Tag Archives: Scott Surovell

Who leads on climate and energy in the General Assembly—and how to get your legislators to up their game

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Sierra Club Legislative Chair Susan Stillman presents the Good Government award to Senator Chap Petersen. Photo credit Sierra Club.

Each year the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club issues grades to Virginia legislators for their votes on bills related to energy and climate change. It’s not an easy task, especially in the House, where too many good bills die on unrecorded voice votes in small subcommittees, defying attempts to hold legislators accountable. Other bills become victims of party politics. In spite of this, the scorecard manages to separate the champions from the also-rans, not to mention the boneheads running in the opposite direction. Guest blogger Corrina Beall, Legislative Director for the Virginia Sierra Club, lays it all out for you.

 

By Corrina Beall

The Sierra Club Virginia Chapter 2017 Climate and Energy Scorecard grades the Commonwealth’s state-level elected officials on their votes during the 2017 General Assembly Session on legislation that will have an impact on Virginia’s energy policies and standards to fight climate change. Eighteen of Virginia’s 40 senators and 36 of 100 delegates received a score of 80 percent or better on the 2017 Scorecard, reflected in their A+, A and B grades.

Check out your Senator’s and Delegate’s grades and let them know what you think! Thank them for supporting good environmental policies, or let them know that they need to do better. Scorecard available online, here: http://www.sierraclub.org/virginia/general-assembly-scorecard

As a voter, your elected officials care about your opinions even when you disagree. Regardless of party affiliation, your legislator will be interested to know that passionate environmentalists live in his or her district. Even if you never thought it was possible, you may be able to find some common ground. Talk with your legislator about shared values, and from there, the outcome of a friendly conversation about how we govern is anybody’s guess.

Legislators at all ends of the political spectrum need to hear from environmentalists who live in the districts they represent. The environment isn’t a partisan issue: everyone wants clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and to protect those resources for future generations.

Nine legislators deserve your special thanks this year for their work to protect our environment our air, water or land during the 2017 Legislative Session. Seven will be awarded by are receiving awards from the Virginia Chapter this summer:

  1. Senator Chap Petersen, Good Government Award
  2. Senator Scott Surovell, Water Champion Award
  3. Delegate Mark Keam, Energy Freedom Award
  4. Senator Jennifer Wexton, Energy Freedom Award
  5. Delegate Rip Sullivan, Legislative Leader Award
  6. Senator Jeremy McPike, Environmental Justice Award
  7. Delegate Kaye Kory, Environmental Justice Award

In addition, Senators Amanda Chase and Richard Stuart will be recognized for outstanding contributions on specific bills that help protect Virginia’s water quality from the consequences of our fossil fuel dependency.

Here is the full run-down:

Senator Richard Stuart (R-28) has led on water quality issues in coastal Virginia during his tenure in the Virginia Senate. Since the first commercial oil well was drilled in 1896 in Virginia, it is estimated that seven thousand oil and gas wells have been drilled in the state. Until 1950, there were no permitting or environmental requirements of well operators– and wells no longer in use were not plugged or closed, but simply abandoned. These abandoned wells, and those that are abandoned by insolvent companies, are called “orphan” wells.

According to the latest state review of oil and natural gas environmental regulations, there are at least 130 orphaned wells in Virginia. Orphaned wells that predate regulation often go unnoticed because their locations were never recorded. According to the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME), the cost of plugging an orphaned well is between $50,000 and $60,000. It took fifteen years for DMME to accumulate sufficient funds to complete a project of plugging seven wells.

Virginia’s orphan well program is funded by fees charged to well operators when they apply for a well site permit. The fee was set at $50 in 1990, and remained stagnant until this General Assembly Session. Sen. Stuart introduced successful legislation Senate Bill 911 that will increase the fee from $50 to $200.

Senator Chap Petersen (D-34) showed remarkable leadership by proposing to repeal a statute enacted in 2015 (the now-infamous SB 1349), which froze electric rates at levels that are designed to allow Dominion and Appalachian Power to over-collect money from customers. Virginians are now paying too much for their electricity because our largest utilities are earning unjustified profits. Petersen’s bill would have unfrozen utility rates, and allowed for base rate reviews for both utilities, ultimately resulting in lower electric bills and possibly a refund to consumers.

Additionally, Petersen sponsored Senate Bill 1593, which would ban political contributions from regulated monopolies. Petersen’s stand brought the issue of money in politics to the forefront, a focus that has spilled over into the gubernatorial race.

