Category Archives: Environment

Will Democrats Revisit Virginia Net Zero Laws?

Posted on January 18, 2024 by | 63 comments

Senator David Marsden, D-Fairfax, sees “serious problems” in Virginia’s net zero laws.

By Steve Haner

For the third year in a row, Democrats in the Virginia Senate have shot down an effort to divorce Virginia’s auto dealers from California’s impending mandates on electric vehicle sales. But before the predetermined vote went down, the new chair of the committee made a surprise announcement that he and his colleagues are open to revisiting Virginia’s legal rush to end fossil fuels.

Senator David Marsden, D-Fairfax, said he and Senator Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, have discussed using the period between the 2024 and 2025 General Assembly sessions to convene a conference on the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and the many other statues they passed to suppress coal, oil and natural gas use.  Republicans later shared his musings on X.

What serious problems, Mr. Chairman? Tell us more.

Marsden is the new chair of the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee and Deeds now chairs the Commerce and Labor Committee. The Virginia Mercury noted Marsden’s comments at the tail end of its report on the meeting, but it was the only actual news to break out that afternoon. The Richmond Times-Dispatch failed to mention Marsden’s announcement but had a nice photo of a half-empty Tesla charging lot in California.

Truth would have been better served by a photo of the stranded EV’s waiting for crowded, failing chargers in frigid climes this week. There is a reason consumers have not been rushing to buy EV’s at the expected rates.  Despite the happy talk from mandate proponents, the targets are pie-in-the-sky. The only winner in this whole process is Tesla, getting rich selling carbon credits under the cap-and-trade element of the California regime. Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Utilities

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Thank Coal, Gas for Your Warm House Today

Posted on January 15, 2024 by | 45 comments

PJM generation mix as of 8 a.m. this morning. Coal, natural gas and nuclear are meeting the vast majority of the demand.

By Steve Haner

Good morning, Virginia.  Your lights and heat are on, and you can thank coal and natural gas. Here are the 8 a.m. charts from PJM’s website, which you can check periodically today as the winter weather closes in. Those fuels were providing more than 66% of our electricity, with nuclear providing almost another third. Go to the website for the interactive version. The 9 a.m. chart is little changed.

The data are for the entire PJM region, not just Virginia.

Billions of dollars into the renewable energy transition, various renewable sources were providing less than 6 megawatts throughout the entire system, not even 5% of demand. Solar should increase a bit as the day proceeds, but the projection (on the same website) is that wind will dip toward the middle of the day.

The breakdown of generation from renewable sources, mainly hydro. The solar output should improve but in much of the region winter storm clouds will continue to limit it, and snow may pile up on solar panels.

Remember, this is a holiday and the peak demand projected for the workday tomorrow is higher. But the sun may be back to help at least a bit.

We could be Alberta, Canada. Here is what they are going through. Or Texas. Read those links and know, that is the future the General Assembly and the wind and solar industrial complex that owns it have planned for us.

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Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, Environment

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The Plain Truth about Climate Change in Virginia

Posted on December 11, 2023 by | 75 comments

Surry Nuclear Power Station

by Nelson Fegley

Climate change is real. Major climate fluctuations have occurred over hundreds of thousands of years, and the future will be similar. The changes are both anthropogenic (human caused) and due to natural causes. The magnitude of natural changes in temperatures and sea levels have far exceed those from anthropogenic causes. It is highly unlikely that we can significantly influence the natural causes, so whatever happens we will need to adapt to the resulting changes in temperature, sea levels, etc.  More about this later.

The Commonwealth of Virginia, due to the structure the power industry, is well positioned to deal with both the anthropogenic and natural causes of climate change. About 87% of the state’s power is generated via nuclear and natural energy sources. Nuclear energy generation involves zero carbon emissions, while natural gas is clean relative to sources like coal. The combination of nuclear and natural gas provides dependable power, not dependent on the wind blowing and sun shining. 

The capability to provide reliable generation of power is a key reason why Northern Virginia has become the world center for cloud computing and data storage centers. And businesses such as Amazon have committed an additional $35 billion for further expansion of this technology throughout Virginia. The economic fallout from these investments will help provide resources that will be needed to adapt to the changes in climate due to natural causes. An example would be funding major infrastructure projects in the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Coast areas. 

