by J. Kennerly Davis

With statewide elections coming up this fall, all candidates have an opportunity, indeed an obligation, to state clearly their position on a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation passed during the Northam administration: the net-zero greenhouse gas emission goals contained in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).

The VCEA mandates Virginia reductions in the emission of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gasses such as nitrous oxide to the point where Virginia greenhouse gas emissions are completely offset by the amount of such gases removed from the atmosphere in Virginia. The VCEA sets goals to achieve net-zero emissions for electric generation by 2045 and for the entire Virginia economy by 2050.

These utopian milestones cannot be achieved. Enormous economic and social damage will be done in the futile attempt to do so. The Electric Power Research Institute, the respected research arm of the American utility industry, published a detailed study showing that no combination of existing or feasible technologies -– wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, battery storage, energy efficiency, atmospheric carbon dioxide removal –- can get our country to net-zero by 2050. The study estimates that attempts to achieve the impossible goal will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Even if these milestones were achievable and achieved at enormous cost to the lives and livelihoods of Virginians, the result would do absolutely nothing to reduce the global emissions of the greenhouse gasses said by environmentalists to be the primary cause of global warming.

Over the past decade, trillions of dollars have been spent across the globe in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To no avail. The level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere has steadily increased as Communist China, India, and a host of other countries rapidly deploy hydrocarbon technologies to expand their economies and increase their prosperity.

Virginia’s economy represents only small sliver of the global economy, approximately seven tenths of one percent. Even if Virginia could achieve the net-zero emission goals contained in the VCEA that would have no measurable effect on global greenhouse gas levels. Global warming is a global issue. State-level mandates and goals, like those costly and unobtainable goals contained in the VCEA, are simply pointless.

The continued futile pursuit of net-zero will also create grave risks. The government-certified North American Electric Reliability Corporation has issued a series of reports warning that the reliability of the nation’s electric grid is increasingly threatened by the continued pursuit of environmental policies such as net-zero that force the premature retirement of reliable fossil-fueled generating resources to meet aggressive carbon reduction goals while subsidizing and mandating the aggressive deployment of less reliable weather-dependent solar and wind powered resources.

Finally, the federal Environmental Protection Agency recently opened a formal proceeding to revoke the anchoring tenet of climate mania and eliminate the logical foundation and justification for the war on carbon. The EPA has announced its intention to repeal the scientifically dubious finding issued by the Obama EPA in 2009 that slightly elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide, in combination with other greenhouse gases, pose a significant danger to public health and the environment and must, therefore, be drastically reduced to mitigate the threat.

The Department of Energy issued a comprehensive scientific analysis to accompany the EPA repeal announcement. That analysis notes the many uncertainties surrounding climate science and stresses the key point that carbon dioxide is materially different from the toxic pollutants that have been the focus of environmental regulation for years. Indeed, the DOE report points out that there may be significant benefits from higher carbon dioxide levels such as increased crop yields and generally healthier vegetation.

As we approach the fall elections, voters are entitled to know where each candidate stands on the Virginia Clean Economy Act. There is absolutely no case to be made for the net-zero goals contained in the Act. The goals should be repealed.

Candidates who oppose repeal and support the status quo should be asked to explain why on earth the energy and economic policies of the Commonwealth should be defined by costly goals that are now widely recognized to be unachievable and, in any event, pointless. Let’s hear from all of them.

J. Kennerly Davis has over forty years of experience in the national electric power industry, and has served as Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia