Category: Energy
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Dominion Models More Future Scenarios and Still Needs Gas
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia has run additional projections on its future energy demand and how to meet it, and the answer keeps coming back that Virginians will need more – not less – natural gas-fired electricity in the next 15 years. The supplemental data was filed with the State Corporation Commission Friday and added…
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Trump Energy Policies Face Hurdles in Virginia
By Steve Haner Once inaugurated, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to immediately mount a major effort to roll back the anti-hydrocarbon fuel agenda of the Biden-Harris years. The positive impact on Virginians will be limited because of our own similar anti-hydrocarbon laws at the state level. The centerpiece of Trump’s multiple energy campaign promises is…
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Dominion Wants Customers to Pay $145M More for Capacity Costs
By Steve Haner The surprise explosion in the capacity auction prices within the PJM electricity collective is expected to cost Dominion Energy Virginia $145 million next year. The company just proposed to the State Corporation Commission that it eventually collect some or all of that directly from its customers, but not until its rates are reviewed…
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Want Energy Both “Green” and Reliable? Send Natural Gas and Money
By Steve Haner With the release of its latest 15-year plan to expand energy generation in the Commonwealth, Dominion Energy Virginia has increased the projected cost of residential electricity in 2035 to almost $216 per 1,000 kilowatt hours, a 24% increase over the same projection in its 2023 planning document. If the $216 comes to…
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A Transparent Effort to Prevent SCC Approval of Hydrocarbons
By Steve Haner Any doubt that some members of the Virginia General Assembly’s reconstituted electricity regulation commission intend on taking full control of our energy economy was dispelled at its second meeting Wednesday. With that control, the goal is to then impose a full anti-hydrocarbon energy agenda. Three proposed legislative initiatives were floated. None…
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Anti-Hydrocarbon Advocates Want It Both Ways on Local Control
By Steve Haner The top 2025 legislative goal of Virginia’s Climate Catastrophe Democrats will be to override local zoning controls on wind, solar and energy storage projects. But for now, they are begging Chesterfield County residents to fight a proposed natural gas plant by appealing to that same local control. What’s a little hypocrisy when you…
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AG Miyares Joins Effort to Prevent California EV Truck Mandate
By Steve Haner Fifteen years ago I took my aging father on a sentimental journey to places in Southern California where we used to live, and just north of Edwards Air Force Base on the Mojave Desert we shared the highway for a time with an Old Dominion Freight Line 18-wheeler. The Richmond firm was…
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RGGI Tax Spikes Again. Democrats Will Bring it Back, Virginia.
By Steve Haner The dollar cost for permission to burn hydrocarbon fuels in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative region spiked another 22 percent in just three months. This is one more sign electric power producers in those states know they will need to keep using hydrocarbons despite the political policy push to eliminate them. The…
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New Battle of the James Centers on Dominion Gas Plant
By Steve Haner Lee pulled his army out of the trenches along the James River south of Richmond and retreated to Appomattox just under 160 years ago (I’m rereading some Civil War history this month). Now the peace of the region is about to be shattered by the next battle in America’s great energy civil…
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Now It’s Hot. You Still Thank Coal and Gas for Staying Cool.
The story on this hot day in August is the same as it was on a cold day in January. You need to thank coal and natural gas for the air conditioning keeping you cool and forget the fantasy that it will eventually be wind turbines and solar panels doing the job. It certainly won’t be…
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Dominion Wind Partnership Deal Drawing No Opposition at SCC
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposal to sell a half-interest in its first offshore wind farm to a hedge fund is drawing no opposition at the State Corporation Commission, which will hold a hearing on the issue August 27. The only analysis of the impact of the transaction has come from the SCC’s own…
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Dominion Acquires Wind Lease Adjacent to CVOW
The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced today that Dominion Energy Virginia has successfully bid on the second wind energy lease area off Virginia Beach, the plot which is adjacent to, and further out to sea from, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. If developed, along with the recently acquired North Carolina project,…
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New PJM Capacity Costs Likely to Impact Dominion, Coop Ratepayers
By Steve Haner Just how much the huge increase in energy capacity prices within the PJM Dominion Zone next year will cost Virginians depends on a several variables. Do not accept claims of negligible impact on face value. In its most recent integrated resource plan filed with the State Corporation Commission, Dominion Energy Virginia projected…
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PJM Capacity Auction Prices Explode Due to Supply Crunch
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia is facing about a ten-fold increase in the price it will pay when it must call on generation resources outside its own assets to meet daily demand. The most recent auction for guaranteed capacity within the 13-state PJM Interconnection network set incredibly new high prices, but nowhere as high as…
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No Dinosaurs Were Harmed in Fueling Your Car. It’s “Carbon Fuel.”
By Steve Haner It is time to retire the term “fossil fuel.” Oil, coal and natural gas (oil is apparently the second most abundant liquid on Earth, after Miller Lite) have nothing to do with the bones of a tyrannosaurus rex or a stone impression of a trilobite. The generic term to describe the class should…