The current political climate involves a goal of having power generation methods that produce zero carbon emissions. Wind and solar power are being pushed, but they are unlikely to become a major source of reliable power due to their intermittent nature. Storage battery technology is under development, but unlikely to provide the needed base load capacity. The wind projects that have been funded are also facing “headwinds” due to major unforeseen costs.  Continue reading →

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SCC Examiner Says No to Dominion Gas Plans

Posted on December 10, 2023 by | 46 comments

By Steve Haner

A hearing examiner at the Virginia State Corporation Commission has recommended rejection of Dominion Virginia Energy’s plan to maintain and add to its fleet of fossil fuel generators. It failed to overcome the presumption in state law that all such plants must go away, she wrote.

In her extensive report following the months-long regulatory battle, Ann Berkebile notes that the Commission itself (still hobbled with only one full member and a retired commissioner sitting in) may reach a different conclusion. And the pending case, Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), does not actually involve final decisions on what power plants to add or delete from its assets in coming years.

But Dominion was looking for a blessing from the Commission on its proposal to maintain most of its natural gas plants and even add one, a 1,000 megawatt facility it wants to place in Chesterfield County. The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act has set a schedule for their retirement, with all fossil fuel generation expected to be gone in about 20 years. Dominion’s announcement last May that it was seeking to keep and add to its natural gas plants was immediately denounced by environmental advocates.

The 2020 legislation included a provision to allow the SCC to approve an additional fossil fuel plant if a utility demonstrates “that it has already met the energy savings goals identified in § 56-596.2 and that the identified need cannot be met more affordably through the deployment or utilization of demand-side resources or energy storage resources and that it has considered and weighed alternative options, including third-party market alternatives, in its selection process.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, Environment, Regulation, Utilities

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Virginia’s Final (Maybe) RGGI Tax Grab: $97M

Posted on December 9, 2023 by | 23 comments

Virginia’s final (maybe) sale of allowances for power plant carbon emissions produced a record $97.4 million. The price for each permit to emit one ton of carbon dioxide, which is passed to customers, has about doubled in four years.

by Steve Haner

Virginia has participated in its final (for a while anyway) Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative auction and the proceeds on the carbon tax set a new record, with Virginia collecting more than $97 million in one swoop. The total carbon tax take for the state is just under $828 million in three years.

The clearing price on December 6 reached $14.88 per ton. It would have been higher but the demand for allowances was so high the RGGI organization released some of its “cost containment reserve” or CCR allowances to tamp down the price increase. The news release on the auction is here. A chart showing Virginia’s proceeds over the three years is attached.

Why the record price? Here’s a solid suggestion: Power producers fear another major winter stressing their systems and know full well that wind and solar are unpredictable and unreliable. They are stocking up on allowances to keep our lights on with fossil fuels.

Just four years ago when the Thomas Jefferson Institute of Public Policy produced this explainer on what RGGI was, the “carbon price” was $5.27 a ton and the prediction was Virginia would collect $150 million a year from electricity producers and eventually their customers. “There is no guarantee the price won’t rise,” we noted, and indeed a steadily rising price for carbon emissions is entirely the point of RGGI.

Pushed by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) the Air Pollution Control Board voted earlier this year to rescind the state regulation that forces Virginia’s larger electric power plants to purchase allowances from RGGI for every ton of coal, natural gas or oil they burn. So far, efforts to reverse that decision in the courts have failed. Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Taxes, Utilities

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Virginia Beach Nixes Kitty Hawk Wind Cables

Posted on December 1, 2023 by | 17 comments

Site map for the first phase and cable connection route for the proposed Kitty Hawk Wind project.

by Steve Haner

The political leaders of the City of Virginia Beach have informed an offshore wind developer that they oppose its plan to bring power cables ashore at Sandbridge Beach. No formal vote was taken on the application, however, according to media reports.

