Category Archives: Environment

A Small Victory – So Far – for Common Sense and Flood Mitigation in Virginia Beach

The central Great Neck Corridor drainage system Virginia Beach

by James C. Sherlock

Sometimes things work. Perhaps they will this time.

There was a time in Virginia Beach when a partnership between a developer and a church to build new houses would have breezed through the Planning Commission and the City Council.

That kind of open season on clearing and building on Virginia Beach’s very low-lying land brought with it lots of problems, including flooding.

The citizens of Virginia Beach, tired of flooding in every heavy rain and even under a clear sky with a full moon, a couple of years ago passed a very large property tax increase on themselves to create a huge pot of money to deal with it.

One of the natural flood control systems already in place is a series of contiguous lakes along Great Neck Road in the eastern part of the city. They handle runoff from that major corridor. That system flows into the Lynnhaven River and the Chesapeake Bay.

To that place comes a developer and a local church with a proposal. Continue reading

Democrats Cannot Hide From Vote to Ban Gas Cars

By Steve Haner

Yes, Virginia, the Democrats are coming for your gasoline and diesel powered cars. The only way to decouple Virginia from the California Air Resources Board’s relentless drive toward electric vehicles only on new car lots is to change the political landscape in Richmond and reverse a 2021 bill.

A Republican candidate for Virginia Senate used the illustration above to challenge his opponent, current Delegate Danica Roem (D-Manassas), now seeking a seat in the less numerous body. The blog Blue Virginia rushed to Roem’s defense. Here is the full link to the article so you can get the link and the tenor of the message all in one. Continue reading

Dominion Plan to Maintain Gas Attacked at SCC

Percentage of Virginians reporting difficulty in paying for electricity, including those setting their thermostats to uncomfortable levels. From expert testimony filed by the University of Michigan’s Justin Schott, based on census data. Click for larger view.

By Steve Haner

First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.

The front line in the war against fossil fuels in Virginia has now shifted back to the State Corporation Commission, and as usual only one side has fielded an army and brought heavy weapons to the battlefield.  Those who might defend the continued use of coal and natural gas are missing in action.   Continue reading

What Global Warming? A Century of Virginia Julys

Graphing every daily high temperature for July in Purcellville, VA, more than a century of daily readings up through last month. What global warming? Click for full view.

By Steve Haner

The constant media hysteria about July’s temperatures gets even harder to swallow when the long-term data are examined. For example, take a look at that graph above, which represents every daily high in July going back to the 19th Century at Purcellville in Loudoun County.

The Purcellville weather monitor is one of just 19 in Virginia with a long enough and reliable enough history to be included in National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Historical Climatology Network. It is the closest Virginia USHCN monitor to the Washington metropolitan region, but like many of the selected monitors is not deep in an urban setting.

The graph itself was generated by a program developed by a regular writer on climate topics named Tony Heller, who spent much of his career doing research at the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories. This is mentioned because he will be attacked by the Bacon’s Rebellion usual suspects as not a real scientist or not a climate scientist. More of his background.

The graphing program can be balky (it could be my equipment or operator error), and you can try it yourself here under “Daily Station Temperatures.” You can select by state, and if you get the version that includes a box at the top marked “Annual Average,” that gives you a pulldown menu for the individual USHCN monitor stations in each state. The graph adds a trend line if you wish, which I included in my screenshots.

Running through the Virginia stations, the thought that comes to mind is, what climate change? What spike in temperatures? Most seem to be complete through all or most of last month. The media coverage has admitted that Virginia was not among the areas supposedly “broiling.” The state’s official NOAA summary claims a temperature rise of only 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, almost 125 years. Continue reading

Why Dominion Stays Calm in Wind Industry Storm

By Steve Haner

First published by Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.  There is some overlap with a post from last week by another author,  but with a slightly different focus.  

