Category: Environment
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Wall Street Journal: Wind Approved “Under Duress”
by Steve Haner With an editorial published yesterday, The Wall Street Journal has now given its readers more insight into the risks inherent in Dominion Energy Virginia’s coming wind project than any Virginia newspaper or broadcast outlet has. It is not the kind of national spotlight Virginia should crave.
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Wind: SCC Rejects Deal Signed By Its Staff
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Rejecting an agreement that its own staff reached with Dominion Energy Virginia, the State Corporation Commission has imposed at least some level of financial risk on the utility’s shareholders should its $10 billion offshore wind project fail to match the…
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Blue Crabs Smiling
by Jim McCarthy The image of Nero fiddling while Rome was ablaze may be apocryphal, but the moral is clear: pay attention to your surroundings. It’s been nearly four weeks since the announcement that the sperm capacity of Chesapeake blue crabs has been found to be in decline, threatening the viability (motility?) of the crustacean’s…
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Salvation for the Mountain Valley Pipeline?
by Steve Haner And now, from our “I’ll believe it when I see it” department, comes the expectation that passage of President Joe Biden’s new corporate tax hike and green energy incentives package will be followed by a smooth path to completion for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) for natural gas. The topic is everywhere…
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Water Leaks
by Jon Baliles This week, Jeremy Lazarus of the Richmond Free Press attended the City Council’s Governmental Operations Committee and found that “more than 6,300 homes and businesses in Richmond — 10% of the customer base — are facing disconnection of their utilities for nonpayment of water, sewer and gas bills.” Yikes. That is essentially…
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Wojick on Whales III: The Noisy Driving of Piles
by David Wojick The Virginia wind-versus-whales story has taken a turn for the worse. Worse for the severely endangered Right Whales that is. My research has found what may be some really bad news. Meet Tethys. Not the real Tethys, the mythical Greek Titan of the sea, but the U.S. Department of Energy’s center for…
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Solar Development Continues to Erode VA Farmland
by Barbara Hollingsworth First published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Virginia lost about 2,000 acres of productive farmland per week in 2021, according to data released in February by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There are many reasons why farmers sell off their land, including development pressures, lack of interest by younger members…
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Bill to Bury Fauquier Powerline Comes to You
by Steve Haner One of the key skills in politics is to make your constituents happy with money provided from those far, far away. It is happening again as Fauquier County’s leaders want the General Assembly to force all Dominion Energy Virginia’s ratepayers to pay to bury a 230-kv power line out of sight from…
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Wojick on Whales II: Missing BOEM Report?
by David Wojick In my previous article I raised this question: what is the potential adverse impact of Virginia’s massive offshore wind project on the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whales? Answering this basic question should be a central feature of the upcoming Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) required for the wind project by the National…
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How’s Your Climate Emergency Going? Hanging In?
by Steve Haner How is your climate emergency going so far? We seem to be hanging in well at my house. The media hype around this fairly typical July hot spell has been off the charts, but my favorite headline of the season appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (home of at least one climate jeremiad…
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Five Reasons to Reject Offshore Wind
by Steve Haner Researchers at the University of Virginia are part of an ongoing effort to redesign wind turbines to be both more efficient and better protected from storm-scale winds, as described in this video you can find on a university website. What is the problem to be addressed? Says one of the engineers: As…
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Wind Farm Threat to Whales is Next Big Argument
by David Wojick The massive offshore wind (OSW) project proposed by Dominion Energy may pose a serious threat to the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale population. A comprehensive environmental impact assessment is required to determine the extent of this threat and the mitigation it might require. The same is true for the other proposed Mid-Atlantic…
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Can Dominion Be Made To Stand Behind Promises?
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Second of two articles. In promoting its proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, Dominion Energy Virginia has made many specific projections about its costs and performance. The State Corporation Commission is now being advised to convert one or more…
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Offshore Wind Risks Stressed in SCC Briefs
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. First of two articles, with the second coming tomorrow. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission has now received a series of legal briefs offering opinions on what steps, under the law, it can take to protect Dominion Energy Virginia consumers from the…
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Hurricanes: Dominion’s Big Bet With Our Money
By David Wojick My regular readers know that I have been fussing about the threat of hurricanes destroying proposed Atlantic coast offshore wind arrays. The issue arises because the offshore wind industry is based in Europe, which does not get hurricanes. My focus has been Dominion’s massive project off Virginia, but the whole East Coast…