Category Archives: Regulation

See, Hear, Speak No Evil on Four Whale Deaths

The Daily Press credits Jennette’s Pier for these two photos it published.

Another whale has turned up dead on a beach, the fourth found on Virginia or North Carolina beaches within one week, several within sight of Dominion Energy Virginia’s offshore turbine project.  This one was identified as a juvenile sperm whale and is the furthest from the project site.

In all the news coverage so far, no intrepid reporter has told their viewers or readers what (if anything) is going on out in the ocean on the construction site. Dominion’s federal license allowing “incidental take” of marine mammals began its five-year effective period in early February. It would be fair to ask the utility if contractors are actively surveying the sea floor with sonar at this time or doing any preliminary pile driving. Continue reading

Electric Cars Are Harder on the Environment than Gas-Powered Ones

by Hans Bader

“Electric vehicles release more toxic particles into the atmosphere and are worse for the environment than their gas-powered counterparts,” according to a study, reports the New York Post:

The study, published by emissions data firm Emission Analytics … found that brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to modern tailpipes, which have “efficient” exhaust filters, bringing gas-powered vehicles’ emissions to new lows. Today, most vehicle-related pollution comes from tire wear. As heavy cars drive on light-duty tires — most often made with synthetic rubber made from crude oil and other fillers and additives — they deteriorate and release harmful chemicals into the air…. Because EVs are on average 30% heavier, brakes and tires on the battery-powered cars wear out faster than on standard cars.

Emission Analytics found that tire wear emissions on half a metric tonne of battery weight in an EV are more than 400 times as great as direct exhaust particulate emissions. For reference, half a metric tonne is equivalent to roughly 1,100 pounds. The most popular EV in the US, Tesla’s Model Y, boasts a lithium-ion battery that weighs in at a hefty 1,836 pounds. Another sought-after electric model, Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup truck, also has an approximately 1,800-pound battery….

The study throws doubt on the practicality of the Biden administration’s EV mandates, which tout electric cars as “zero-emissions vehicles” in a quest to force two-thirds of new cars in America to be all-electric by the year 2032. California lawmakers have similarly referred to EVs as producing “zero emissions” because they don’t have tailpipes, per the [Wall Street] Journal, which added that the label is “deceptive.”

Electric cars still use tires made from petroleum that create particle pollution as they wear….“you have this downside of EVs that increases particle pollution. Air pollution is about what we breathe and the health effects…Tires are made up of a lot of nasty chemicals,” said Emissions Analytics chief Nick Molden.

Increased exposure to these toxins “can increase the risk of health problems like heart disease, asthma, and low birth weight,” according to the New York Department of Health…“A lot of it [chemicals] goes into the soil and water, affecting animals and fish. And we then go and eat the animals and fish, so we are ingesting tire pollution,” Molden added….Even so, California’s air agency used a model that assumes electric and gas vehicles have the same amount of tire wear when analyzing the effects of the ban [on gas-powered vehicles].

Continue reading

Is Dominion-Stonepeak Deal a Partnership Flip?

By Steve Haner

Dominion Energy Virginia insists that its decision to sell a half-interest in the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project “won’t impact ratepayers.” The problem is, perhaps it should. Perhaps Dominion is creating additional value for its shareholders that instead should benefit ratepayers. Continue reading

EPA Told CVOW Wake Has Air Quality Impacts

One of two dead whales washed onto Virginia Beach so far this month, just onshore from the CVOW project. WAVY reports on it.

By David Wojick

In formal comments, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess the adverse impact of the giant Virginia offshore wind project on air and water quality. The issue is far-reaching because all big offshore wind facilities could have these adverse effects. Continue reading

Governor May Get Two Different Nuclear Bills

Small modular reactor illustrated

By Steve Haner

A Virginia Senate committee voted Monday to approve a House of Delegates bill designed to finance a small modular nuclear reactor in Southwest Virginia, contradicting its own earlier vote for a much broader bill that had statewide application.

Two different bills on the same topic might now pass the Virginia Senate.  If the House does the same thing with the Senate bill, now alive in front of its Labor and Commerce Committee, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) could have two very different bills to choose from. Continue reading

If Assembly Wants SMR Bill, Then Fix It

By Steve Haner

This is progress. Only twenty members of the Virginia Senate voted Tuesday to ignore a key tenet of utility ratemaking and put utility stockholders and profits ahead of consumer protection. Usually when the utilities persuade the General Assembly to do that to Virginia consumers, they get a bigger vote margin than 20-16.*

Senate Bill 454 allows Virginia’s two monopoly electricity providers to spend undetermined millions of dollars on planning and developing small modular nuclear reactor projects and get it all paid by consumers, with a profit margin. But there is no guarantee any such plants will ever be built, and no other power plants built in Virginia have gotten this kind of up-front financial guarantee before the State Corporation Commission ruled them in the public interest. Continue reading

Rare SCC Deadlock Sinks Dominion’s Energy Plan

By Steve Haner

The year long debate over Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed integrated resource plan, which threw climate catastrophe activists into a frenzy because it added a new natural gas plant, is ending with no decision.  Two State Corporation Commission judges split on whether to approve it, basically a win for the anti-fossil fuel forces.

