Tag: Dominion
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Dominion ❤ New Utility Bill Payment Plan
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia loves the General Assembly’s most recent proposal on how to deal with mounting unpaid utility bills in the COVID-19 recession. You might not. The state’s dominant utility has activated its network of grassroots lobbyists (including company retirees and stockholders) to express their personal support to their hometown delegate and…
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Told You: You Will Cover Those Unpaid Power Bills.
By Steve Haner If the Virginia General Assembly orders Dominion Energy Virginia to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in “excess profits” to cover unpaid family utility bills, who is really paying? We all are, of course. Don’t say you were not warned. That apparently is the latest approach to help folks behind on…
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We Underpaid Dominion in 2019? Not Really.
By Steve Haner You will be shocked to learn that we customers of Dominion Energy Virginia did not pay it enough money in 2019. The shareholders did not get the profit margin they were due, the utility reported to the State Corporation Commission, which subsequently reported it to us on August 18. We’ve entered the…
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How Discount Power For Poor Will Raise Your Bill
By Steve Haner Virginia’s two major electric utilities estimate that as many as 150,000 of their poorest residential customers will see their monthly bills reduced next year using money extracted from all their other customers on their own power bills. Appalachian Power Company projects about 30,000 of its low income customers will receive subsidies of…
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Charlottesville Elites and Virginia’s New Ruling Class
by James A. Bacon Before it sold off its national newspaper division to Lee Enterprises for a measly $140 million in March, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway owned most of the newspapers in western and central Virginia, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Roanoke Times, the Daily Progress (in Charlottesville), and the News Virginian (in Waynesboro).…
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Dominion Scraps the Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Breaking news: Dominion Energy and Duke Energy have announced the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, citing ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty. The cost of the project had escalated from $5 billion to $8 billion, and, despite winning a victory in the United States Supreme Court, the power companies still have no certainty of…
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Virginia Joins the Wind Power Club
Well, well, Virginia finally has an offshore wind turbine industry. The last 253-foot blade was attached Friday to a turbine and pylon off Virginia Beach. At a cost of $300 million, the two turbines owned by Dominion Energy will provide some of the world’s most expensive electricity, but they do pave the way for a…
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Taken Like Hicks At A Carnival
By Steve Haner Anybody who closely read the so-called Virginia Clean Economy Act and had watched Dominion Energy Virginia’s previous manipulations of Virginia’s General Assembly could see what was coming. Despite its “billing,” that bill was never going to end the use of fossil fuels in Virginia. As early as February 13, I reported that…
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Clean Economy Law Not So Green, Very Expensive
By Steve Haner Mel Leonor reports in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch that Dominion Energy Virginia and the Green Energy Oligarchs have used the Virginia General Assembly to empty your pockets with a false promise. According to Dominion’s own information, the highly touted Virginia Clean Energy Act (1) will not result in a total end to fossil…
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The Energy Free Market that Isn’t
by Jane Twitmyer The South, including Virginia, has been slow to build clean, transformed utility systems. Last year, major corporations including Costco, Cox, Kroger, Sam’s Club, Target and Walmart petitioned Virginia regulators to allow them to meet their renewable energy goals by purchasing their electricity from third parties. Dominion Energy’s response was to commission a…
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Is It the Death Knell For Dominion’s Pipeline?
By Peter Galuszka For more than a decade, hydraulic fracturing drilling for natural gas and oil has transformed the American energy picture, leading to big revivals in such energy fields such as Marcellus in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and the Bakken field in the Dakotas. It has prompted Dominion Energy and its utility partners to…
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Dems Win Big on Renewable Energy, But Issues Remain
by Jane Twitmyer In the 2019 election, Virginia voters finally figured out the one weird trick that allows any jurisdiction to pass good climate and clean-energy legislation, according to Dave Roberts at VOX. “They put Democrats in charge.” Virginia is the first southern state in the U.S. to set a goal of sourcing 100% of…
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Electric Yellow School Buses? Pure Green Grease
By Steve Haner Having voted to give Dominion Energy Virginia a blank check to spend billions of your money on offshore wind turbines, the Virginia House of Delegates will vote today to provide hundreds of millions more from your pockets for electric school buses. Last week the House defeated a similar bill, twice. It received…
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Energy Updates: Signs of Resistance After All
The Main Clean Energy Bill. Both General Assembly chambers have now approved a single substitute version of the omnibus clean energy bill, on largely (but not totally) party line votes. In a further compromise on their plan to save the world, proponents decided not to force closure of a Southwest Virginia coal-burning plant and were…
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Dominion’s Base Rates Like Cable You Can’t Cancel
By Steve Haner The 2020 effort to bring Dominion Energy Virginia back under full State Corporation Commission regulation failed because too many of the loudest advocates are two-faced hypocrites. If they truly cared about ratepayers and the proper balance in utility regulation, they wouldn’t be pushing that other bill, the one that further guts the…