Author: Steve Haner
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With Virginia Back In, RGGI Futures Price Tops $41 Per Ton
by Steve Haner Virginia’s impending return to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has driven up the price for carbon credits in the multistate cap-and-trade system’s secondary market. The futures price exceeded $41 per ton this morning, far above the roughly $25 per ton that utilities had to pay in the March 2026 auction. It reflects…
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Potentially Disastrous Legislative Brinksmanship
by Ali Ahmad One of the most striking themes from last Wednesday’s reconvened session was the widespread rejection of Governor Spanberger‘s recommendations. Legislative Information Services shows that of 180 bills amended, the legislature adopted 137, placing those bills straight into law without returning them to her desk. For the first time in decades, the General Assembly also preemptively…
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Testing a New Governor’s Resolve
by Derrick A. Max and Steve Haner This session, the General Assembly sent over 1,000 bills to Governor Spanberger for her signature. She signed 852 into law, vetoed 8 and proposed amendments to 180. Even though some of her amendments were little more than window dressing (see article on Paid Family and Medical Leave) and…
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Another SCC Warning That VCEA Will Fail and Cost a Fortune
by Steve Haner The Virginia State Corporation Commission, consisting of three judges all picked by the General Assembly while Democrats were in control, has delivered another stern warning that the Virginia Clean Economy Act is unworkable and will greatly increase electricity costs within Virginia as it reaches failure. Despite the concerns expressed in its 21-page…
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Spanberger’s Rewrite of Energy Bill Challenges Assembly, Dominion
by Steve Haner Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) has proposed that the General Assembly return to the misguided practice of dictating by law a utility profit margin, overturning a bipartisan reform approved just three years ago. It is no different than her effort to end the bipartisan reforms against political gerrymandering and again put politicians in…
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Will Union “Dues Skimming” Come to Virginia?
by Chris Braunlich There are many reasons why Governor Abigail Spanberger should veto the collective bargaining bill headed to her desk, a bill requiring local and state governments to bargain with union bosses even if less than a majority of public employees want the union or the bargaining. There is the fact that it will…
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Spanberger Pushing for July Return to RGGI and Its Carbon Tax
by Steve Haner The Abigail Spanberger Administration has told an energy industry publication that it plans to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative by July, in time to participate in the September and December 2026 carbon dioxide allowance auctions. Because of the accelerated timetable, the Department of Environmental Quality will not publish a draft regulation…
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Independent Gas Generator Faces State Permitting Gauntlet
by Steve Haner The 1540-megawatt natural gas generation unit approved last week by the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors has already been identified by the regional PJM Interconnection electricity grid operator as a key reliability asset. The Expedition Generation Station is proposed by independent power producer Tenaska, which already has the 940-megawatt Virginia Generation Station…
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Those Who Ignore History….
News reports of a substantial Marine expeditionary force embarked to the Persian Gulf sparked a musical memory. Jim Bacon may recall we had a colleague at the Roanoke Times, columnist Mike Ives, who was among the Marines that were the first ground troops ashore in South Vietnam circa 1964. Mr. Seeger always said it…
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The Bill Promising “Lower Power Bills” Got Changed on Final Day
by Steve Haner Remember the highly hyped bill at the General Assembly that was going to lower most electric bills by shafting Virginia’s data center industry? It underwent a late transformation, and the promise of big financial relief is fading. It was always unrealistic. Under a rewritten version of Senate Bill 253, approved as a…
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A Dangerous Mission Creep for Virginia’s Public Schools
by Derrick A. Max Virginia parents should be alarmed that the Virginia General Assembly just passed House Bill 355 which mandates annual mental health screenings for all public school students in grades 6 through 12. While framed as a compassionate response to a very real “mental health crisis,” it represents a fundamental shift in the mission of public education: from academic instruction to clinical surveillance. By…
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Pray for Sun; Solar Is the Only New Power We Get
by Steve Haner The 2026 General Assembly has decided Virginia’s future energy eggs will come from a basket made of sunbeams. A series of approved bills are intended to accelerate the proliferation of solar panels on rural fields, rooftops, urban parking decks and apartment balconies, even if local objections need to be disregarded. Giving the…
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Assembly Found Nine Ways To Make Electricity More Expensive
by Steve Haner The 2026 General Assembly has passed at least nine separate new laws that will increase the cost of your electricity. Not one of the bills creates a single megawatt of additional energy for our use. Most of the bills create new ways for the utilities to take money from all their ratepayers and…
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No “Global Boiling” in Virginia This Winter
The news media won’t bother to show you that chart, because it undercuts the narrative of a dangerous climate crisis upon us. The three winter months of December 2025 through February 2026 in Virginia were well below average in temperature for the past 100 years, with 60 of those years colder than the past three months. The…
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March RGGI Carbon Tax Jumped 26% in One Year
by Steve Haner The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) held its first carbon allowance auction of 2026 Wednesday and the price came in at just under $25 per ton of emissions, 26% higher than a year ago. There should be no doubt now about predictions that imposing this carbon tax on Virginia electricity plants will…