Monthly Archives: October 2015

Virginia’s Commitment to Smart Cars and Smart Roads

Posted on October 30, 2015 by | 2 comments
Virginia Tech smart car

Virginia Tech smart car

by James A. Bacon

Tom Dingus has done as much as anyone to advance vehicle automation and the advent of self-driving cars. Many of the automated features found in automobiles today — automated braking, active cruise control, rear-view cameras — were tested at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, where he serves as director. But Dingus is cautious about predicting the imminent arrival of self-driving cars.

Estimates range from three years to thirty for how long it will take before self-driving cars dominate the road, he told the Governor’s Transportation Conference yesterday. He would lean toward the thirty-year estimate, he said.

Automated cars are excellent at dealing with routine situations. If the car ahead jams on its brakes, the automated car will respond more quickly than the typical human could. But most traffic fatalities don’t occur in routine situations, Dingus said. They occur in “anomalous,” or unusual, situations for which cars have not been programmed to respond. “You have to solve real-world problems.” And that takes time.

Despite the challenges, Dingus said, connected vehicles — vehicles that communicate data with each other and the road infrastructure — potentially could eliminate 70% of all crashes.

Virginia is in the vanguard of research on vehicle automation and connected vehicles. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is recognized as a national leader, having forged partnerships with leading technology and automotive companies, that generates millions of dollars in research contracts annually. The state’s Transportation Research Council, which does work on smart infrastructure, also is highly regarded nationally. Virginia Automated Corridors on Interstate 66 and Interstate 495 provide real-world “test beds” for both connected vehicles and smart infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) personnel are taking active part in an American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) coalition that is studying connected vehicles, and VDOT is the lead funder in a pool-funded research initiative geared to move connected-vehicles from research to pilot projects and testing.

The emphasis on smart technology, said Virginia Highway Commissioner Charlie Kilpatrick is part of a larger shift in thinking at VDOT. For decades the department had a civil engineering mindset that its  jobs was to build bridges and roads. “Our job is not about building bridges and roads,” he said. “It’s about moving people.”

VDOT sees the potential to use technology to improve system performance — reducing accidents, improving safety and increasing reliability, said Dean Gufstafson, state operations engineer. And the department is asking lots of new questions: What will the future of transportation look like? What investments does VDOT have to make? What is the role of government?

Catherine McGhee, VDOT’s safety chief, described how connected vehicles could work with connected infrastructure to make roads safer for public servants who work in and near the roads — construction workers, state police, emergency service personnel. A state trooper can carry a device that alerts cars when he’s on the side of the road so that cars will switch lanes. Similarly, a road worker can wear a vest that informs cars when he steps beyond the traffic cones.

Virginia had 700 traffic fatalities last year, said McGhee. That’s too many. And the new technologies can make a big difference.

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Posted in Science & Technology, Transportation

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McAuliffe Adminstration Gives P3s a Second Chance

Posted on October 30, 2015 by | 42 comments
Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne. Photo credit: Daily News.

Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne. Photo credit: Daily News.

by James A. Bacon

The McAuliffe administration has spent much of its first two years unwinding the legacy of botched and controversial public private partnerships inked by the McDonnell administration: radically truncating the plan to to build a U.S. connector between Petersburg and Suffolk, and revising significantly the tolling for Norfolk’s Midtown-Downtown tunnel project. Now, after the enactment of significant legislative reforms, the McAuliffe transportation team is turning to the P3 tool to help fund and/or operate its ambitious plans for Interstate 66 in Northern Virginia.

Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne is confident that he can avoid the pitfalls of the previous administration, and that a public-private partnership can make a major contribution to improving mobility along a transportation artery that Governor Terry McAuliffe variously described Thursday as a “parking lot” and “the most congested road in America” at the 2015 Governor’s Transportation Conference in Virginia Beach.

“We’ll be a big supporter of P3s,” elaborated Layne in his own remarks to the conference. “We need to share risk with the private sector. [Virginia] will very much continue to be a leader.”

The I-66 initiative essentially consists of two separate plans: one for inside the Beltway and one for outside the Beltway. The outside-the-Beltway plan entails widening the Interstate, installing HOT lane tolls and ramping up commitment to mass transit. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has generated 13 responses from private-sector players on how to structure the P3.

Where Sean Connaughton, Layne’s predecessor as transportation secretary, regarded P3s as a way to leverage finite public dollars with private investment, thus maximizing total dollars invested, Layne emphasizes the role of P3s in allocating risk. That feedback has been invaluable in surfacing cost and risk issues that VDOT had not considered. “Transparency is the way you have price discovery and risk discovery,” he said.

One set of risks revolves around building a major project on budget and on time. Another major risk is “demand risk” — the likelihood that traffic and revenue forecasts will materialize as projected. There also are risks associated with operations and maintenance. Layne is open to assigning those risks to a private-sector contractor. He has been far more skeptical, however, of relying upon private-sector capital. Private-sector demands for higher financial returns on investment can add hundreds of millions of dollars to the price of a project.

Layne’s approach is to establish public policy first — what does the Commonwealth want to accomplish along I-66, and how? The administration has made it clear that the I-66 corridor will be multi-modal, including transit, and that the state will not agree to covenants that would restrict for decades construction on other roads that might divert traffic, as the previous administration did in the Downtown-Midtown tunnel project. Those parameters are non-negotiable, except perhaps at the margins. Once those guidelines have been established, he said, the private-sector input can be extremely valuable.

In other remarks, Deputy Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue told the conference that Virginia and California lead the country with their P3 laws, and that delegations from other states frequently visit the Old Dominion to see what has been done here. Stymied by transparency laws from talking to private corporations “off line,” he explained, other states cannot enact laws like Virginia’s. And that curtails the ability to put together deals like Virginia’s.

An open and transparent process is critical to Virginia’s P3 law, said Donohue, but so is the ability to engage in confidential negotiations. He believes that Virginia has done a good job, based upon its extensive experience with P3s, in threading the needle between transparency and confidentiality. “Steps we have taken in the last couple of years have addressed a lot of problems” with Virginia’s law, he said.

The decision-making process for the I-66 corridor will put the administration’s faith in P3s to the test. The issue of inside-the-Beltway tolls has exploded into a political furor. More controversy is bound to follow as the administration moves from the concept stage to specific proposals.

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Posted in Government Finance, Transportation, Uncategorized

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The Terry McAuliffe Show

Posted on October 29, 2015 by | 21 comments
Governor McAuliffe checks out a made-in-Virginia three-wheeler outside the Virginia Beach Conference Center.

