Category: Energy
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AG Expert: Wind Project Unneeded, Accounting Off
by Steve Haner There is no justification for Dominion’s $10 billion offshore wind project other than that the General Assembly has ordered it, a witness for Virginia’s Attorney General has testified. The utility doesn’t need its electricity, doesn’t need its renewable energy attributes, and is ignoring lower cost alternatives if it does need generation in…
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Another Try for Natural Gas to Hampton Roads
by Steve Haner Natural gas pipeline companies have applied to federal regulators with another proposal to enhance supply into Virginia’s Hampton Roads region, despite the earlier failures of two similar high profile efforts. Columbia Gas Transmission, part of TC Energy which is best known for the recently-rejected Keystone XL pipeline, is proposing to replace 48…
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If U.S. Copies Europe, “It Will End In Tears”
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. A major European voice for climate and energy rationality told a small Charlottesville audience March 30 that his home, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Europe face an immediate energy crisis that was brewing long before the war in…
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No Other State Plans Utility-Owned Wind Farms
by Steve Haner The table reproduced above may one of the most interesting exhibits submitted to the State Corporation Commission as it considers Dominion Energy Virginia’s offshore wind application. Two things jump out, both highlighted in pre-filed expert testimony sponsored by environmental activist group Clean Virginia. First, only in Virginia is such a project being…
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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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What Virginia Can Do to Temper Inflation
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin has proposed using $437 million in unanticipated transportation revenues, much of it generated by the wholesale tax on gasoline, to give Virginians a three-month break on the 26-cent retail gasoline tax. During his campaign, Youngkin ran on a platform of addressing Virginia’s high cost of living and reversing…
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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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Economic Illiterates Demand Youngkin Halt Gasoline “Price Gouging”
by James A. Bacon Virginia Democrats are calling upon Governor Glenn Youngkin to combat rising gasoline prices by declaring a state of emergency and activating the anti-price-gouging law. “Governor Youngkin has the power to act and help protect Virginians at the pump, but so far, has failed to do so. Instead, he continues to point…
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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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Will Environmental Regs Throttle the Solar Industry?
by James A. Bacon Virginia environmentalists are coming to grips with the fact that while solar farms may help fight global warming, they’re not always good for the local environment. In the wealthy northern Piedmont, known for its wineries, horse farms and scenic vistas, some residents have complained about the clear-cutting of forest to make…