The Governor’s Commission on Climate Change has issued a draft interim report summing up the testimony from five sessions of public hearings. To my mind, the most compelling graphic in the document shows that the intensity of energy use in Virginia is twice that of several advanced European countries. Virginia — 345 million BTUs per…

Virginia’s State Corporation Commission may have bought Dominion’s logic for building a high-voltage transmission line across the northern Virginia piedmont, through Maryland and Pennsylvania, but regulators in Pennsylvania have not. Regulatory judges have recommended that the Public Utilities Commission in the Keystone State deny the application of Dominion and Allegheny Power to build the interstate…

In 1971, Dominion Virginia Power created a man-made lake, Lake Anna, to serve as water coolant for the power company’s two nuclear power generators situated on the shoreline. As part of the project, the company built a series of dikes and lagoons through which water from the power plant passed. The design allowed for a…

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has appointed James C. Dimitri, the McGuire Woods attorney who has led Dominion Virginia Power legal team bidding to build a high-voltage transmission line through Virginia’s horse country, to the State Corporation Commission. In making the announcement, Kaine noted that Dimitri had served as senior counsel at the SCC between 1994…

What do Virginians think about drilling for oil and gas off the Virginia coast? I haven’t seen any polls that ask that question specifically, but the American Petroleum Institute has generated data hinting that they might approve by large numbers. In a poll that encompassed 18 key states, the Institute found that 70 percent of…

The battle over Pittsylvania County’s uranium deposit — the largest undeveloped deposit in the United States and reputedly the seventh largest in the world — has attracted the attention of the Wall Street Journal. Max Schultz, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, quotes two environmental foes but makes it clear he does not sympathize…

Dominion Virginia Power has unveiled a plan to invest $600 million in “smart grid” technology plus a slew of energy conservation programs that it estimates will save electric consumers $1 billion over 15 years and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12 million tons. “This plan will provide a jump start toward meeting the 10 percent…

Patrick Michaels, Global Warming skeptic, has weighed in on the Virginia Commission on Climate Change — and this time there’s no question that it’s him and not one of his colleagues (as was unclear in another recent communique discussed in “Low Hanging Fruit vs. Deep Green.”) This time, he has written a column in the…

Shrewd, very shrewd. Dominion is asking the State Corporation Commission for permission to offer customers two options for purchasing renewable energy, be it solar, hydro, wind, biomass, wave, tide or geothermal. Under one option, customers would be billed for what it costs Dominion to acquire the “green” energy from independent green power producers. Under the…