Governor McAuliffe checks out a made-in-Virginia three-wheeler outside the Virginia Beach Conference Center.

by James A. Bacon

Terry McAuliffe doesn’t just fill the room — he fills the banquet hall. He’s loud, he’s animated,  he’s funny and he’s prone to superlatives. Economic development success, he proclaims, comes from superior salesmanship and the art of the deal. Indeed, if he doffed a wig of thinning blond, slicked-back hair, you’d be hard pressed to tell him apart from Donald Trump.

The governor regaled the audience at the 2015 Governor’s Transportation Conference in Virginia Beach around noon today. Among some of the more notable quotes:

Referring to Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne, McAuliffe said with typical enthusiasm: “He’s the greatest transportation secretary in the history of Virginia!”

Similarly, John Rinehart, CEO of the Port of Virginia is “the greatest port director in America!” The recent increase in container traffic, the governor added, is “an absolutely extraordinary record! … Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have the greatest port in America!”

Touting the benefits of the Interstate 95 tolled HOT lane project, he proclaimed the awesomeness of private-sector concessionaire Transurban. “Give Transurban a great round of applause!” he urged the audience.

As for those opposed to paying tolls on the proposed Interstate 66 megaproject in Northern Virginia, they’re not just misguided or mistaken. What they’re saying about tolls is “an absolute lie! It’s a fiction! It’s misleading to voters!”

McAuliffe said he has probably spent more time promoting Virginia overseas than any other governor. Ever. And one could surmise from his remarks that he’s given foreigners the hardest sell. He told a story about talking to some wine stewards in France. “I spent an hour convincing them that Virginia wines are better than French wines.”

The governor has made self-driving cars and unmanned aerial vehicles a major economic development priority for Virginia. His goal, he said: “I want a clone in every home in Virginia. And I wanted it manufactured in Virginia!”

Agree with him or disagree, McAuliffe is never dull.

21 Comments

Posted in Economic development, Politics, Uncategorized

More Meaningless Numbers from Virginia Educrats

Posted on October 28, 2015 by | 14 comments

bogus_numbersby James A. Bacon

In a story that generated front-page headlines, Governor Terry McAuliffe announced yesterday a “significant increase” in the number of Virginia public schools earning accreditation in 2015. The number of fully accredited schools increased by 10 percentage points to 78%.

“Offering every Virginia student a world class education in a public school is at the very foundation of our efforts to build a new Virginia economy,” the governor said. “This year’s strong progress is a reflection of the dedicated work of educators, parents and communities and a clear sign that the reforms we have put into place are working.”

“Getting challenged schools the resources they need to ensure student success is one of the most important steps we can take to improve our Commonwealth’s education system,” said Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton. “Every school that earned full accreditation this year is another school that is better preparing its students for a lifetime of success.”

O Frabjous day! Calooh! Callay! Maybe the educational establishment has finally figured out how to turn around Virginia’s ailing public schools! Maybe there is hope for the future!

Or maybe not. The press release was honest enough to acknowledge the following: “The 2014-2015 school year was the first during which students in grades 3-8 were allowed to retake SOL tests in reading, mathematics, science and history. On average, the performance of students on expedited retakes increased pass rates by about four points on each test.”

In other words, any comparison between 2015 results and 2014 results is likening apples to oranges.

What the press release does not tell us is how many schools this adjustment pushed over the minimum accreditation level. (“Students must achieve adjusted pass rates of at least 75 percent on English reading and writing SOL tests, and of at least 70 percent on assessments in mathematics, science and history.”) Four points on a 1-100 scale is not insignificant. Moreover, that four points is an average. It is possible, indeed probable, that the “expedited retakes” proved to be a bigger factor in improving test scores for poorly performing schools, where more students needed to retake the tests, than for strong performers.

Among the crucial data not included in the press release was the number of schools that would have been accredited had the old policy remained in place. The Virginia Department of Education did not provide the data for citizens to conduct their own analysis or draw their own conclusions.

John Butcher has been illuminating VDOE statistical prestidigitations far longer than I. As he has written on his blog, Cranky’s Blog:

The moving target moves; and having moved,
Moves on:  nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to give an honest answer
Nor all thy tears wash away the bureaucrats’ obfuscation.

The manipulation of data is insulting. And who suffers the most from this statistical sleight of hand? Children, disproportionately from poor, African-American households, who are consigned to schools with no effective accountability, that’s who. Just another example of how the bureaucratic, statist status quo works to oppress poor people of color in Virginia. If you think there’s such a thing as “institutional racism” in this country, this is it.

Update: Cranky calculates the impact of other “adjustments” VDOE makes to the data for students with limited English proficiency and for students who have recently transferred into a Virginia public school. On the math tests, the adjustments had the felicitous effect of increasing the number of schools achieving the 70% pass rate from 1,519 to 1,627, or six percentage points.

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Posted in Poverty & income gap, Race and Race Relations

The Virginia Way

Posted on October 28, 2015 by | 7 comments

talkEva Teig Hardy, former Virginia health secretary, on the endless debate over Certificate of Public Need regulations of Virginia hospitals, as quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

I think we need to go somewhere with this. Otherwise we are making changes that are just very superficial to the process but not to the substance of COPN. Changes like this have been talked about (since) I was secretary 30 years ago. We talked about this 15 years ago. We talked about it 10 years ago. We haven’t moved.

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Posted in Health Care, Regulations and Government Oversight

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“Cultural Attachment” the Latest Barrier to Infrastructure Projects?

Posted on October 27, 2015 by | 11 comments
country_road

Take me home, country roads…

by James A. Bacon

Landowner and environmentalist groups have advanced a number of arguments against building more gas pipelines (see previous post), but among the more novel is the idea that the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) will disrupt the “cultural attachment” rural landowners feel for the land that would be traversed. What foes are contending here is that construction of a pipeline will do far more than hurt property values. It will damage peoples’ culture in ways that cannot be mitigated.

Most arguments against the Virginia pipelines are familiar in the sense that they appeal to widely (if not universally) recognized principles of economics and environmental stewardship. The “cultural attachment”gambit  is not like anything I have seen before.

Here’s how a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from some 30 environmental and landowner groups makes the case:

The proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cross primarily rural landscapes where agriculture and forestry are the dominant land uses. The communities that would be affected by the ACP have deep roots in and strong cultural identification with the land and its rural character. In addition to adverse effects associated with the use of eminent domain, construction and right-of-way maintenance … the ACP will have significant adverse effects on the character of these currently non-industrialized areas.