With growing  turmoil in the offshore wind industry finally being reported, it would be nice to turn the clock back a year and revisit the State Corporation Commission’s failed 2022 effort to impose a real performance standard on Dominion Energy Virginia’s $10 billion, 176-turbine project.  No such luck, Virginia. Continue reading

Heat Wave? Here In Southeastern Virginia We Call It July.

by Kerry Dougherty

Stop the presses. It’s July 26th. And it’s hot. My trusty iPhone weather app says it will hit 91 today, 94 Thursday and 96 on Friday.

Who could have predicted such temperatures? Actually, all of us. It’s called JULY.

And yes, much of the country is in a record heat wave with far hotter weather. It’s not the first heat wave and it won’t be the last. But there is a new breed of “safetyist” afoot. Not the usual alarmists who feel it’s their duty to remind us every summer to wear light clothing, drink water — not tequila — and not to exercise at high noon, as if we are idiots.

This new bunch is raising the alarm on the dangers of temperatures — get this — above 90.
Continue reading

Destroying the Commonwealth in Order to Save It

(This was first published today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy)

by Barbara Hollingsworth

Members of the General Assembly who voted for a bill in 2021 mandating that new vehicles sold in Virginia must be all-electric by 2035 forgot to do the math to show exactly how that would work in real life.

As the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy noted in February when we unsuccessfully made the case for repeal of this ill-advised legislation, the Commonwealth simply does not have the technological capacity to make such a massive switch from internal combustion engines in such a short period of time.

Replacing the energy stored in one pound of oil takes 15 pounds of lithium battery. To mine the materials found in the typical 1,000 pound car battery will mean mining and processing about 250 tons of rock and dirt.

Nobody told Virginians that the level of subsurface mining required to manufacture the millions of new batteries required to store electricity generated by wind, solar and other “renewable” energy sources will dwarf current production levels, scarring the earth.

Consider our planet — including Virginia, which has deposits of copper, manganese and zinc — pockmarked with ten times the current number of mines, resembling craters on the moon. This in a state that won’t even allow an underground natural gas pipeline to be built. Continue reading

Clean Virginia Win is Bad News for Gas Consumers

By Steve Haner

Renewable energy donor Clean Virginia Fund was the biggest winner in Tuesday’s Democratic primaries, going head to head against Dominion Energy Virginia in several nomination contests and often winning.  Senior incumbent Democrats with strong Green New Deal voting records went down to defeat, because good wasn’t good enough. Continue reading

RGGI Reg Repealed, But RGGI Tax Returns to Bills

The states currently in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative tax compact.  Put an X through Virginia as of January 2024? Pennsylvania remains covered with a question mark.

by Steve Haner

Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board voted Wednesday to remove Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, keeping Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s promise to eliminate the related carbon tax that has been imposed on electricity ratepayers under RGGI since January 2021.

The bad news is the tax itself won’t disappear until at the earliest September 2024.  Collection from customers has been delayed.  A separate bill surcharge to collect the tax, imposed and then removed by Dominion Energy Virginia, is likely to be imposed again as of September 1 of this year.  A State Corporation Commission hearing examiner has recommended approval of Dominion’s petition to collect another $350 million or so from its customers.

The surcharge is still being calculated, as there remains some dispute over what the full costs are.  The warmer than normal winter reduced electricity demand and required fewer RGGI credits.  The surcharge should settle somewhere above $4 per 1,000 kilowatt hours of usage.  In effect, as the hearing examiner notes, Dominion is seeking to collect 17 months of RGGI allowance costs in just 12 months. Continue reading

Mountain Valley Pipeline Back Thanks to McCarthy-Biden Debt Deal

by Shaun Kenney

As part of the debt ceiling deal, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), long thought dead, is now suddenly back in the cards.

