Tag Archives: VCHEC

Looking backward, Virginia Republicans attack climate action and coddle coal

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Photo credit: Mark Dixon from Pittsburgh, PA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Even before taking office, Governor Glenn Youngkin made two rookie mistakes: he declared his intention to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) by executive order, not realizing it can only be done by legislation; and he nominated the much-reviled Trump-era EPA chief Andrew Wheeler to be his Secretary of Natural Resources, apparently unaware the appointment would need approval from the Democratic-led Senate he had just infuriated with the RGGI announcement. 

Evidently not a man to admit a blunder, on his first day in office Youngkin signed an  executive order directing the Department of Environmental Quality to notify RGGI of his intent to withdraw Virginia from the carbon-cutting program, and to develop an “emergency regulation” to send to the Air Pollution Control Board for the same purpose. The language in the order is a little less than he pledged, and yet still not legal.

These are unfortunate signs that Youngkin, who ran for governor as a moderate Republican, intends to govern as a burn-the-house-down extremist when it comes to the environment. 

It’s surprising to see Youngkin pursuing Trumpist energy policies, and not just because they failed so dismally when Trump tried them. As the former CEO of a multibillion-dollar private equity investment company, Youngkin is, presumably, not an idiot. He has acknowledged climate change is real and affecting Virginia, and he has access to the same polls the rest of us do that show Americans are concerned and want government action to address the crisis. Corporate America is also calling for action; CEOs of more than 70 of the world’s largest corporations wrote a letter last June calling on governments to adopt policies capable of capping the global rise in temperature at no more than 1.5 decrees Celsius. 

The legislation that put Virginia into RGGI will lead to a 30 percent cut in the Commonwealth’s electric sector CO2 emissions by 2030. Companion legislation, the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), extends the carbon cutting out to 2050, to hit zero carbon emissions from the electric sector. Youngkin complains that RGGI costs ratepayers money, but it’s not like the money raised through carbon allowance auctions disappears into the ether: it pays for coastal flood-control projects and low-income energy efficiency programs that Virginia wasn’t funding before. Maybe Youngkin intends to replace these hundreds of millions of dollars with some of the federal funding coming to Virginia through the federal infrastructure bill—you know, the legislation that Virginia’s Republican congressmen voted against. 

Or maybe he doesn’t really care about the human consequences of his actions, since Virginia governors can’t run for reelection. Even last fall Youngkin was being talked about as a potential presidential candidate based on his ability to say nothing of substance for an entire campaign season. It was a good trick, but it’s a hard one to pull off twice. If Youngkin runs for president, he’ll be doing it as the guy who started his governorship by torching Virginia’s climate action plan.

Whether they are fellow flame-throwers or not, General Assembly Republicans are rallying around the new governor. Two bills filed last week seek to do legally what Youngkin wanted to do by executive fiat. SB532 (Stuart) and HB1301 (Kilgore) would repeal the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act, direct DEQ to suspend the Commonwealth’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and remove provisions for using revenues from the auctions. 

SB81 (Stanley) would prohibit the Air Pollution Control Board from considering health, environmental, scientific, or economic factors when making regulations—an attack on both RGGI and clean car regulation, as well as on the independence and very mission of the Air Board. SB657 (Stuart) also attacks the Air Board’s authority (and that of the Water Board for good measure).

HB118 (Freitas) goes bigger. It repeals key features of the VCEA, including achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050; allowing the SCC to approve new fossil fuel plants only if a utility has met energy-saving goals and can prove cost-effectiveness; allowing utilities to recover costs of compliance with Virginia’s new renewable portfolio standard; and making wind, solar and offshore wind projects “in the public interest,” magic words that assure utilities they will get paid for making these investments.

The Freitas bill might pass the House, now that Republicans hold a slim majority, but neither of these two bills should pass the Senate with Democrats in charge. Creating the framework for the energy transition was a signature success for Virginia Democrats, and it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which they will let it be taken from them. 

That isn’t stopping other Republicans from taking their own shots. Several bills seek to undermine the energy transition in various ways; all of them are bad policy.