The adverse effects of the taking and alteration of private property … must be assessed in light of the affected communities’ “cultural attachment” to the land. Cultural attachment is the “cumulative effect over time of a collection of traditions, attitudes, practices, and stories that ties a person to the land, to physical place, and kinship patterns.” Much of the land that would be affected by the ACP has been held in families for generations and people’s reliance on the land for survival and prosperity has resulted in high levels of cultural attachment. Rural Appalachian communities have historically suffered from significant intrusions, such as railroad highway constructions, that have “undercut the cultural patterns that had developed through people’s relation to the land, physical place, and kin.

As the U.S. Forest Service recognized in a 1996 Draft Environmental Impact Statement for an Appalachian Power Co. project in rural West Virginia and Virginia:

Substantial outside-generated intrusions (such as highways, railroads, and transmission lines) that breach the boundary of a high cultural attachment area may have significant adverse impacts to the sustainability of the local culture. … The permanence of the intrusions is a symbol of the imposed dominance of commerce and economic interests. … Permanent and elongate linear intrusions tend to bifurcate previously existing cultural units into new units. This tends to fracture informal support systems and create new boundary areas. Boundary areas created by intrusion are often abandoned by area residents from cultural management, thereby increasing the likelihood of additional intrusions.

Bacon’s bottom line: It strikes me that this argument is getting at something real. Some people feel an attachment to the land so strong that it transcends the monetary value of the land. Disruption to these ties cannot be measured by any conventional means, thus they cannot be compensated.

If the Virginia Department of Transportation wanted to run a highway through my home in western Henrico where I have lived for 13 years, I would be plenty unhappy. But I wouldn’t be devastated. My personal identity is not tied up in the house. I have no ancestral ties here, no spiritual ties. Leaving the house would have no impact on my network of kin and friends. I fully expect to sell the house when I retire and I’m ready to downsize. The house is a commodity in a way that property is not for people with strong attachments to the land.

I sympathize with those who fear the loss of something that can never be retrieved. But I have concerns. The idea of “cultural attachment” is so vague and hard to define that it could be applied to almost anything. There is no way to measure cultural attachment, and there is no way to ascertain the sincerity of the people who claim to have it. If this new doctrine were given legal force, it could be invoked to block any infrastructure project that ran through a rural area, that is to say, almost every road, highway, rail line, transmission line or pipeline ever proposed.

The idea has been around at least 20 years (since the 1996 U.S. Forest Service report at least). It doesn’t appear to have gained much traction since then. It will be interesting to see if FERC gives it any credence.

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Property rights, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Pipeline Foes Appeal to FERC

Posted on October 27, 2015 by | 24 comments
This map shows approximate routes of four proposed natural gas pipelines running through Virginia. Image credit: Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition

This map shows approximate routes of four proposed natural gas pipelines running through Virginia. Image credit: Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition. (Click for larger image.)

by James A. Bacon

A coalition of pipeline opponents has called upon the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to conduct a comprehensive review of the need for four natural gas pipelines running through Virginia rather than reviewing them on their individual merits. The coalition, which includes numerous environmental and landowner groups, was joined by two Virginia state legislators: Sen. John S. Edwards, D-Roanoke, and Del. Joseph R. Yost, R-Giles.

Foes have raised a host of issues regarding the impact of the proposed pipeline projects on the environment and landowners. While the pipelines would be buried, their rights of way would be maintained clear of trees and brush, they argue, creating erosion issues, disrupting wildlife habitat, despoiling view sheds, and harming local agricultural, craft and tourism economies. Wider impacts from bolstering the consumption of natural gas would include an increase in the greenhouse gases implicated in global warming (CO2 and methane) and environmental damage caused by fracking.

Of the four pipeline projects, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) have been actively mapping of routes, and both have filed applications with FERC. Both MVP and ACP say demand for natural gas is increasing as electric utilities switch from coal to gas, and both companies have lined up customers to purchase most of the gas that would move through their pipelines. The public need, they say, is demonstrated by the fact that the pipelines have hard contractual commitments for the gas.

FERC has not accepted previous requests for comprehensive reviews, and the response of a FERC spokesperson did not suggest than any re-evaluation of its position was imminent. “The commission’s stance has been that we don’t develop infrastructure, that we process the applications that come through FERC,” spokesperson Tamara Young-Allen told the T-D.

But pipeline foes are giving it another try. The details of their arguments can be found in a letter to FERC addressing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline specifically.

Pipeline foes say FERC is required to determine whether a pipeline applicant has made efforts to minimize adverse effects upon landowners, communities, existing pipelines and their captive customers. “To demonstrate that its proposal is in the public convenience and necessity, an applicant must show public benefits that would be achieved by the project that are proportional to the project’s adverse impacts.”

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, states the letter, does not provide any benefit that existing pipelines could not provide. Central to their argument is that new pipelines are not needed to meet the market’s growing demand for gas.

Evidence shows that significant existing pipeline capacity may be available to serve the South East and Mid-Atlantic markets. … Gas pipelines nationwide on average utilized only 54 percent of their capacity between 1998 and 2013. FERC has similarly acknowledged the underutilization of pipeline capacity and found that improved scheduling of natural gas deliveries would make “more efficient use of existing pipeline infrastructure.”

ACP would tap bountiful Marcellus shale gas deposits in West Virginia and Ohio, creating a supply alternative in Virginia and North Carolina to gas originating in the Gulf of Mexico. But foes argue that existing or already-approved pipelines to the north can move gas from Marcellus to the existing Transco superhighway pipeline, which serves Virginia markets. In the past Transco moved gas only from south to north. But by 2017 it will be able to move gas both directions, providing a way for Marcellus gas to reach Virginia markets.

Utilizing the existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, foes argue, would minimize the disruptive impact of building new pipelines.

For an in-depth discussion of the four Virginia pipeline projects, see “A Plethora of Pipelines.”

Update: Dominion, managing partner of the ACP, has provided a more detailed response than appeared in the T-D article: FERC will assess the cumulative effect of ACP and other proposed projects within a three-state region. ACP anticipates minimal impact due to “implementation of specialized construction techniques, the relatively short construction time frame in any one location, and carefully developed resource protection and mitigation plans.”

While critics have called for a programmatic Environmental Impact Statement — “a much broader, speculative regional analysis” — FERC has said in recent rulings and statements that an EIS  would not present “a credible forward look and would therefore not be a useful tool for basic program planning.”

