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 war, because Dominion Energy Virginia wants to build a new natural gas powerplant in the area. 

Dominion has been making an outreach effort to the people of that part of Chesterfield County and has mounted a public relations campaign in support of the proposed 1,000 megawatt plant. The activist opponents, who would fight any gas-fired facility no matter what the circumstances, have now announced they plan to bring their challenge to Dominion’s neighborhood open house tomorrow, Sept 5.   

The 6 p.m. Dominion presentation at a local hotel (details here) will be preceded by the opponent’s program at a restaurant next door. The message, of course, is that if the plant is built, its emissions will worsen health and even kill people. One flaw in the message is that the small gas plant will be built on the site of a former much more massive, and much more polluting, coal generation station. If that didn’t devastate and depopulate Enon, it is doubtful this will.

Dominion had originally been talking about putting the new plant in an industrial park a couple of miles away, but moving to the old coal plant footprint puts a bit more distance between it and residential areas and schools. Of course, a couple of dozen extra miles of distance would not have calmed the opponents, being organized by Glen Besa of the heavily pro-wind Sierra Club. 

So far, the opponents have dominated what little news coverage the dispute has generated, and their tactics indicate they will do so again tomorrow. The purpose of the Dominion meeting is information, not advocacy, but when the time for advocacy comes, will a strong contingent of advocates for the project appear? A similar information session at another Chesterfield location is set for September 10.

Wind energy is the reason the plant is needed, Dominion says. Wind and solar are intermittent energy sources, and this plant would provide almost instant-on access to another 1,000 megawatts to balance the grid. It writes:

With our commitments in mind, we are proposing to build the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center (CERC). CERC will be an always-ready resource that will provide power quickly — in as little as 10 minutes — and as needed, for example, on the hottest and coldest days of the year. It will not be used as an everyday power source. Instead, it will serve as a power generation source when other sources are unavailable or insufficient to meet our customers’ energy needs.

The critics make one strong point against the plant, something bound to come up when Dominion actually asks the State Corporation Commission for permission to build it. This kind of undersized plant that will also run intermittently is far more expensive than a baseload gas plant intended to provide power on a steady basis. Mainly, it sits there doing nothing most of the time. Another point bound to come up: is 1,000 MW really enough? No.

But for the foolish decision to rely on so much wind and solar in the future, this plant might be instantly rejected on an economic basis.

Opponents are bound to argue that the existing Virginia Clean Economy Act should be interpreted to prevent this project, despite some provisions in the law that nod in favor of keeping hydrocarbon fuels if needed for reliability reasons. The battle over what those sentences mean, and whether they should be changed, will be at the heart of a proposed review of the VCEA during the 2025 session. Rejecting the future expansion of wind and solar would weaken the demand for plants like this one, but don’t expect the climate alarmism movement or the wind-solar industrial complex to agree to any of that readily.