Senator Scott Surovell (D-36) introduced successful legislation this year to place a moratorium on coal ash disposal permits until the issue has been studied and information has been provided to the regulating entity, the Department of Environmental Quality. Senate Bill 1398 requires Dominion to assess a range of alternatives for disposing or recycling coal ash, the toxic byproduct of burning coal for electricity.

Despite the dangers associated with coal ash, it remains both ever-present and under-regulated. Coal ash is the second largest industrial waste stream in the United States. Vast quantities of poorly-contained ash sit in numerous pits along many of the Commonwealth’s most prized rivers, including the James, the Clinch, and the Potomac Rivers. In many cases, coal ash disposal sites are located upstream from popular fishing, kayaking, and hunting destinations.

The bill is an important step toward protecting every Virginian’s right to clean water. Senator Amanda Chase (R-11) co-patroned the bill. Chase raised the profile of this issue and rallied support around this measure, and after a weakened version of the bill passed in both chambers, she pushed for the Governor to strengthen the bill by amending it to include a prohibition on future issuance of permits until the studies are submitted to DEQ in December of 2017.

At the Request of the Virginia Distributed Solar Collaborative, Senator Jennifer Wexton (D-33) and Delegate Mark Keam (D-35) introduced companion legislation to establish community-owned renewable energy programs in Virginia with Senate Bill 1208 and House Bill 2112. Community-owned projects are not legal in Virginia, but could provide the option to power homes and businesses with clean energy for renters, apartment and condo dwellers, low-income families, and buildings that have unfavorable characteristics for on-site generation like deep shade.

Development of wind or solar energy that provides power to multiple community members leverages an economy of scale to reduce the price for each individual customer. By owning or leasing the solar or wind system, each community member taking part in the project can reduce his or her utility bills. Although these bills failed, they helped legislators understand what a true “community solar” bill looks like, and have helped set the stage for future efforts.

Delegate Rip Sullivan (D-48) introduced a suite of bills on energy efficiency this year in addition to a bill to establish renewable energy property tax credits in Virginia, HB 1632. Sullivan’s bills include HB 1703 (energy efficiency goals), HB 1636 (adjusting energy efficiency programs’ criteria for approval by the SCC), and HB 1465. Only HB 1465 passed.

House Bill 1465, which will become law in July, requires the Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (DMME) to track and report on the state’s progress towards meeting its energy efficiency goal. Virginia has a voluntary goal, set in 2007, of reducing electricity consumption by 10 percent by 2022, and we are only a tenth of the way there. Despite the modesty of our goal, at our current pace we will not attain it. This legislation requires that the Governor, the General Assembly and the Governor’s Executive Committee on Energy Efficiency will receive an annual report on our progress. Sullivan’s bill will provide a tool to hold the Commonwealth accountable for reaching our energy efficiency goal, and increase government transparency.

Senator Jeremy McPike (D-29) and Delegate Kaye Kory (D-38) introduced Senate Bill 1359 and its companion, House Bill 2089, which require every public school board in the state to adopt a plan to test for lead in each school’s drinking water. Children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of lead poisoning, but often do not look sick. Lead in the body can cause brain damage and developmental problems including learning disabilities, impulsive behavior, poor language skills and memory problems. This bill will become law in July.

Only the good die young: A mid-way review of Virginia climate and energy bills

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Photo credit: Corrina Beall

Photo credit: Corrina Beall

Virginia’s 2016 legislative session is only half over, but it’s already clear that the General Assembly is no more capable of dealing with climate change and a rapidly-evolving energy sector than it ever was. Republicans are stuck in denial, Democrats are divided between those who get it and those who don’t, and for most legislators in both parties, the default vote is whatever Dominion Power wants.

Republican attacks on EPA climate regulations sail through both houses, while popular RGGI legislation dies in committee.

Practically the first bills filed this session call for Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality to submit for legislative approval any plan to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Anxious to safeguard Virginia’s heritage of carbon pollution against the twin threats of clean energy and a more stable climate, the Republican leadership rammed through HB 2 and SB 21 on party-line votes. Governor McAuliffe has promised vetoes.

Eager as it was to defeat Obama’s approach to climate disruption, the Party of No supported no solutions of its own, even when proposed by one of its own. Virginia Beach Republican Ron Villanueva couldn’t even get a vote in subcommittee for his Virginia Alternative Energy and Coastal Protection Act, which would have had Virginia join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). It was the only legislation introduced this year that would have lowered greenhouse gas emissions and raised money to deal with climate change. The Democratic-led Senate version also failed to move out of committee, on a party-line vote.