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Virginia GOP Flunks the ABC Test

Posted on October 26, 2015 by | 17 comments

abc_storeby Justin Trent

With the Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverages Control in the news again, residents of Virginia have another opportunity to ask their elected officials why the Commonwealth of Virginia holds a monopoly over an entire industry. In addition, small government conservatives should consider whether the continued existence of Virginia ABC proves that the Virginia GOP is just another big government party.

As readers may know, Virginia ABC was established in response to the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. The agency was given a monopoly over the sale of distilled spirits and it controls the distribution of alcoholic beverages (which means that it controls the selection of beers and wines available to Virginia consumers). It was given full police powers in 1936. Those powers landed the agency in hot water in recent years with its agents’ arrest of University of Virginia students.

As a native-born Virginian, I have always been told that the Virginia GOP is the political party that supports the free market and defends against government overreach. Imagine my confusion, then, at the unwillingness of General Assembly Republicans to dismantle the Virginia ABC when they had the chance.

I decided to look back through history and see if the Virginia GOP has ever had am opportunity chance to privatize Virginia ABC without the need for bipartisan support. (Some Democrats have supported privatization in the past, but for the sake of this exercise I assumed that all Virginia Democrats support the existence of Virginia ABC.) Because of the shift in party alignment in the early 1970s, I started by identifying the Republican governors who have held office since the 1970s: Mills Godwin (’74-’78), John Dalton (’78-’82), George Allen (’94-‘98), Jim Gilmore (’98-’02) and Bob McDonnell (’10-’14). During the terms of Godwin, Dalton, and Allen, the Virginia Democrats controlled at least one house in the General Assembly; as a result, I give both those governors and the Virginia GOP a pass on the assumption that Virginia Democrats would have blocked privatization. But what about the Gilmore and McDonnell eras?

It turns out that the Virginia GOP had control of both the governor’s mansion and the General Assembly during the General Assembly sessions held in 2000, 2001, 2012, and 2013. They could have passed a bill privatizing the Virginia ABC if they had really wanted – and there is evidence that at least some Republicans in the General Assembly were in support of privatization during those windows of opportunity.

Here’s a short breakdown of the attempts to privatize Virginia ABC:

  • In 1995, John Watkins (R) and Harry Purkey (R) sponsored bills.
  • In 1996 and 1997, a similar bill was sponsored by William P. Robinson, Jr., a Democrat.
  • From 2002 through 2005, Allen Louderback (R) sponsored a privatization bill in each session. Frank Hargrove (R) co-sponsored Louderback’s bill in 2005.
  • In 2006 and 2007, there were no bills.
  • In 2008, Bob Marshall (R) and David Poisson (D) both sponsored privatization bills.
  • In 2009, Poisson sponsored his bill again and Purkey sponsored a bill that called for a study of privatization.
  • In 2010, Marshall sponsored his bill again and Purkey sponsored his study bill again. Mark Obenshain (R) also sponsored a bill in the Senate.
  • In 2011, Obenshain and Watkins sponsored a bill in the Senate, while Robert Brink (D) sponsored a bill in the House.

So, what about those brief windows in 2000, 2001, 2012, and 2013, when the Virginia GOP was in power? It turns out that no privatization bills were sponsored during those years. None. How strange – especially when you consider that Watkins, Purkey, Marshall, Louderback, and Hargrove were all in office during 2000 and 2001, and Obenshain, Marshall, and Purkey were all in office during 2012 and 2013. In other words, the same Republicans who pushed privatization when the Democrats held a crucial office were quiet when their own party held all the cards.

Marshall and Obenshain are well-known for their “small government” bona fides. But where were their principles, when they had the opportunity to enact real change and privatize the sale of alcoholic beverages? And what about all of the other conservative state legislators who served at those times but didn’t push for privatization?

There are two answers, neither of which should be acceptable to small government conservatives: Either the Virginia GOP is addicted to the revenue provided Virginia ABC (a criticism that is frequently leveled at Democrats) or the Virginia GOP is a party that only provides lip service to the ideal of “limited government.”

Justin Trent lives in the Richmond region.

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Posted in Politics, Regulations and Government Oversight

Shutting Down the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Posted on October 26, 2015 by | 1 comment
moon_robinson

The case of Kayleb Moon-Robinson, an 11-year-old autistic child in Lynchburg schools, started with kicking a trash can and ended with a charge of felonious assault, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

by James A. Bacon

Amid growing national concerns about “mass incarceration,” particularly of African-Americans, a Center for Public Integrity study found in August that Virginia schools refer students to law enforcement agencies at a higher rate than schools in any other state in the country — and three times the national average. The report highlighted the case of an autistic, 11-year-old African-American student in a Lynchburg school, Kayleb Moon-Robinson, who, in a series of incidents that started with kicking a trash can, wound up being charged with disorderly conduct and felony assault on a police officer.

There is a growing consensus across the political spectrum that the United States puts too many people into jail and prison, and that there has to be a better way to deal with minor crimes and misdemeanors.  There is less agreement about what that “better way” might be.

Fortunately, the federal system of the U.S. government creates a “laboratory for democracy” that allows lots of experiments at the state and local level. One such experiment for reducing the school-to-prison pipeline will take place in the City of Richmond when schools resume next year after the Christmas break. A new program called LIFE, reports Louis Llovio with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, will divert students into an after-school program designed to “get them the skills needed to make better decisions.”

Richmond police arrested 149 students last year; of those arrests, 59 were for disorderly conduct for such behaviors as not sitting down in class or cussing at a teacher. In the hope of plugging the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline,” LIFE will be open to students committing minor offenses. Students will attend nine 90-minute sessions covering topics such as conflict resolution, drug and alcohol awareness, gangs and respect for self and others. Parents are expected to attend three of the nine classes.

Diversion programs have a mixed record, according to Llovio’s reporting — some research finds that they lead to increased recidivism. But program organizers continue to tweak them in the hope of improving outcomes, so it’s possible that the Richmond program will enjoy better results. Personally, I’m highly skeptical that 13 to 14 hours in an after-school program can do much to change a student’s behavior by the time he’s reached middle school or high school. But I’m willing to entertain the notion that if participants are chosen based on a teacher’s appraisal of their potential willingness to change, and if parents participate as well, the program might rescue a few kids from jail.

The key is to set goals and metrics by which to measure those goals. If results don’t improve, adjust the program. If they still don’t improve, shut it down.