  • HB74 (also Ware) would subsidize certain large industrial customers by allowing them to share in the benefits, yet exempting them from the costs, of the energy transition, shifting their share of the costs onto all other customers. 
  • HB5 (Morefield) raids the RGGI funds to get money for his own district. 
  • HB892 (Kilgore) and SB398 (McDougle) subsidize RGGI costs for certain fossil fuel generators, another raid on the funds. 
  • HB1204 (Kilgore) prevents the RPS from taking effect until 2025 and guts the carve-out for distributed generation permanently. It also removes the authority of the Air Pollution Control Board over air pollution permits for “minor” sources of pollution.
  • HB1257 (Kilgore, on a roll!) guarantees customers access to natural gas in the name of “energy justice,” banning local electrification efforts, and making it really hard for the city of Richmond to terminate its gas utility.
  • HB1261 (Bloxom) also strips the Air and Water Boards of their permit-granting authority. 
  • HB73 (Ware) and SB761 (Sutterlein) eliminates language putting wind, solar and offshore wind in the public interest, undercutting the market certainty that put Virginia into the top ranks for solar energy in the past year and attracted a major offshore wind turbine blade manufacturing facility to Portsmouth. (The bill also lets the SCC put costs of new facilities into a utility’s rate base instead of tacking on a rate adjustment clause. If this were the only thing the bill did, it would be worth supporting.)

Not all the bills we are likely to see this year have been filed yet, so there is a good chance we will see further attacks on climate action, all with the pretense of saving money. I will continue updating this post when I hear of other bills like these. 

“Virginia is no longer anti-coal,” — new Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. 

Speaking of things that cost ratepayers money, bills to subsidize coal are back this year. As we have all learned, coal is no longer a competitive fuel in Virginia. It lost out first to fracked gas, and more recently to solar. But in a compromise with coalfields Republicans, the VCEA excluded one coal plant, the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center (VCHEC) in Wise County, from a requirement that Dominion Energy Virginia close its Virginia coal plants this decade. In theory, VCHEC could stay open until 2045, when the VCEA requires Dominion to reach zero carbon across all its generation.

In reality, though, the reprieve isn’t enough to save the coal plant. Dominion’s own analysis, from its 2020 Integrated Resource Plan case, assigned VCHEC a net present value of negative $472 million just for the ten years from 2020-2029. Dominion didn’t try to extend that analysis out to 2045, but clearly the cost to customers from running a money-losing coal plant for 25 years would top a cool billion. Not surprisingly, the SCC is considering requiring Dominion to retire VCHEC to save money for its customers.

Given concerns about RGGI’s cost to consumers, you might think Southwest Virginia Republicans would lead the charge to retire the money-losing coal plant in their midst. You would be wrong. To understand why, it will help you to know that the counties making up Southwest Virginia are not in Dominion’s service territory, but in Appalachian Power’s. The people who benefit from keeping a coal plant open in Wise County are not the same people who have to pay for the plant’s spectacular losses. 

As an excuse to keep the plant open, coalfields Republicans claim it’s to help the environment. Yes, really. Some of VCHEC’s fuel is waste coal excavated from the piles of mining waste that litter the coalfields, a toxic legacy of the era when coal was king and environmental regulations went unenforced. Burning the waste coal is one way to get rid of it, though not the only way or, for that matter, the right way. 

As a new report from the Appalachian State School of Law discusses, the federal infrastructure bill (again, the same one Virginia Republicans voted against) will provide millions of dollars to Virginia to remediate abandoned minelands, including these piles of toxic waste. (The report, titled Addressing Virginia’s Legacy GOB Piles, has been sent to General Assembly members but is not yet available online.)

In a letter to Senator John Edwards, report lead author Mark “Buzz” Belleville expressed his strong disagreement with bills aimed at encouraging the burning of waste coal. As he wrote, “Waste coal is of lower quality, requiring additives for combustion and resulting in even greater CO2 emissions and traditional air pollution than newly-mined coal. As the report notes, existing GOB piles can be disposed of or remediated in other manners that do not undermine Virginia’s commitment to a transition to clean energy.”

Rather than use the coming federal funds to remediate GOB piles, Republicans would prefer that Dominion customers be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in higher energy costs and put more pollution into the air. 

So at the same time they rail against the costs of RGGI and VCEA, Republicans are using waste coal as a reason to raise costs even more. 

  • HB656 (Wampler) dangles a tax credit for using waste coal. 
  • SB120 (Hackworth) and HB657 (Wampler) declare waste coal a “renewable energy” source and exempts VCHEC from the requirement that it close by 2045. 
  • HB894 (Kilgore) outright prohibits the SCC from requiring Dominion to retire VCHEC “before the end of its useful life.” (Would that be before or after Virginia becomes so hot we all move to Canada?)
  • HB1326 (Kilgore, trying everything he can think of) makes it “in the public interest” for utilities to use waste coal, and gives utilities a way to charge ratepayers extra for doing so.

