Tag: Dominion
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Your PIPP Tax Will Buy Heat Pumps For Poor
by Steve Haner Lower-income Virginians who are customers of the two largest electricity providers may begin to receive subsidies on their residential bills in March 2022 under legislation moving forward in the General Assembly. The money for the subsidies will come from their fellow customers.
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Dominion Electric Bus Scheme Back, With More
by Steve Haner First published this morning by Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The ultimate goal of the Transportation and Climate Initiative with its tax and rationing scheme is to eliminate fossil fuels for transportation and get us into electric vehicles. That is something advocates have admitted and critics have pointed out. While Virginia…
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Dominion VCEA Plan Review Ends with Questions
by Steve Haner A near year-long review of Dominion Energy Virginia’s plans to meet service obligations while abandoning fossil-fueled energy has ended with a pile of data, a list of unanswered questions, no real decision and plenty of reason to fear future electricity cost increases. The review of Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) started March…
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One Third of House GOP Backs Stronger SCC
by Steve Haner Five interrelated bills that will strengthen the State Corporation Commission’s oversight during Dominion Energy Virginia’s next rate case advanced out of the House of Delegates Friday, with the two strongest receiving either 12 or 10 Republican aye votes. All received at least some Republican votes, and four of the five had Democrats…
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A Great First Inning: Reformers 6, Utilities 0
by Steve Haner Six bills which reverse 15 years of Dominion Energy Virginia legislative dominance advanced out of a House of Delegates subcommittee today, setting up the strongest challenge to the utility’s profits and power in decades. Most in one form or another restore authority to the State Corporation Commission to use its own discretion…
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Dominion $$ Overwhelm Clean VA’s in Committees
by Steve Haner The first major showdown over last-ditch efforts to change the rules on the coming Dominion Energy Virginia rate case occurs Monday in a subcommittee where six delegates received a total of $80,000 from the utility in 2020, and four received $67,500 from its self-appointed watchdog Clean Virginia. The chair of the subcommittee,…
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Industrial Escape from Green Energy Costs Blocked
by Steve Haner Virginia’s major energy-intensive industries will not get a requested path to avoid some of the coming cost shock from the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The bill that sought them a lifeline was tied to an anvil and sunk in a House of Delegates subcommittee today. It didn’t even help when…
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GE Sues Siemens Over Dominion Data Leak
by Steve Haner General Electric (GE) has filed suit seeking major monetary damages from Siemens Energy in a Virginia federal court, alleging “willful and malicious misappropriation of GE trade secrets” as they competed to be suppliers to Dominion Energy Virginia. Dominion is not a named defendant, but an employee (reportedly now gone) is accused of…
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A Last-Ditch Effort to Improve Regulatory Balance
By Steve Haner In a matter of weeks, Dominion Energy Virginia is expected to initiate the long-awaited review of its revenues, expenses, and profits in front of the State Corporation Commission, the first since 2015. A series of bills in recent years has set rules for that process which constrain the SCC’s discretion and fix…
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A Giant Wind Turbine, but Not for Virginia
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The issue of wind energy is pretty much out of my field of knowledge, much less expertise. I follow the discussion on this blog with a lot of interest. In this vein, I found a story in today’s New York Times most interesting. It is about a giant turbine that GE is…
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More Falsehoods and Malarkey from Clean Virginia
By Steve Haner The big money behind the Clean Virginia activist group was all earned by a Charlottesville hedge fund manager through the great American system of capitalism. That didn’t stop his organization from a recent attack that could have come from Communist Party USA. This one would have made Bernie Sanders blush. Dominion Energy…
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Wind and the Grid: a Precautionary Tale from the U.K.
by James A. Bacon So, you think the rolling blackouts experienced in California were a fluke and of no relevance to Virginia? Well, then, consider what’s happening right now in the United Kingdom, where “unusually low wind output” and a series of planned power plant outages puts the nation at risk of blackouts. You see,…
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Investigative Journalism: Still Alive and Aimed at Dominion
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Well, investigative journalism is still alive. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has teamed up with the national journalist investigative organization, ProPublica, to report on the political influence of Dominion Energy in Virginia. The first result of this effort is a major, long article in today’s edition of the RTD. By long, I mean a…
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Dominion Green Energy Costs Continue to Grow
by Steve Haner As sobering as they were, the initial estimates of how a green energy conversion will explode Dominion Energy Virginia rates have now been revised up. The State Corporation Commission staff now sees it costing an additional $800 per year for a residential customer to purchase 1,000 kWh per month by 2030, an…
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All Leader Saslaw Cares About: Is Dominion OK?
By Steve Haner Every now and then you can actually see the strings, see the puppet master that is Dominion Energy Virginia calling the shots at the Virginia General Assembly. Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax, provided a glimpse of its power during a floor debate Thursday. Republican senators were in revolt. Two days after…