Bacon’s bottom line. Two things worry me. First, one of the few clear public policy successes of the past two decades has been so-called “broken windows” policing, in which police crack down on seemingly minor offenses like vandalism in order to avert an escalation into major crimes. The thrust of the movement to roll back “mass incarceration” seems to go against the broken-windows philosophy. We need to be vigilant against a retrogression to the widespread public disorder of the 1970s and 1980s.

Second, we must remember the silent victims of school disorder — the majority of students whose education is disrupted by the behavior of a noisy, troublesome minority. The hand-wringing over “mass incarceration” paints criminals as the victims while ignoring the plight of their victims. While it’s true that the jailed and imprisoned population is disproportionately African-American, let us not forget that the vast majority of their victims are African-American. Affluent white Virginians living safely in their leafy suburbs have little to fear from the consequences of social experiments gone awry. Poor African-Americans have the most to lose.

So, let’s try experiments to shut down the school-to-prison pipeline, but let’s monitor them very closely and make sure they accomplish what we expect of them.

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Posted in Poverty & income gap

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How the Feds Run Virginia’s Colleges and Universities Now

Posted on October 24, 2015 by | 31 comments
Anne Holton, Virginia's Secretary of Education: not really in charge of higher education any more.

Anne Holton, Virginia’s Secretary of Education: token task master. She’s really not in charge of Virginia higher education any more.

by James A. Bacon

A new Vanderbilt University study sheds light on the relentless increase in costs at U.S. colleges and universities: government regulation. In a detailed study of 13 institutions, Vanderbilt and the Boston Consulting Group found that compliance with federal regulations ranges between 3% and 11%, depending upon the institution, with a median cost of 6.4%. Research institutes bore the heaviest burden — grants & contracts incurred the greatest costs — but government regulations cut across all aspects of campus life.

The report delved deeper into the numbers than any previous study and is the most authoritative to date. “While many regulations are useful and effective, others are unrelated to the mission of higher education. All regulations impose cost, however,” said Thomas W. Ross, president of the 17-campus University of North Carolina, one of the study participants. (No Virginia university participated in the study.)

Under pressure for soaring tuition and fees, the higher ed sector has long complained about the cost of government regulation. A recent report, “Recalibrating Regulation of Colleges and Universities,” put it this way:

Over time, oversight of higher education by the Department of Education (DOE) has expanded and evolved in ways that undermine the ability of colleges and universities to serve students and accomplish their missions. The compliance problem is mandated by the sheet volume of mandates — approximately 2,000 pages of text and the reality that the Department of Education issues official guidance to amend or clarify its rules at a rate of more than one document per work day. As a result, colleges and universities find themselves enmeshed in a jungle of red tape, facing rules that are often confusing and difficult to comply with. They must allocate resources to compliance that would be better applied to student education, safety and innovation in instructional delivery.

Key points made in that study:

  • Regulations are unnecessarily voluminous. Referring to Department of Education regs alone, “the Higher Education Act (HEA) contains roughly 1,000 pages of statutory language; the associated rules in the Code of Federal Regulations add another 1,000 pages. Institutions are also subject to thousands of pages of additional requirements in the form of sub-regulatory guidance.”
  • Regulations are overly complex. “Frequent issuance of sub-regulatory guidance by the Department, although intended to clarify, often leads to further confusion.” A “Dear Colleague” letter on Title IX responsibilities regarding sexual harassment required further guidance in the form of a 53-page “Questions and Answers” document that took three years to complete. “And that raised even more questions. “Complexity begets more complexity.”
  • The DOE has an increasing appetite for regulation. The growth in the “volume and velocity” of regulation has increased in recent years, even in the absence of new statutory changes from Congress. “Negotiated rulemaking sessions have addressed topics as varied as accreditation, college teacher preparation programs, PLUS Loans, debit cards, gainful employment, state authorization, and the credit hour — all undertaken solely at the Department’s initiative without any prior Congressional action.
  • The DOE does not act in a timely fashion. “The HEA explicitly requires the Secretary of Education to issue final regulations within 360 days of the date of enactment of any legislation affecting these programs. The Department almost never meets this deadline.”
  • Regulation can be a barrier to innovation. “The Department’s definition of credit hour … is one example. By relying on the concept of ‘seat time,’ the Department’s definition had discouraged institutions from developing new and innovative methods for delivering and measuring education, such as competency-based models.”
  • The regulatory process is opaque. “While intimating that it consults professionals in the field in developing its calculations, we have been unable to locate a single institutional official who has ever been contacted by the Department for this purpose. Even more telling, we have been unable to locate any institutional official who has heard of anyone else ever being contact for this purpose.”

Bacon’s bottom line: For perhaps the first time ever, I feel a smidgen of sympathy for Virginia’s university administrators. The DOE exercises fearsome power — the ability to cut off federal backing for college loans, upon which almost every college in the country is slavishly dependent. And the DOE has wielded that power to compel colleges to submit to new regulations. A recent example: The Obama administration’s aggressive interpretation of Title IX regulations to attack the supposed “epidemic of rape” on colleges campuses has led to the creation of a new bureaucratic apparatus to combat the problem. (Hopefully, Bacon’s Rebellion soon will be able to document how that has played out at the University of Virginia.)

The big take-away from these studies is to change the way we think about public oversight of Virginia’s “state” colleges and universities. They are “state” universities in the sense that the state provides financial support for them and provides modest regulatory oversight. But the federal government, in its overweening way, now exercises as much, if not more, control over “state” universities as the state does. Indeed, all major regulatory initiatives in recent years have emanated from the U.S. Department of Education, not the state, not Congress.

The fact is, the Governor of Virginia and the General Assembly aren’t the drivers behind higher educational policy in Virginia anymore. The federal government — more specifically, the Obama administration, acting without the authorization of Congress — has usurped that role. The federal leviathan grows ever more powerful in ways that may never be reversed.

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Federal issues, Regulations and Government Oversight

How Much Is It Worth to Preserve Dominion’s Nuclear Option?

Posted on October 23, 2015 by | 21 comments
Schematic of proposed North Anna 3 nuclear plant. Image source: Dominion.

Schematic of proposed North Anna 3 nuclear plant. Image source: Dominion.

by James A. Bacon

Perhaps the biggest question facing Virginia as it implements the Clean Power Plan, which mandates a 37% reduction in CO2 emissions from Virginia power plants by 2030, is what fuel mix to rely upon. Compelled to cut coal use sharply, Virginia’s power companies effectively have a choice of natural gas, nuclear and renewables such as wind and solar.