The story appeared in The Virginian-Pilot and on local television station WAVY around Thanksgiving. When Bacon’s Rebellion last visited this matter, Virginia Beach City Council had conducted a May public hearing at which most speakers strongly opposed the power cable location. Continue reading →

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Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, Environment, Land use & development, Regulation, Utilities

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Misleading Certitude on Climate Change

Posted on November 27, 2023 by | 103 comments

by Bill O’Keefe

The Richmond Times-Dispatch meteorologist, Sean Sublett, recently wrote an article, “What to make of the National Climate Assessment.” He makes little of it in terms of analysis, and he reposts as if the assessment is primarily fact and not scientific speculation.

He provides almost nothing on the uncertainties that drive the National Assessment. The report treats uncertainties as scientific facts, and substantive information about the climate system is limited because uncertainties are not explicit. The long-range projections about temperature, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events are all the result of assumed emission scenarios and climate models that have proven to be too pessimistic. Since the climate is accepted as a chaotic system, it is virtually impossible to make accurate predictions absent actual knowledge of “initial conditions” which are unknown. Continue reading →

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Dominion Wind May Be Sued, Hikes Customer Bills

Posted on November 15, 2023 by | 17 comments

The first eight monopile bases for Dominion Energy’s CVOW project arrive on the Portsmouth waterfront. But a planned German-owned wind turbine blade factory nearby ist kaput.

by Steve Haner

Two national activist groups on energy and environmental issues, both with connections to Virginia, have taken the first legal steps to challenge the recent federal approvals for Virginia’s planned offshore wind complex.  Most of what follows is directly from their announcement dated November 14.

The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) are filing with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) a 60 Day Notice of Intent to Sue letter for a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The violation is contained in a defective “biological opinion,” which authorizes the construction of Dominion Energy Virginia’s Virginia Offshore Wind Project (VOW). Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Utilities

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Court Blocks Pennsylvania from Joining RGGI

Posted on November 1, 2023 by | 7 comments

The states currently in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative tax compact. Pennsylvania will remain conspicuously absent, and Virginia departs in two months.

by Steve Haner

A state court in Pennsylvania has ruled that the regulatory decision to enroll that state in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) exceeded the authority of state regulators. It ruled RGGI is a tax that could only be lawfully imposed by the legislature.

It was the Republican majority in one of the state’s legislative chambers that brought the legal challenge, so unless or until the political balance changes in that state, a vote to join the interstate carbon dioxide capping program is unlikely.

Adding Pennsylvania would have been a major expansion of the 11-state RGGI compact. Its many fossil fuel power plants would need to buy $400 million or more worth of CO2 allowance credits per year, a third or more than Virginia’s power plants are being taxed.

It is also one of the larger states in the PJM Interconnect regional power marketplace (it is the P) where the power plants do not pay into RGGI, lowering the relative cost of its power when it flows into other PJM states. Virginia electric customers are often using electrons from elsewhere in PJM.

That the money the utilities must pay for operating their fossil fuel plants is a tax is something most RGGI proponents, including those in Virginia, vehemently deny. That was one of the key disputes in the challenge in Pennsylvania, where joining RGGI was a regulatory step initiated by its then-Governor Tom Wolf (D). Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes, Utilities

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Dominion’s Wind Project Wins Federal Approval

Posted on October 31, 2023 by | 29 comments

Norfolk Virginian-Pilot photo of the first eight monopiles for Dominion’s offshore wind project, celebrated at a ceremony last Thursday upon their delivery.

The Biden Administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued final approval for the construction of Dominion Energy Virginia’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. Here is the release. A few more steps remain and should be completed by late January, according to BOEM.

The announcement, fully expected since all previous U.S. projects have been similarly approved, followed by a few days the arrival of the first set of gigantic monopiles, the first eight of the 176 structures Dominion will build about 27 miles or more off Virginia Beach.

The only coverage of their arrival was provided by The Virginian-Pilot. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) attended and has praised the project all along. The paper provided only an indirect quote from his remarks:

The project is also at the heart of Virginia’s all-of-the-above approach to energy production, which aims to make energy cheap and plentiful by employing fossil fuels, nuclear and growing green energy, said Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who attended the event.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Utilities

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The Californication of Virginia

Posted on October 30, 2023 by | 143 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Does anyone really think fewer gas mowers will make a difference?

More importantly, is it the role of government to tell citizens what they must use to trim their fescue?

Of course it isn’t.

Why should we in Virginia care? Because we’re just one car back on California’s crazy train.

During the disastrous Ralph Northam era, when both chambers of the General Assembly were controlled by Virginia’s far-left Democrats, the Old Dominion linked its automotive climate policies to California’s.

Unless sanity is restored in the November elections and the Senate flips to the GOP, gas-powered cars will no longer be sold in Virginia after 2035. Continue reading →

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Posted in Elections, Energy, Environment, Freedom, General Assembly, Politics

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Electric Vehicles May Be Worse for the Environment than Gasoline-Powered Ones

Posted on October 30, 2023 by | 39 comments

by Hans Bader

Electric vehicles require enormous damage to the environment just to produce their batteries — 250 tons of mining is required for a single battery, according to Real Clear Energy. Switching to electric cars would require a radical expansion of mining across the world, and the minerals for the car batteries will be refined mainly using the coal-powered electric grid of China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Yet states are starting to mandate electric vehicles. Nine states, including California, have now decided to ban gasoline-powered cars by 2035, requiring that all cars sold be electric instead. In 2021, Virginia’s Democratic-controlled legislature passed a law adopting California standards for Virginia vehicles, so Virginia also will ban gasoline-powered cars in 2035, unless that law is repealed, as Republicans seek to do (the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates voted to repeal the ban on gas-powered cars in 2023, but the Democratic-controlled Virginia state Senate kept the ban in place). Continue reading →

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Posted in Elections, Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Virginia Law

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NY Ratepayers Better Protected Than Virginia’s

Posted on October 16, 2023 by | 8 comments

Illustration of planned Equinor offshore wind installation off the coast of New York State. Equinor was one of the developers asking for a price increase, which was rejected.

By Steve Haner

The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) last week told several offshore wind developers it would not approve changes in their state contracts, putting several planned ocean turbine projects into jeopardy.  The story is important for its contrast to how Virginia faces the same future. Continue reading →

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Posted in Consumer protection, Energy, Environment, Regulation, Utilities

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Is a Séance with Yogi Berra Dominion’s Source of Insight?

Posted on October 5, 2023 by | 35 comments

by Bill O’Keefe

According to lore, Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

Dominion must have had a séance with Yogi and just learned that piece of wisdom because until its latest filing with the SCC it maintained that it would build its giant offshore windfarm for $9.8 billion while also getting to zero emissions by 2045. Now it is fessing up to that being a pipe dream. Until the recent switch, Dominion gave every indication of supporting the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s  goal of zero emissions by 2045.  Its latest submission to the SCC reverses course.

In its recent submission, Dominion stated, “Due to an increasing load forecast, and the need for dispatchable generation, the Alternative Plans show additional natural-gas-fired resources and preserve existing carbon-emitting units beyond statutory retirement deadlines established in the VCEA.” Its new demand estimate comes from PJM, the regional grid operator that Dominion is required to use. Its earlier rosy scenario proves that analyses can be constructed to produce whatever answer you want. In this case, Dominion saw a way to increase its profits by gaming the VCEA, at least until it began to look like Democrats might lose this year’s election and with it the VCEA mandates.

Similar projects on the East Coast have been confronted by demands for larger subsidies by offshore developers like Orsted or outright contract cancellation. On Monday, Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola, announced that it was abandoning the 804-megawatt Park City Wind project offshore Connecticut because it has become unfinanceable. Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment

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Miyares Seeks Dismissal of Suit to Save RGGI

Posted on September 28, 2023 by | 70 comments

The states currently in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative tax compact.

By Steve Haner

Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) is defending the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board’s decision to exit a multi-state carbon cap and tax compact as within the regulatory agency’s authority. He has also claimed to the circuit court hearing an appeal of that decision that the plaintiffs were not affected by the action directly and thus have no standing to sue.

The four plaintiffs, all associations, filed a 138-page petition in the Circuit Court of Fairfax County in late August. Miyares’ office used just ten pages total for two responses dated September 13. Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Regulation, Taxes

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