Author: Steve Haner
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Richmond’s Reaganesque Time for Choosing
by Chris Braunlich Richmond, like Washington, has always been a place where an “insider’s game” is played – not in a pejorative sense, but simply as the way things are done. Relationships are paramount, people speak in the arcane language of lawmaking, agendas are confusing for outsiders, and the activities of a subcommittee for an…
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Moran’s Green Energy Ties Ignored by Media
by Steve Haner If the Commonwealth of Virginia was not paying Matthew Moran to serve as Governor Glenn Youngkin’s deputy chief of staff and point person with the General Assembly, as recently revealed, who was? Based on the websites for his employers, mainly the renewable energy industry. For example, Moran is identified as on the…
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Wind Case Spinning Up; Your Comments Sought
by Steve Haner In the coming weeks, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission takes up one of the largest utility investments ever undertaken in the Commonwealth, where the cost and the risk will rest squarely on Virginia’s citizens: Dominion Energy Virginia’s $10 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. In applications and appendices filed late last year, probably…
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AG Sought Rejection of Some Solar Over Cost
by Steve Haner On behalf of Dominion Energy Virginia’s customers, Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) asked the State Corporation Commission to reject five of the solar projects included in the statewide renewable energy development package the Commission approved last week. The Commission, however, did not take them off the approved list and thus did not…
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Secrecy Also Hides Key Solar Energy Data
by Steve Haner Perhaps issuing its ruling on the Ides of March by design, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission last week approved another major wave of requests from Dominion Energy Virginia for solar plants it will own, solar plants it will contract with, and a smattering of battery storage facilities added to provide some public relations…
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Key Data on Dominion Wind Project Still Secret
By David Wojick A previous article published by Bacon’s Rebellion and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow challenged the notion that Dominion Energy Virginia can build a huge amount of wind and solar generating capacity and retire all of its fossil-fueled generators with almost none of the enormous storage capacity that is required to make the…
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A Low Solar Minimum Bill Ups Yours, By Design
by Steve Haner Virtue signaling can be fun. It can also be profitable if you can shift the overall cost onto somebody else. That is what is going on in the battle over a proposed “minimum bill” for Dominion Energy Virginia customers who seek to partially escape the utility by signing on with a separate…
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Another Reliable Energy Provider Abandons VA
By Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. A long-embattled plan to build a natural gas-fueled generating plant not owned by Dominion Energy has become the latest victim of Virginia’s patent hostility toward fossil fuels. Environmental opponents and the incumbent utility will probably join in popping the corks.…
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Virginia Remains a Green New Deal Mecca
by Steve Haner The elections of a Republican Virginia governor and a new Republican majority in the House of Delegates have not changed Virginia’s status as one of the greenest of Green New Deal states in the country. Every effort to reverse the course set during the previous period of Democratic hegemony has failed at…
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Still Time to Limit Governor’s Emergency Powers
by Barbara Hollingsworth First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Should the governor of Virginia have the power to unilaterally declare an open-ended state of emergency that indefinitely restricts Virginians’ civil and constitutional rights without a recorded vote by the General Assembly? The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns raised this serious question.…
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Fairfax County Also Prepared to Move Against Gas
by Steve Haner It was a Richmond City Council resolution back in the fall, expressing a desire to shut down its municipal natural gas utility, that triggered pending (and now struggling) Virginia legislation to prevent localities from prohibiting natural gas. Less attention has been given to the “climate action” plan by Virginia’s largest local government…
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Big Gas Users Protect Selves, Abandon Home Users
by Steve Haner Divide and conquer is an ancient tactic. Virginia’s residential natural gas customers were just divided from industrial and commercial users, and those big users then threw homeowners under the bus. Without blinking an eye. House Bill 1257 had passed the House of Delegates on an almost party line vote, with two Democrats…
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Last Stand for a Higher Standard Deduction
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The argument now dividing the General Assembly on partisan lines is not whether to cut the state income tax, but for whom. The House of Delegates goes big with a broad tax cut that brings Virginia into line with other…
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Reliable Electricity Not Part of the Plan
by David Wojick I recently published a report on how Virginia’s big electric power utility, Dominion Energy Virginia, deliberately ignores the fact that the state’s zero emission law does not work. Utilities are doing this around the country. They will make a fortune building useless wind and solar generation before they finally admit it does…
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Christie Decries “Mother of All Legal Weapons”
by Steve Haner Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission changed the rules on pending and future natural gas pipelines and related projects, citing the threat of catastrophic climate change and injecting environmental justice concerns. Now with a 3-2 Democratic majority under President Joe Biden, the vote followed party lines. One of the nay votes…