In December, a hearing officer assigned to study the case had ruled that Dominion’s plan should be rejected because it included the expansion of gas generation, when the anti-natural gas forces in the General Assembly had passed laws against that 2020 and 2021.  Those laws did include provisions for maintaining or adding fossil fuel generation on the basis of a threat to reliability, but only under limited circumstances. Continue reading

NJ Greenmailed Into Massive Wind Energy Costs

By Steve Haner

New Jersey just agreed to two ocean wind projects with astronomical guaranteed power prices. The price demanded and received by independent competitive suppliers shows there is at least some upside to the utility-owned, captive ratepayer-financed model behind Dominion Energy Virginia’s massive offshore wind facility.

In late 2023 the news was full of reports that independent wind developers were pulling out of various projects along the East Coast because the projects were no longer economically viable. Those who thought the future of the industry was in jeopardy were wrong. Continue reading

The Aggressive Progressive Democratic Agenda

From tiny acorns grow the mighty oaks of government.

By Steve Haner

The Democrats now running Virginia’s General Assembly are not just more progressive, but far more ambitious than their predecessors. To fully understand how ambitious you must compile the entire list of progressive bills advancing in the 2024 session and consider their total impact on the cost of living and cost of doing business in the commonwealth. Individual news stories miss the big picture.  

The push to radically regulate Virginia’s energy future discussed earlier is being mimicked with equally aggressive legislation throughout the rest of our economy. None of the ideas below are new, and most are already in law in places like California, New York or other more liberal states. What has changed is that when proposed in the past, they usually were rejected in Virginia on a bipartisan basis. Democrats now march in lockstep.  

The Assembly is still in its first phase and adjournment is set for early March. Which of the following will pass remains to be seen, and in many cases, amendments are already appearing. Most may also face gubernatorial veto or amendment, but that just underscores that Virginia is only one election of one official away from total transformation.   

In the case of the bills to increase the minimum wage (here and here), Democrats are simply building upon what they did during their last period of control. But if they succeed in setting future wage increases to automatically grow with inflation, the impact just builds and builds. Classes of employees reasonably exempted from the law currently, such as farm workers, may now be covered, as well.   

Likewise, the previous Democratic majority also took the first steps toward collective bargaining for limited groups of local employees, but only after elected local officials gave a green light to negotiate a contract. This year’s bill expands the right to bargain to almost all local and now most state employees, with no vote needed by a school board or city council. It was revealed that the most recent version does conveniently exempt employees of the General Assembly, however. Continue reading

Great Judges Can’t Fix Bad Energy Laws

Former SCC Commissioner Mark Christie communicated his enthusiasm for Kelsey Bagot’s election with this photo on X.

By Steve Haner

The General Assembly has now filled the two open seats at the State Corporation Commission (SCC), ending two years of gridlock.  Unfortunately, the same legislators, on both sides of the aisle, are still working overtime to dictate and micromanage the state’s energy policy, reducing the discretion and authority of the independent, non-partisan regulators. 

Samuel T. Towell, elected to the SCC last week, fits the expected mold for such positions.  His legal career has been inside and outside the Virginia government, with his term as the civil litigation deputy under Attorney General Mark Herring (D) as the highlight of his resume.  In that role he supervised the consumer counsel functions under Herring, participating in SCC matters.  Since then, he has been working for Smithfield Foods.  

Breaking the mold is Kelsey Bagot, only a decade out of Harvard Law and with no real Virginia-specific experience.  She spent much of her career so far at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), working part of that time for former SCC Chairman Mark Christie.  Christie’s expressed enthusiasm for her qualifications makes her about as close to a bipartisan choice as was possible.   

They join current Commissioner Jehmal Hudson, also a veteran of FERC, who has been serving by himself for more than a year.  Towell and Hudson, less than 20 years out of law school, and the younger Bagot form a trio that could be in office together for decades.  That had to be on the minds of the legislators (all Democrats) who made these choices.   

Fully qualified and engaged judges are still bound to follow the law.  Virginia’s headlong rush into an economically foolish war on fossil fuels is being directed by the bills flowing from the General Assembly, not by rogue judges.  If the last two sessions controlled by Democrats, 2020 and 2021, were a two-alarm EV battery fire, the 2024 session could be the equivalent of the Maui apocalypse.    Continue reading

Two Excellent Nominees Emerge for SCC

Kelsey A. Bagot, now nominated for the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

By Steve Haner

The new Democratic majority in the Virginia General Assembly is moving rapidly to fill the two State Corporation Commission vacancies with excellent, qualified choices. One is well known in Virginia and the second is new to our hallowed Capitol, but with a decade of energy law experience on the federal level.

