Author: Steve Haner
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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…
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A Slippery Slope Down to Dark Backroom Deals
by Chris Braunlich Unless Virginia voters reject the constitutional amendment on the ballot April 21, gerrymandering will return to Virginia. Five years ago, 66% of Virginia voters — 2.8 million Virginians — approved a bipartisan redistricting constitutional amendment ending gerrymandering. The result was a map that is widely regarded as one of the fairest in…
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Public Union Bills Causing Angst Among Local Democratic Officials
by Steve Haner Legislation to expand the potential for union contracts to cover most local and state employees is on the verge of approval if Democrats in the House of Delegates and Senate can reconcile two versions of the bill. They might also have to reconcile with locally elected Democratic officials. Many of them have…
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The $4 to $5 Billion in Tax Hikes the Assembly is Approving
by Steve Haner The tax increase proposals still pending at the 2026 General Assembly will extract another $4 to $5 billion annually from Virginians if enacted, shared between the state and the local governments. The Democrats in political control have taken a bow for producing competing budget proposals that are not dependent on major…
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Extended Teacher Leave Entitlement Could Hit Schools Hard
by Derrick A. Max The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran my guest column this morning that warns of the significant learning loss that will likely occur from the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill (SB2) that is quickly winding its way to the Governor’s desk for her promised signature. As I have written previously, the Virginia General Assembly is…
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Expanded PIPP Pulls $360 Million from Power Bill Piggy Bank
by Steve Haner The expansion of an existing state electricity-bill subsidy program under legislation pending at the 2026 General Assembly could add up to $360 million to the annual cost during its first full year of implementation. The Department of Planning and Budget (DPB) has produced a detailed fiscal impact analysis for House Bill 884,…
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Cost of Undergrounding Program is Mostly Profit to Lenders, Stockholders
by Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia’s ongoing program to place selected neighborhood service lines underground, spreading the bill for the upgrades onto all its 2.7 million customers, will cost another $3.8 billion if the General Assembly blesses its extension for another ten years. Of that, about $1.6 billion is the cost of the construction work…