While not committed to building a third nuclear plant at North Anna Three, Dominion Virginia Power has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create that option. But leading Virginia environmental groups have declared their all-out opposition to nuclear power, despite its zero carbon emissions. Then on Wednesday the Attorney General’s Office, which represents the interests of Virginia’s consumers, publicly stated that Dominion should abandon its nuclear initiative on the grounds of cost.

“How many hundreds of millions or billions of dollars does a company need to spend … before we can say we are planning to build this generation project?” said William Reisenger, an assistant attorney general, as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Is there a threshold? Could Dominion spend $3 billion on a generation project without deciding whether it is building that project?”

At present, North Anna 3 is the third most expensive option for complying with the Clean Power Plan, Thomas P. Wohlfarth, Dominion’s senior vice president for regulatory affairs, acknowledged Wednesday in a hearing about Dominion’s long-range planning document, the Integrated Resources Plan. But that ranking could change. “All it takes is some variation on how the state decides to implement the plan, or decisions by other states, or a change in gas prices. You could very easily see a flip in the value where North Anna ends up being the lowest cost. … You can’t go all in on one fuel source.”

Framed this way, the question becomes how much is it worth to maintain diversified power sources for Virginia’s electric grid?

Dominion, like other electric utilities across the country, is increasing its commitment to natural gas. Gas is cheap (at the moment), it is virtually pollution free, and it has half the carbon emissions of coal. But there are legitimate questions how long it will remain cheap. No one is certain how long the Marcellus and Utica shale fields can continue to expand production, or how long supplies can keep pace with increasing consumption, especially after the U.S. starts exporting liquefied natural gas.

The main non-nuclear alternatives to natural gas are solar energy and wind power. In the past, those power sources have been exceedingly expensive, but improving technology has brought costs down. In Virginia, off-shore wind is still wildly uncompetitive in the near-term, and it appears that on-shore wind, sited mainly along mountain ridges, will be only a niche power source. The economics of solar look far more positive. The issue with solar, as with wind, is the intermittent nature of the power production. How much conventionally powered backup will be required, and what will be the impact, as solar becomes a major contributor, on electric grid reliability?

The strategic question Dominion is asking is this: Does Virginia want a future electric grid that relies largely upon natural gas, wind and solar? Or does it want to diversify its fuel mix with nuclear power to provide a stable base? Should the state roll the dice on two or three power sources or spread its bets to include nuclear?

The cost of nuclear is a huge consideration. According an expert witness for the AG’s office, North Anna 3 would cost in the realm of $19.3 billion, a sum that could increase customers’ electric bills by 25%. Irene Leech, president of the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, declared the nuclear project “the biggest single threat posed today against the pocketbooks of Virginia consumers.”

Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher says the AG office’s $19.3 billion estimate is “not unreasonable.” But it’s important to understand the context. That is not the up-front capital cost of building North Anna 3. The figure includes the cost of interest, which is paid out over decades. It also doesn’t take into account the fact that, once built, a new nuclear unit would likely have a 60-year life span, longer by decades than the life span of an investment in gas, wind or solar. All things factored in, will nuclear will be economically competitive? As Wohlfarth says, it all depends.

So, how much is it worth to maintain the nuclear option, not knowing whether it will ever be exercised? It’s not clear from the Times-Dispatch article where Reisenger with the AG’s office got the $3 billion figure. (I suspect it was a number pulled out of thin air for purpose of making a rhetorical point, not meant to be an authoritative cost projection.) Whatever the source, Dominion takes issue with it. Wrote Zuercher in an email late yesterday:

We disagree with the $3 billion stated by the witness in reference to how much the company could spend before committing to the new unit. The net capital spending to date is $278 million, net the $301 million that the Virginia General Assembly  allowed to be covered by existing rates, and does not include interest. It is more likely that spending on the unit could be in the $450 million range (net the write off) by the end of 2017, the year in which we expect the NRC to issue the license that would allow us to build and operate the North Anna 3.

Combining the $301 million “write-off” (what Dominion has already spent and is charging to rate payers) plus an additional $450 million, the total cost of preserving the nuclear option would be about $750 million. That’s about one-quarter the $3 billion figure cited.

Is the benefit of of preserving the nuclear option worth spending $450 million over and above the $301 million in sunk costs? If you’re dead-set against nuclear, no number is worthwhile. If your primary interest is holding down electric rates, maintaining system reliability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the long haul, reaching a judgment is a lot more complicated.

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Wind Power in Virginia… 2017 or Bust

Posted on October 22, 2015 by | 11 comments

wind_turbines

by James A. Bacon

Investors have been trying without success for nearly a decade to build wind turbines along the ridge lines of Virginia’s mountains. Projects have bogged down amid concerns about noise generated by thrumming blades, the slaughter of birds and bats, and the imposition of 500-foot-high machines upon neighbors’ pristine views. While wind turbines have sprouted around the country — generating 25% of the electric supply of Kansas, Iowa and South Dakota — not one wind farm has been built in Virginia.

Charlottesville-based Apex Clean Energy is optimistic that it can break the jinx, predicting that its Botetourt County wind farm, Rocky Forge, will plug into Virginia’s electric grid by late 2017, and that a Pulaski County project, Pinewood, will be up and running by 2018.

I sat down yesterday with Tyson Utt, Apex director of development for the Mid-Atlantic, to discuss land-based wind power in Virginia. When I asked him why there is none,  he didn’t want to talk about what others might have done wrong. Apex’s focus, he said, is on getting it right. The special attention Apex pays to site selection and community relations, he says, minimizes local opposition by framing wind power as an asset, not a liability, to the community.

If anyone is positioned to pull off the feat of generating land-based wind power in Virginia, it’s Apex. Senior management has years of experience in wind, selling a portfolio of projects to BP in 2009 and then launching Apex to acquire stranded wind projects around the country and add to them with internally developed projects. The team includes more than 150 employees steeped in all aspects of siting, constructing and operating windmills. Pocketing $30 million in second-round financing in August to finance its growth, Apex has 53 wind projects in 25 states completed or under development.

The economics of wind power are improving as the turbines that convert wind to energy continuously improve in efficiency, says Utt. Meanwhile, there is growing demand for green energy as states adopt Renewable Portfolio Standards (mandatory targets for renewable energy as a percentage of total electricity production) and as corporations seek to establish their green bona fides by purchasing green power. While concerns persist about the intermittent nature of wind, the experience of other states and some European countries, he says, has demonstrated that wind can account for a significant percentage of total electric power without compromising the reliability of the electric grid.

