more than a dozen bills dealing with siting impacts, water resources, noise abatement, undergrounding of transmission lines and other location-specific issues. 

The excuse for inaction is that the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee is undertaking a study to examine the energy and environmental effects of data centers. However, legislators did not impose a concomitant pause in data center development while the study is ongoing. Instead, for at least another year, Virginia’s leaders decreed that there will be no restraints or conditions on the growth of the industry, even as ever more new data center developments are announced and community opposition increases. 

And falling for the boondoggle

Nuclear energy has always had its true believers at the General Assembly, and the prospect of small modular reactors (SMRs) has excited them again. Many of the same legislators who busied themselves killing climate and energy bills this year insist Virginia needs SMRs to address climate change. They are more than happy to let utilities charge ratepayers today for a nuclear plant tomorrow — or rather, ten years from now, or maybe never if things go as badly here as they did in South Carolina, Georgia and Idaho.

More cautious lawmakers say if Dominion or APCo wants to go all in on an unproven and risky technology like small modular reactors, they should shoulder the expense themselves and only then make the case for selling the power to customers. 

Dominion has achieved a terrific success rate with boondoggles over the years. (See, e.g. its coal plant in Wise County, spending on a North Anna 3 reactor that was never built, and the so-called rate freeze, followed by the also-lucrative legislation undoing the rate freeze.) By now you’d think more legislators would have joined Team Skeptic. But as always, utility donations and lobbyists’ promises are the great memory erasers. So once again, the General Assembly voted to allow ratepayer money to be spent on projects that may never come to fruition. 

This year APCo is in on the act as well. Two bills, one for APCo and the other for Dominion, will allow the utilities to charge ratepayers for initial work on nuclear plants of up to 500 MW. The final language of both bills requires SCC oversight and imposes limits on spending. That is, for now.

Will the real climate champions please step forward?

This round-up might leave readers thinking there aren’t many lawmakers in Richmond who take climate change seriously. Fortunately, this is not the case. Close to two dozen legislators introduced bills targeting stronger measures on energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric vehicles and utility reform. Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, led the pack both in the sheer number of initiatives he introduced and the tenacity with which he pursued them, but he was not alone. 

A few Republicans also supported good energy legislation, and even, in the case of Del. Michael Webert, R-Fauquier, sponsored priority bills like the SAVE Act. With groups like Energy Right and Conservatives for Clean Energy making the case from a conservative perspective, maybe we will see progress towards a bipartisan climate caucus to build on Virginia’s energy transition. 

If that sounds too optimistic, consider that the alternative right now is the near-total inaction that marked this year’s session; we just don’t have time for that.