Category: Environment
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Apex Encounters Headwinds in Botetourt Wind Project
by James A. Bacon An interesting player is emerging in the Virginia renewable energy scene — Apex Clean Energy. The Charlottesville-based company has announced that it has erected two test towers for a proposed wind farm in Botetourt County to gather data about wind strength and frequency. The company has proposed constructing up to 25 wind turbines…
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Circuit Court Judge Upholds Pipelines' Right to Survey
A circuit court judge in Montgomery County dealt a setback to foes of the Mountain Valley Pipeline yesterday by finding constitutional a controversial state law allowing natural gas companies to survey private property without an owner’s permission. Turk said that the Virginia law allows a natural gas company to enter private property for surveying even…
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Circuit Court Judge Upholds Pipelines’ Right to Survey
A circuit court judge in Montgomery County dealt a setback to foes of the Mountain Valley Pipeline yesterday by finding constitutional a controversial state law allowing natural gas companies to survey private property without an owner’s permission. Turk said that the Virginia law allows a natural gas company to enter private property for surveying even…
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Yes, Virginia, the EPA Is Still Cracking Down on You
by Bill Tracy Many folks are trying to interpret the Environmental Protection Agency’s final Clean Power Plan (CPP) and its impact on Virginia. The EPA, along with its August 3 rule announcement, released a large volume of on-line support material including the popular State-at-a-Glance Summary sheets. Unfortunately, Virginia’s state summary sheet is misleading. EPA made relatively…
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It's the Buzzard Talking
If you want to understand why Dominion Virginia Power does what it does, visit the Henrico County operations center where the company manages 6,400 miles of electric transmission line.
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It’s the Buzzard Talking
If you want to understand why Dominion Virginia Power does what it does, visit the Henrico County operations center where the company manages 6,400 miles of electric transmission line.
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More Questions about Virginia's Solar Energy Policy
by James A. Bacon I’ve been covering business in Virginia four nearly four decades now, and I have to say, the electric power industry may be the most complex and difficult to understand. I freely admit that I have a steep learning curve ahead of me, and it’s pretty clear that other Virginia journalists do,…
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More Questions about Virginia’s Solar Energy Policy
by James A. Bacon I’ve been covering business in Virginia four nearly four decades now, and I have to say, the electric power industry may be the most complex and difficult to understand. I freely admit that I have a steep learning curve ahead of me, and it’s pretty clear that other Virginia journalists do,…
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Next Step for Offshore Wind
Earlier this year Dominion Virginia Power received a bid for building two experimental offshore wind turbines that exceeded internal cost projections by more than half, making the proposed project unlikely to win State Corporation Commission approval. In a July stakeholder meeting, DVP executives laid out their analysis of what went wrong. Now stakeholders will convene in…
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Clean Power Plan: What Comes Next?
by James A. Bacon I may be like the proverbial three-year-old playing with matches with this blog post, but as I decipher the Clean Power Plan, Virginia’s final CO2 emission goals should be fairly easy to attain — far easier than anyone was anticipating based upon the draft goals published last year. According to the EPA’s…
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EPA Cuts Virginia Slack with New CO2 Emission Targets
by James A. Bacon Virginia dodged a bullet today: In final rules for its Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has significantly scaled back its carbon intensity goals for Virginia’s electric power sector. The final rule establishes an interim goal of 1,047 pounds per megawatt hour of electricity produced for the period 2022-2030. That…
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The Democratization of Data
Andrew Mondschein, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, is studying how the redevelopment of Tysons affects the pedestrian experience. The first step is collecting data. Accordingly, he is dispatching students equipped with sensors, wearable cameras and smartphone apps to monitor temperature, light levels, green cover, noise pollution and carbon monoxide…
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Conserving Energy, Helping the Poor
by James A. Bacon Marjorie Wilson has lived in the same 1,000-square-foot bungalow on Texas Street in the City of Richmond since 1953. Two sons and a grand-daughter share the residence with her but it isn’t easy keeping up with the bills, including the electric bill, which averages about $120 per month. “We’d talked about insulating…
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The Bay Needs More than a Pollution Diet
by Carol J. Bova The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to set limits on the amount of pollution and sediment reaching the Chesapeake Bay through TMDLs, Total Maximum Daily Loads. TMDL plans are sometimes referred to as a “pollution diet.” The 3-judge panel said, “The Chesapeake Bay TMDL…
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Zoning for Solar
by William Marsh Want to see more solar energy in Virginia? There many ways to tackle the challenge. One that typically gets overlooked is for local governments to amend their zoning ordinances to be friendlier to larger scale (transmission scale) solar generation of electricity. Solar power can be generated either for private use on a property,…