Apex’s value proposition, says Utt, is the close attention it pays to site selection. The development team does due diligence on potential locations, focusing not only on technical factors such as wind speeds and variability, and economic factors such as proximity to transmission lines, but to intangibles like wildlife habitat and impact on view sheds. “We factor in community acceptance when we site a project,” he says.

High on the list is aligning the interests of the landowner with the company, says Utt. Typically, that means paying the landowner a royalty as a percentage of revenues generated, and it means configuring the project so that the landowner can continue using the land — for farming, forestry, whatever — that he or she had been using it for previously. In the case of the Rocky Forge project, which will have up to 25 windmills, a provision is written into the lease that allows hunters to continue using the land, a measure that has helped win over local hunting clubs. Also critical to building public support is creating an open line of communication with county residents to allay the inevitable fears.

An advantage of the Rocky Forge project is that the wind turbines will be located on isolated mountain ridges that will be seen by relatively few people, says Utt. For the most part the mountain ridges will be screened by other ridges and forested land. Botetourt County has enacted an ordinance laying out guidelines for development of wind projects, including a restriction that limits turbines and their blades to a maximum height of 550 feet.

However, Apex hasn’t won over everybody. In July, eight Botetourt residents filed a lawsuit in circuit court claiming that the ordinance failed to protect them from dangers posed by the giant windmills. “Industrial wind turbines are known to catch fire, to collapse, emit audible and low frequency noise, cause shadow flicker and to throw ice from spinning blades in the wintertime,” the lawsuit states. And that’s just the impact on people. The giant blades also kill birds and bats.

The county isn’t backing down, and Apex is proceeding with development. In July the company applied for a permit to build three temporary meteorological towers, no higher than 199 feet, to collect data on wind speeds and variability. Eight days ago, the company asked the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a determination that the towers would not interfere with passing airplanes.

Important aspects of the Rocky Forge project have yet to be determined, like who will buy the electricity. Apex might sell it to a power company — the site is located next to a Dominion Virginia Power transmission line — or to a large commercial customer, or even to the wholesale market. If the price was right, it could sell the project to another owner, although Apex’s business model calls for operating and maintaining the wind farms itself. The company monitors and controls facilities around the country from a central facility in Charlottesville 24 hours per day.

When asked what the General Assembly, Governor’s Office or the State Corporation Commission can do to make Virginia more hospitable to on-shore wind power, Utt doesn’t have any suggestions. He just emphasizes the opportunity created by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which compels Virginia to reduce CO2 emissions over the next several years, to grow a new industry.

Fostering the growth of Virginia-based wind farms keeps economic activity in the state, Utt observes. Virginia is one of the largest importers of electric power of any state in the country. Why not create a revenue stream for Virginia landowners and a Virginia company instead of importing green power from outside the state?

Thanks to improving technology, the cost of wind has come down 58% over the past five years, says Utt. Between the growing demand for green energy and the declining cost, growth of the wind industry is “inevitable.” Virginia might as well take part.

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Woolly Headed Thinking about Transportation

Posted on October 21, 2015 by | 12 comments
Woolly headed

Baaah! Baaaaaaah!

by James A. Bacon

Virginia Beach’s ongoing debate over light rail is emblematic of everything that is wrong with Virginia’s system for determining which transportation projects get built. While the Virginia Department of Transportation is implementing a mechanism for ranking road and highway projects, there is no mechanism for ascertaining the proper balance between roads/highways and mass transportation or even to prioritize mass transit projects. Those choices remain as muddied and politicized as ever.

The latest episode in the long-running saga of Virginia Beach light rail, which would extend Norfolk’s existing The Tide rail line to the Virginia Beach resort area, revolved around a bid yesterday by Virginia Beach Councilman John Moss to use $10 million dedicated for light-rail plans to plug a projected $33 million budget hole. City Council rebuffed the measure, but a vocal minority of citizens continue the fight against the rail line. (See the Virginian-Pilot coverage here.)

Foes oppose a rail line that will require heavy up-front subsidies to build and ongoing subsidies to operate. They make a legitimate point. Rail supporters retort that building and maintaining roads also entail taxpayer subsidies. They, too, make a legitimate point. Ever since Virginia abandoned the user-pays principle of transportation funding in the bipartisan transportation-funding legislation of the McDonnell administration, all forms of transportation are subsidized to a greater or lesser degree. Because everything is subsidized, it is exceedingly difficult to determine whether any project is economically justifiable. Anyone can make any claim without any effective way to test it.

In an ideal world, Virginia Beach’s mass transit project would pay for itself through (a) fare revenues, (b) ancillary revenues such as advertising, and (c) revenues from special tax districts surrounding rail stations to capture some of the increased real-estate value created by the rail service. A transit authority would issue bonds to be repaid from those revenue sources, and bond buyers would exercise an independent, non-political judgment as to whether they were likely to earn a competitive, risk-adjusted return on their investment.

But it’s not an ideal world. Mass transit advocates argue rightly that rail competes against subsidized roads. No longer does Virginia pay for its roads mainly through the gas tax. But, rather than hold road funding to a higher and stricter standard, Virginia carves out a percentage of transportation allocations for mass transit. Funds are spread around to appease regional constituencies and ideological enthusiasms.

To see where fuzzy logic of transit funding leads us, read this op-ed by Nelson Reveley, a co-coordinator for the Richmond Clergy Committee for Rapid Transit. Reveley invokes social justice, the environment, public safety and economic development in support of a “comprehensive transportation system for the sake of all our citizens” in the Richmond region. Writes Reveley, a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of Virginia:

This isn’t about any singular neighborhood. It’s about all our neighborhoods, as we appreciate and celebrate our intimate interrelation as one metro ecology of education and commerce, employment and leisure, justice and mercy, beauty and creativity, vulnerability and mutuality.

My stomach heaves in rebellion against such treacly sentimentality. Nowhere in his op-ed does Reveley wonder how much this majestic mass transit system might cost. Obviously, the concept of “alternate opportunity cost” is not taught in the UVa religious program, for nowhere does Reveley wonder what could be accomplished by expending the same sum in other ways. Nor does he much care who will pay for this vision of his, although we can be certain it will not be the people who ride the buses or otherwise benefit from the transit lines through the higher property values he insists will occur or workforce benefits accruing from the young talent he suggests will be attracted to the region.

