Category: Energy
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Dominion Energy Prices Spike 11% By Sept 1, Mostly Due to VCEA
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia electricity bills rose August 1 and will rise again September 1, with many of the increases due to various aspects of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, especially ongoing construction of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. The net change is just over $14 more on that prototypical residential bill…
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The Risk of Offshore Turbine Blade Failure
by David Wojick On July 26, CFACT’s President Craig Rucker sent Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin a letter warning him about the serious risk of blade failure in the giant offshore wind facility being built off Virginia. The warning builds on the recent blade failure off of Nantucket, which has littered the beaches with fiberglass fragments.…
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Virginia Risks Running Out of Other People’s Power
By Steve Haner An electricity drought is looming, not only for Virginia but also for much of the United States, if the political hostility toward the most reliable forms of electricity generation is not reversed. Warnings that wind and solar power alone will not be sufficient resonated like a drumbeat from the podium of a…
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To End Carbon Energy We Need More Carbon Energy!
By Steve Haner Three recent announcements from Dominion Energy Virginia in rapid succession point a path forward for the utility that complies in part and utterly rejects in part the carbon-free energy pipe dream of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). All three of the announcements will result in major cost increases to the company’s…
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Will Dominion Now Have Three Offshore Windfarms?
By Steve Haner The Kitty Hawk North windfarm off the coast of North Carolina, stalled because of its need to bring transmission cables ashore under Virginia’s Sandbridge Beach neighborhood, now has a new owner, a new name and a new lease on life. It is hard to imagine Dominion Energy Virginia would buy it without some…
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Charlottesville Gas Study Not Pointing To Elimination. Yet.
By Steve Haner Charlottesville is one of three Virginia municipal governments that still owns and operates a natural gas distribution utility. With the current political hostility to all forms of hydrocarbon energy, the future of that utility is under debate and its customers will soon have a chance to speak up. The listening sessions follow other…
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VCEA Fans and Foes Both See Failure Looming
By Steve Haner There is a growing recognition that the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) as written is going to fail. Both those who strongly believe in its goal of ending the use of hydrocarbon fuels, and those who consider that idea nothing but fool’s gold, see major problems on the horizon. There is also…
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Venture Global: Virginia’s Unknown Energy Giant
by James A. Bacon An Arlington-based company that most Virginians have never heard of could well alter the global energy balance of power — if the Biden administration doesn’t get in the way. In 2023 and 2024 alone Venture Global LNG., Inc., has announced long-term deals to supply 3 million tons of LNG to the…
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Clean Economy Act: A Refresher on What it Does
By Steve Haner A senior Democratic state senator is leading an effort to review and possibly revise the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which orders the future elimination of hydrocarbon fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) used in making electricity. His goal is to conduct a stakeholder process and bring legislation to the 2025…
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Mountain Valley Pipeline To Start Moving Gas
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the full operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Gas from West Virginia will now flow. Environmentalist heads are exploding, but this is the best news for Western Virginia’s economy in a long while, and an encouraging sign of hope for energy sanity. A decade ago both this 303-mile,…
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Now Fix the Clean Economy Act, Governor
By Steve Haner Governor Glenn Youngkin recently flew to Louisiana to join with other Republican governors in criticizing President Joe Biden’s energy policy, especially the president’s hostility to hydrocarbon fuels. Youngkin and the rest gathered at an oil refinery to make their point that oil and gas should not go away in the decades to…
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An Alternative Interpretation of the EV Statute
by Dick Hall-Sizemore This is a follow-up to Steve Haner’s article on Gov. Youngkin’s announcement that Virginia will not be bound by California regulations on electric vehicles after this year. The Governor’s announcement is a lawyer’s dream. There are different ways to interpret the laws and regulations involved and, so, off to court we go.…
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Injunction to Stop Wind Project Denied
A federal judge in Washington has declined to prevent Dominion Energy Virginia from constructing its offshore wind turbines, but presumably the underlying legal challenge to the federal permitting process will grind on through the court process. Virginia Mercury reports the basics this morning. Installation of the first monopiles actually started while the judge was still…
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EVs More Likely to Kill Pedestrians, Damage Roads and Bridges
by Hans Bader “A recent study published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids are twice as likely to hit pedestrians compared to those driving traditional gas-powered cars, potentially leading to more fatal accidents. This conclusion came from a review of British road accidents. The study…
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Data Centers Are Good for Virginia. Predictably, Opposition Is Mounting.
by James A. Bacon Data centers have become such big business in Virginia that the industry has formed its own trade association, the Data Center Coalition, Unsurprisingly, that group is headquartered in Leesburg, smack dab in the middle of the largest cluster of data centers in the United States if not the world. You know…