Electricity customers had better get used to being used as a political football by legislators who attack the costs of the energy transition but have no qualms about making ratepayers subsidize coal. 

This post originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on January 20, 2022. It has been updated to include bills filed since then.

The facts about coal plants Dominion didn’t want you to know

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smokestack

Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

Last winter, during the fight to pass the Virginia Clean Economy Act, Dominion Energy lobbyists went out of their way to save the company’s youngest coal plant in Wise County. It worked. Legislators exempted the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center from closure until 2045, when Dominion has to shutter all its fossil fuel generation.

VCHEC was approved in 2008 and built in 2013 as a boondoggle for Dominion, earning the company an enhanced rate of return. It was also intended as an expensive gift from then-Gov. Tim Kaine to coalfield Democrats, who went on to lose their seats anyway. Even then, it was a terrible deal for Dominion’s customers and the climate, with all the carbon pollution you expect from coal and a cost that was twice that of cleaner alternatives.

No wonder it proved to be one of the last coal plants ever built in the U.S.

Knowing this, and knowing the determination of this year’s General Assembly to turn the commonwealth in the direction of clean energy, you might not have expected VCHEC to have a lot of friends left in Richmond. But Dominion never told legislators what it would cost consumers to keep its coal plants running. Among all the criticism of the price tag associated with Virginia’s energy transition — much of that criticism coming from Dominion itself — one crucial fact gets lost: It’s coal that is hitting consumers the hardest.

An analysis Dominion reluctantly made public last month as part of its Integrated Resource Planning case shows that VCHEC is far and away the worst performing economically of all the utility’s fossil fuel-burning plants. This one coal plant carries a 10-year net present value of negative $472 million. (The analysts didn’t extend their calculations out to 2045, where it would certainly cross a billion dollars; maybe they were running low on red ink.)

VCHEC isn’t the only coal plant in Dominion’s fleet with a negative valuation, just the worst. In fact, all the Virginia coal plants have negative values.

These are Dominion’s numbers, not those of the Sierra Club or the other environmental and consumer groups challenging Dominion’s plans. The Sierra Club hired a consulting company to run its own analysis, using a standard utility model. That analysis concluded it would be cheaper for customers to build more solar now and speed up the closure not just of VCHEC but of all Dominion’s coal plants. This includes even the company’s Mount Storm coal plant in West Virginia, the only one assigned a positive economic value in Dominion’s analysis. From a customer standpoint, all of them should go.

Maybe that’s not too surprising. We already knew coal was dead. But how many of us knew we were paying to prop up the corpse?

Dominion’s lawyers tried to keep the terrible cost numbers out of the public’s hands, contending it was “confidential commercial and financial information that other entities could use to their competitive advantage in future negotiations.” I can imagine these future meetings: the other entities would be so busy mocking Dominion that, indeed, negotiations might stall permanently.

Fortunately for all of us, the Attorney General’s Office of Consumer Counsel persuaded the SCC the information should be public. Some information truly is confidential; this is merely embarrassing. Dominion’s customers—and the General Assembly—should know what it’s costing us to prop up coal.

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on September 24, 2020.

The analysis Dominion ultimately produced, showing 10-year Net Present Values for certain of its generating units, under various scenarios. Notice biomass doesn’t do too well either. The analysis omits some additional units, apparently because they are already scheduled for retirement.

The Wise County coal plant should never have been built. Why fight to keep it open?

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smokestack

Just blowing smoke. Photo credit Stiller Beobachter

The Virginia Clean Economy Act continues to bump along towards the finish line, losing pieces of itself but picking up new and different features as it makes its tortuous way.

Most recently, and disconcertingly, Republicans representing southwest Virginia persuaded the Senate to remove a key provision requiring the closure of the Virginia City coal plant in Wise County by 2030, unless it reduces its carbon emissions by 83% through the carbon capture technology it was designed for. The change would undermine the carefully-negotiated pathway to a zero-carbon electric sector.

On Tuesday the House rejected the Senate version of the bill that would have allowed the plant to continue operating until 2050. The Senate will have the final say, but it can only save the coal plant by killing the legislation altogether.

