Category: Environment
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The Energy Whirlwind: Here Finally are the Bills
The House Labor and Commerce Committee has now seen (sort of) and passed out two major revisions to Virginia’s energy policies, promising a new clean energy economy and demanding that the two dominant electric power providers reach 100% renewable status in a few decades. Delegate Richard Sullivan, D-Arlington, is patron of both House bills, which…
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Updates: Electoral College, Carbon Tax, Tax Reform
By Steve Haner Catching up on several issues previously discussed, with links to the original posts: Virginia’s 2020 Electoral Votes Still Ours to Award. Pending legislation to enact the National Popular Vote regime has now failed in both House and Senate committees, although nothing is really dead in this process until final adjournment in March. …
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High Cost Detailed, Offshore Wind Support Fades
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia’s massive $7.8 billion offshore wind project received a tepid 5-4 endorsement late Thursday night in a House subcommittee, after legislators were told it would add $13 per month to typical residential bills starting in 2027. In stark contrast to a similar hearing in the Senate Wednesday, both the State…
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Bill to Expand (Pack?) SCC a First Test of Change
by Steve Haner Legislation to increase the size of the State Corporation Commission from three to five judges, giving majority Democrats a chance to pack the panel with their appointees, may provide the first real test of how much things have changed in New Blue Virginia. Freshman Delegate Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, introduced House Bill 1297,…
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Analysis: Only Assembly Can Impose Carbon Tax
By Steve Haner It is illegal in Virginia for a petroleum wholesaler to arbitrarily reduce the amount of product it provides to retailers. The General Assembly has intervened in that marketplace, probably for the reasonable public purpose of preventing price gouging. Regulating the sale of fuel for some other purpose should also require action by…
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Electoral College Vote, Carbon Tax, Labor’s Wants
By Steve Haner The End of the Electoral College Looms The legislature’s new ruling Democrats, having celebrated their adoption of the national Equal Rights Amendment, may continue their Constitutional aspirations next week and try to kill the federal Electoral College. Some believe the will of Virginia voters in choosing presidential electors should be overridden by…
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2020 Assembly May Not Vote on Carbon Car Tax
By Steve Haner It now seems unlikely the 2020 General Assembly will act directly on Virginia’s membership in the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative, an interstate compact to cap, tax and then start to ration fossil fuels that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Virginia would be the southernmost member. While six pieces of pending…
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The Wildest Energy Whirlwind Ever is Underway
by Steve Haner If Bacon’s Rebellion at times has been “Dominion Pravda,” providing a window into that corporate giant’s C suite, our friends at the Virginia Mercury sometimes take the opposite role of “Environmental People’s Daily.” Its story today is a good example, for what it includes and what it does not. The long, detailed…
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After Santa Comes Carbon Tax Sugar Daddy
by Steve Haner The Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources will be the sugar daddy for the carbon tax dollars raised from electricity customers, according to pending legislation to fully enroll Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) next year. House Bill 20, sponsored by Norfolk Democrat Joe Lindsey, is similar (with some changes) to…
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The Good News Few Will Report or Admit
I ran across the illustration above on my favorite contrarian website, Wattsupwiththat.com, and decided to share. The media feed us a constant diet of gloom and doom and disaster, and only those with a sense of history understand this is a bit of a Golden Age (75 years ago the American and British armies were…
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Watch Out, Here Comes the Transportation and Climate Initiative
by James A. Bacon A new poll from a “nonpartisan nonprofit think tank,” MassInc., has found that 60% of Virginians surveyed support the Transportation and Climate Initiative Framework while only 29% oppose it and 11% are unsure of their feelings, reports The Virginia Mercury. We know right off the bat that the findings are nonsense.…
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Billions for Coal Ash Cleanup — for What Benefit?
by James A. Bacon The cost of cleaning up coal ash at Dominion Energy’s old coal-fired power plants will run between $2.4 billion and $5.7 billion, the company said at a presentation to the State Water Control Board yesterday. Disposal costs could add $5 to the monthly bill of typical households over the next 15…
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Bacon Bits: Hemp, Housing and Solar
NIMBYs against hemp. Farmers across Southside Virginia have turned to growing hemp (the THC-free version used in industrial applications) as a replacement crop for tobacco. But at least one Dinwiddie County neighborhood has risen in revolt. A hemp farm near the Lake Jordan neighborhood emits an offensive odor. The smell is so bad that it’s…
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Northam Comes to the Aid of Menhaden (But is Chap Petersen Paying Attention?)
By Don Rippert Fish tale. Omega Protein, a Canadian owned company, has willfully exceeded its menhaden catch limit in the Chesapeake Bay. You can read the details here. The catch limit is controversial since menhaden is the only marine fish regulated directly by the Virginia General Assembly. All other saltwater fish in Virginia are regulated…
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Replacing One Existential Threat with Another
by James A. Bacon I’m a big fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose thinking on such subjects as “black swan” events, “Intellectuals Yet Idiots (IYIs),” “antifragility,” and “skin in the game” I have incorporated into my commentary on this blog. So, when Taleb invokes the precautionary principle in the context of climate change, I take…