Republicans scoff at climate change, but they are beginning to worry about its effects. Bills have moved forward to work on coastal “resiliency” efforts and to continue studying sea level rise (referred to as “recurrent flooding,” as though it were a phenomenon unto itself and suggesting no particular reason it might get worse). The Senate passed SB 282, creating the Virginia Shoreline Resiliency Fund, and SJ 58, extending the work of the Joint Subcommittee to study recurrent flooding. The House passed HJ 84, a companion to SJ 58, and HB 903, establishing a Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency.

Bold energy efficiency measures die. Not-so-bold measures don’t do well either.

Virginia appears set to continue its woeful record on energy efficiency. Between the opposition of electric utilities and their regulators at the State Corporation Commission, bills that would have set the stage for cost-effective reductions in energy use got killed off early or watered down to nothing.

Among the latter were the fairly modest bills pushed by the Governor. They passed only when reduced to a provision for the SCC to evaluate how to measure the subject. Weirdly, even that found opposition from conservative members of the Senate and House.

The only bill to move forward more or less intact was Delegate Sullivan’s HB 1174, which requires state agencies to report on how badly the state is doing in meeting its efficiency goal. So we may not make progress, but at least we’ll have to acknowledge our failures. (Roughly the same group of conservatives didn’t think we should even go that far.)

Renewable energy bills won’t move forward this year, except the one Dominion wants.

As previously reported, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Commerce and Labor committees decided not to decide when it came to much-needed renewable energy reforms. Every bill to create new market opportunities for wind and solar was “carried over to 2017,” i.e., referred to a not-yet-existent subcommittee composed of unnamed people tasked with meeting at a not-yet-scheduled time, in order to do “something.”

“We do need to get moving on these solar bills faster than we have been going,” said House C&L Chairman Terry Kilgore, in explaining why his committee was not getting moving on any solar bills.

On the other hand, over in House Finance, Dominion Virginia Power’s bill to lower the taxes it pays for renewable energy property fared better. In exchange for an 80% tax exclusion for its own utility projects, Dominion offered up reductions in the tax savings currently afforded to the smaller projects being developed by independent solar companies. In an amusing sideshow, Republican leaders tried to use their support for this legislation to strong-arm liberal Democrats into supporting a bill extending coal subsidies, on the theory that passing one bill that benefits Dominion warrants passing another bill that benefits Dominion.

Given the lack of progress in opening the wind and solar markets, there is more than a little irony in the fact that legislation moved forward in both the House and Senate requiring utilities to direct customers to an SCC website with information about options for purchasing renewable energy. (Which leads to the question: if visitors to such a site encounter an error message, is it still an error?)

Coal subsidies remain everyone’s favorite waste of money.

Once again, the House and Senate passed bills extending corporate welfare for companies whose business model involves blowing up mountains and poisoning streams. Over the years legislators have spent more than half a billion dollars of taxpayer money on these giveaways, knowing full well it was money down a rat-hole. Community activists have pleaded with lawmakers to put the cash towards diversifying the coalfields economy instead, but there has never been a serious effort to redirect the subsidies to help mine workers instead of corporate executives and the utilities that buy coal.

This year the corporate handout went forward in the face of reports that one of the biggest recipients plans to pay multi-million-dollar bonuses to its executives while laying off miners and looking for ways to dodge its obligations to workers. Add to this the news that the same company owes two coalfields counties $2.4 million in unpaid taxes for last year, and you have to wonder what fairy tales legislators are hearing from lobbyists that makes them put aside common sense.

It’s not just Republicans who voted for these subsidies (though there is no excuse for them, either). Some Democrats did so, too. Governor McAuliffe has said he would veto these bills, which means senators like David Marsden, Jennifer Wexton, John Edwards and Chap Petersen will have a chance to redeem themselves by voting against an override.

Many thanks to Senators Howell, Ebbin, Favola, Locke, McEachin, McPike and Surovell for seeing through the propaganda of the coal lobby and voting no.

Dominion defeats legislation protecting the public from coal ash contamination

Senator Scott Surovell’s SB 537 would have required toxic coal ash to be disposed of in lined landfills rather than left in leaking, unlined pits and simply covered over. The bill failed in committee in spite of support from one Republican (Stanley), after Democratic Senator Roslyn Dance caved to pressure from Dominion and abstained. One might have expected more backbone from a legislator with coal ash contamination in her own district. (Nothing excuses the Republicans who voted against the public health on this, either. Last I heard, Republican babies are as vulnerable to water pollution as Democratic babies.)