But don’t expect bulldozers back in Virginia anytime soon, as the 4th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is not expected to grant permission to cross any streams or wetlands before 15 June. From The Roanoke Times:

Efforts to obtain the permit — the last major approval needed to restart construction that has been stalled since the fall of 2021 — were underway well before the Mountain Valley provision was added to the debt ceiling bill at the urging of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Most importantly for Mountain Valley, the bill prohibits any legal challenge of the Army Corps permit or any other government approval.

Since work on the pipeline began in 2018, the Fourth Circuit has thrown out about a dozen permits, siding with environmental groups who argued that agencies failed to take adequate steps to limit muddy runoff from the construction sites.

A pending lawsuit over the fate of endangered species in the pipeline’s path, and a potential legal challenge of a permit allowing its passage through the Jefferson National Forest, will be rendered moot as soon as the law takes effect.

Continue reading

First Lawsuit Over Whales and Wind Dismissed

Vineyard Wind 1, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Click for larger view.

By Steve Haner

A federal district judge in Massachusetts has rejected an effort to stop an offshore wind project near Nantucket Island on the basis of danger to whales, apparently the first court test of similar claims being raised against wind turbine proposals along the U.S. eastern seaboard, including here in Virginia.

On May 17, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted a motion for summary judgement to the federal agency that approved the Vineyard Wind One project. With a planned 84 turbines, the project is about half the size of Dominion Energy Virginia’s planned project off Virginia Beach. Both are just the first phases of larger planned buildouts. Continue reading

Dominion Seeks Permit to Harass 100s of Whales

Click for larger view. BOEM map of Right Whale density noting offshore wind lease areas. Dominion’s CVOW and Avangrid’s Kitty Hawk Wind are the southernmost mapped.

By David Wojick

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking public comments on a massive proposal to harass large numbers of whales and other marine mammals off Virginia by building a huge offshore wind complex. There is supposed to be an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed harassment, but it is not there with the proposal.

We are told it is elsewhere, but after searching we find that it simply does not exist. Like a shell game where the pea has been palmed, there is nothing to be found. Continue reading

Renewables? Fossil Fuels? Americans Want Both.

by Steve Haner

Given a choice between an energy future that is dependent on a) generation using sun, wind or falling water; or b) thermal generation sources using fossil fuels or uranium; or c) a combination of both, which do Americans prefer? Should it surprise anybody that the answer is both?

Reliance on both, the need for at least a substantial amount of electricity not depending on weather, is at the heart of the recommendations coming at Virginians from many directions. It came recently from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, including the Virginian on that panel, Mark Christie. It is the premise for both Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s (R) 2022 Energy Plan and Dominion Energy Virginia’s new integrated resource plan. Continue reading

Christie Using FERC Pulpit for Dire Prophecy

FERC Commissioner Mark Christie

by Steve Haner

Virginian Mark Christie is using his position on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as a national pulpit to preach a message of energy reliability doom, and he is being heard.

It helps that he is not alone in spreading the alarm. It also helps that he is basing his warning on actual instances of energy shortages, from Texas’s deadly experience two years ago to the problems in the eastern United States just before Christmas 2022, which merely came close to catastrophe. Continue reading

CVOW on Schedule and Budget, Utility Reports

Dominion’s proposed offshore wind project.

by Steve Haner

Dominion Energy Virginia’s first wave of offshore wind remains on schedule, and within the announced capital cost of $9.8 billion; and the cost per unit of the energy from the turbines will be lower than initially projected, the utility reported last week.

Details? Well, many of those are secrets. Much of the brief report the utility filed with State Corporation Commission remains redacted, with large blocks covered by black ink. The redacted data involves reports from an affiliate corporation, Blue Ocean Energy Marine LLC. There apparently is also another document “filed under seal under separate cover.”

Finally, Dominion refers to an Excel file that includes all the data on the new levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculations which was posted to a shared eRoom. The password is available only to the SCC and case parties who signed non-disclosure agreements, reports the SCC’s communications director in response to a query about access for Bacon’s Rebellion.

Among the interesting items which are on the record: Continue reading