Tag: Stephen D. Haner
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Natural Gas Dominates PJM’s Future Plans
by Steve Haner And the winner, again, is natural gas. The 13-state PJM Interconnection regional electricity market announced this week that it has reopened its process for adding new generation and most of the new electrons are proposed to come from natural gas. The news release reports 811 applications for future connection to the regional…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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…