Further, nowhere does Reveley acknowledge the emergence of an alternative, private sector-driven model as epitomized by companies like Uber, Lyft and Bridj, which, given sufficient time and dismantling of regulatory barriers, could provide a shared-ridership transportation alternative far more robust and comprehensive than a public system.

The prevalence of blinkered, woolly headed thinking in the Old Dominion is just staggering. It goes a long way towards explaining our stagnation and relative decline among the 50 states.

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Posted in Environment, Infrastructure, Poverty & income gap, Transportation

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SCC Says Dominion Must Seek Third-Party Solar Alternatives

Posted on October 20, 2015 by | 14 comments

solarThe State Corporation Commission has nixed Dominion Virginia Power’s proposal to construct a 20-megawatt solar projects near its Remington Power Station in Fauquier County, stating that the power company must first see third-party alternatives.

In its final order, the Commission said, “As a ‘small renewable’ solar project, the Remington Solar Facility is one type of generation resource that the General Assembly has identified as in the public interest. … The General Assembly, however, has not declared it to be in the public interest that renewable power can only be obtained from the applicant’s own self-built project … or at any price, no matter how burdensome to consumers.”

The estimated cost of the proposed facility would be $2,350 per kilowatt, and its capacity factor (the percentage of time that it would operate) would be 22 percent. “The comparatively high cost to consumers and low capacity factor … underscore that serious and credible efforts, as required by the General Assembly, must be made to determine whether lower cost alternatives for obtaining renewable power are available in the market from third parties.”

Dominion issued the following response:

We are disappointed in this setback in our efforts to add  renewable energy. We believe we have shown this project is among the most cost-effective ways to add solar generated capacity in Virginia. Large-scale solar is needed in order to meet new federal carbon rules, diversify Dominion’s fuel mix and support bipartisan legislation passed in the General Assembly and signed by the governor, to build at least 500 megawatts of solar generation in the state by 2020.  We are evaluating our options regarding this project.

The SCC invited Dominion to re-file after seeking third-party alternatives. See Dominion’s Remington solar page here.

— JAB

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Environmentalist Update on Offshore Wind

Posted on October 20, 2015 by | 2 comments
Alstom wind turbine like that contemplated for installation off Virginia Beach.

Alstom wind turbine like that contemplated for installation off Virginia Beach.

by James A. Bacon

Judging from comments made in a Environment Virginia-sponsored webinar held this morning, environmentalists, the McAuliffe administration and Dominion Virginia Power are operating on the same wave length when it comes to developing offshore wind power in Virginia. If environmental groups have big differences with Dominion on how to proceed, no sign of criticism surfaced in the webinar presentations.

The main focus of environmentalists, as it is for Dominion, is bringing down the cost of offshore wind power. The top priority nationally is building a big enough pipeline of wind power projects off the Atlantic Coast to persuade manufacturers, specialty vessels and others in Europe’s established wind-power supply chain to create a presence on the U.S. East Coast. The existence of a supply chain, along with continued technological development, could make offshore wind power far more cost competitive in the U.S. than it is today.

Here in Virginia, the top priority is ensuring that Dominion builds two experimental turbines off Virginia Beach that will provide the data needed to optimize the development of hundreds of wind turbines in a subsequent project potentially large enough to power 700,000 homes. The big hurdle is persuading the State Corporation Commission that such a massive investment would constitute an acceptable trade-off between cost, reliability and environmental goals.

David Carr, general counsel for the Southern Environmental Law Center, provided an overview of Dominion’s offshore wind initiatives. Dominion solicited bids to build a two experimental turbines off the Virginia coast. (The turbines would test an unproven hurricane-resilient design and a new turbine foundation.) The original plan was to seek SCC approval in 2015, said Carr, but the low bid of $375 million to build the two turbines far exceeded the original estimate of $230 million. Dominion has restructured the contract by breaking it into four components in the hope of stimulating more competitive bidding and reducing the risk premiums bidders build into their offers. The new goal is to file with the SCC by June 2016.

Hayes Framme, advisor for infrastructure and development with the Secretariat of Commerce and Trade, said the McAuliffe administration played a key role in moving the Dominion’s experimental-turbines project forward by negotiating a complex lease with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and other federal agencies to lease the ocean bottom where the turbines would be located. “Without this lease,” he said, “we would not be able to get these turbines in.”

An offshore wind farm would advance two McAuliffe administration goals: increasing the state’s commitment to renewable energy and also promoting economic development. A study completed this summer found that Virginia is “uniquely positioned” to house “at least a portion, if not most, of the supply chain” supporting an East Coast offshore wind industry, Framme said. Virginia ports are located in the Mid-Atlantic, providing convenient access to projects to the north and south, and it has a large existing ship-repair infrastructure.

“Having a commercial deployment off Virginia’s coast sends a signal that we are serious,” Framme said. “If we don’t lay the foundation now, it will be more difficult for us to take advantage of that opportunity when it does come.”

Virginia’s projects are not sufficiently large by themselves to coax the offshore wind supply chain to bolster its U.S. presence. That will take commitments from multiple states. Fortunately, that commitment seems to be forthcoming, said Stephanie McClellan, director of a special initiative on offshore wind housed at the University of Delaware. The states of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine and Maryland all are actively exploring offshore wind opportunities. The state of New York has set a goal of 50% renewables by 2030, while New York City has established a goal of 100% renewables for electricity consumed by municipal operations.

To build a supporting infrastructure for offshore wind, said McClellan, eastern U.S. states need to provide market visibility and revenue certainty for a volume of projects over time, as well as more data on site-specific conditions such as wind speeds and wave size. The cost of wind power dropped “precipitously” in Europe as the industry gained scale; it will do so in the U.S. as well, she said.

Bacon’s bottom line: I posed one question to the presenters: Given the intermittent nature of wind production, has anyone studied the impact of a massive wind farm on the reliability of Virginia’s electric grid? The short answer: No. However, presenters noted that European countries have integrated large off-shore wind projects into their power grids, and PJM Interconnection, the group that ensures grid reliability in the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, including Virginia, has looked into the issue.

Update: Regarding the impact of massive off-shore wind power on the electric grid… a Dominion planning department study published in 2010 concluded, “It is possible to interconnect large scale wind generation facilities up to a total installed capability of 4500 MW with the existing transmission system in the Virginia Beach area.  The study also indicates that when the actual output of the wind farm or farms approaches 2700 MW, there are greater probabilities that the output will have to be limited due to transmission constraints unless transmission infrastructure improvement are made.” Those improvements could cost between $30 million and $70 million.

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Posted in Economic development, Energy, Environment, Infrastructure

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