It’s understandable that senators want to please everyone, or at least everyone with a lobbying presence at the General Assembly building. Yet the case for keeping the coal plant running is built on a lie — indeed, on a history of lies.

Coal champions call the Wise County facility “the cleanest coal plant in the country,” a claim that, at best, misses the devastating environmental and human impacts of coal mining itself. More to the point right now, the claim ignores the fact that the facility emits millions of tons of CO2 every year, the very reason it needs to be retired by 2030 in order for the Clean Economy Act to deliver on its carbon-cutting mission.

And while coalfield Republicans emphasize the coal plant’s economic benefits to the region, the fact is that the plant never made sense economically and should never have been built. Trying to keep it running will simply burden ratepayers further.

In 2007, when it sought permission from the State Corporation Commission to build the plant, Dominion projected the cost of the electricity it would generate at $93 per megawatt-hour. Yes, that’s high. Even 13 years later, wind, solar and combined cycle gas still come in at under $40.

Worse, Dominion based its cost on a projection that the plant would run at 90 percent of its full capacity. It never did. The plant is running at only 24 percent today. If Dominion had accurately represented that the capacity percentage would not exceed the mid-60s and would plummet into the 20s a mere seven years after it entered service, the cost projection would have been a good deal higher.

The SCC only granted Dominion permission to build the plant for a reason that will sound familiar to anyone following the debate over the Clean Economy Act: The General Assembly passed a law proclaiming construction of a coal plant in southwest Virginia “in the public interest,” removing the SCC’s authority to make that determination.

Yes, the General Assembly’s habit of bossing the SCC around with these magic words goes back quite a ways.

Legislators weren’t the only ones championing the coal plant back in 2007. In her book Climate of Capitulation, retired University of Virginia professor and former State Air Pollution Control Board member Vivian Thomson describes how then-Gov. Tim Kaine put enormous pressure on the Air Board to approve the air permit for the facility. Not incidentally, Dominion’s chief lobbyist, Bill Murray, worked for Kaine during these years, before he made his way through the revolving door.

Dominion has sometimes suggested that it pursued the coal plant only as a favor to legislators. I asked Thomson about that in a phone call. She responded that on the contrary, the plant is a prime example of how Virginia Democrats and Republicans alike have capitulated to Dominion’s interests over the years.

Perhaps Dominion was angling for some pot-sweetening through a show of reluctance. The General Assembly obliged, of course, promising Dominion a higher rate of return than usual. And indeed, the SCC eventually granted Dominion an enhanced rate of return of 12.12%.

The SCC’s approval of the plant outraged consumers and environmentalists alike. Attorney Cale Jaffe, who represented environmental groups in the SCC proceeding, says it was a bad decision even in the years before Virginia committed to reduce climate pollution.

“All of the concerns and risks associated with the project in 2006-2007 were fully debated and apparent to everyone,” he told me. “The fact that we would be moving to a low-carbon economy made building a coal plant and locking yourself in for decades a risky strategy. The carbon emissions should have led people to look at other options for generating electricity that don’t emit 5.3 million tons of carbon every year.”

It’s remarkable that even today, with coal plants closing across the country and mining companies going bankrupt, legislators from southwest Virginia still can’t bring themselves to break with the industry that has polluted their land and water and shattered their communities. The Sierra Club and its allies tried for years to persuade the General Assembly to redirect millions of dollars annually in coal subsidies, urging that the money could have underwritten thousands of new jobs in a more diverse economy. Legislators kept throwing taxpayer money at coal companies anyway, always with the full support of Dominion.

Now, when it comes to the Clean Economy Act, Dominion wants to have it both ways. During negotiations, the company agreed to the coal plant closures as part of a deal that gave it cost recovery for offshore wind, energy efficiency targets significantly lower than what advocates originally sought, and numerous other concessions. But it turns out company lobbyists were simultaneously working to undermine the compromise bill by encouraging southwest Virginia legislators to push for coal industry protections.

Senators should have none of it. They’ve promised Virginians a bill that responds to the climate crisis by putting the commonwealth on its way to a clean energy future. Today, it’s time to deliver.

 

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on March 5, 2020. 

Update: on March 5, the House passed the Clean Economy Act; on March 6, the Senate did also, sending the bill to the Governor’s desk. The final version of the bill does not require closure of the Wise County coal plant until 2045.