Former Virginia Deputy Attorney General Samuel T. Towell has degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (engineering) and the University of Virginia (law).  Kelsey A. Bagot just got her Harvard Law degree a decade ago, but she had the opportunity at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to work for former SCC Chairman Mark Christie.

Former Deputy Attorney General Sam Towell, also nominated today.

Both appeared this afternoon before a brief, perfunctory really, joint meeting of the relevant House and Senate committees. Within a couple of minutes, with only one question asked, both were unanimously certified as qualified. Which they are.

It will be up to the full House and Senate to formally elect them at some point in the next few days. The two seats they will fill have been vacant for a long time and they will start with desks piled high. Members of the SCC are actually judges, subject to Virginia judicial canons. The pending state budget sets the salaries as of next July 1 at $214,000 for the chair and $212,000 for the other two members. Continue reading

Will Democrats Revisit Virginia Net Zero Laws?

Senator David Marsden, D-Fairfax, sees “serious problems” in Virginia’s net zero laws.

By Steve Haner

For the third year in a row, Democrats in the Virginia Senate have shot down an effort to divorce Virginia’s auto dealers from California’s impending mandates on electric vehicle sales. But before the predetermined vote went down, the new chair of the committee made a surprise announcement that he and his colleagues are open to revisiting Virginia’s legal rush to end fossil fuels.

Senator David Marsden, D-Fairfax, said he and Senator Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, have discussed using the period between the 2024 and 2025 General Assembly sessions to convene a conference on the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and the many other statues they passed to suppress coal, oil and natural gas use.  Republicans later shared his musings on X.

What serious problems, Mr. Chairman? Tell us more.

Marsden is the new chair of the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee and Deeds now chairs the Commerce and Labor Committee. The Virginia Mercury noted Marsden’s comments at the tail end of its report on the meeting, but it was the only actual news to break out that afternoon. The Richmond Times-Dispatch failed to mention Marsden’s announcement but had a nice photo of a half-empty Tesla charging lot in California.

Truth would have been better served by a photo of the stranded EV’s waiting for crowded, failing chargers in frigid climes this week. There is a reason consumers have not been rushing to buy EV’s at the expected rates.  Despite the happy talk from mandate proponents, the targets are pie-in-the-sky. The only winner in this whole process is Tesla, getting rich selling carbon credits under the cap-and-trade element of the California regime. Continue reading

As Dominion and APCO $oar, NOVEC Drops Rates

Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative’s territory within the greater Northern Virginia region.

By Steve Haner

The major “rural” electric cooperative serving very urban Northern Virginia is drastically lowering its rates as of this month, because the cost it is paying for bulk power purchases has dropped. The contrast with what is happening with Virginia’s two major investor-owned electric companies may be telling Virginia something if anybody wants to listen.

NOVEC, or Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, will be charging its residential users just under $114 for each 1,000 kilowatt hours of usage, down more than $26. The commercial and industrial users among its 175,000 customers are seeing comparable reductions. Continue reading

Rent Control Bill Introduced in Virginia

by Hans Bader

A just-introduced Virginia bill, HB 192, would limit rent increases to “one percent over the Consumer Price Index” in places where the rental vacancy rate is “less than 10 percent,” if the “Consumer Price Index … is greater than five percent.” Virginia has a rental vacancy rate of about 4%, well below 10%, so effectively, this would be a statewide rent control law.

The bill does not allow larger rent increases even to pay for things like major capital improvements.

The bill, introduced by Democratic Del. Marty Martinez, is called the “Landlord and Tenant Fairness Act.”  It contains this rent-control provision:

C. If the rental vacancy rate for a locality is less than 10 percent during the previous calendar year and the Consumer Price Index as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor is greater than five percent, any rent increase imposed by a landlord shall be no greater than one percent over the Consumer Price Index.

Continue reading

Hey Virginia: Hands Off Those Cake Pops

Photo courtesy of Kelly Phillips

by Kerry Dougherty

There’s a reason Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s approval rating in the latest Mason-Dixon Poll perches at a lofty 58 percent in this once-blue state, despite Republicans losing control of the legislature in November’s election.

Youngkin gets it.

On X, he wrote:

“We’re going to fix this, Virginia will always be the best place to live, work, and bake cake pops!”

Like everyone else who heard about Kelly Phillips’ cake pop conflict, the governor immediately saw this for what it was: one more example of government overreach, punishing an enterprising Richmond woman with a small business for no good reason or public benefit.

According to The Virginia Mercury, cake pops are Ms. Phillips’ side hustle. Her day job is as a manager in a financial planning firm. But what began simply as irresistible treats she made for birthday parties and baby showers grew into a little cottage business.

Phillips now sells her gorgeously decorated confections mostly at craft fairs. If Richmond regulators have their way, she’ll have to stop.

Virginia’s stringent food safety regulations, designed to protect folks from unsanitary practices, make exceptions for small craft bakeries. But ridiculous regs, such as the one that allows these homemade goodies to be sold at farmer’s markets but not craft fairs make absolutely no sense.

“What is the difference between a farmers market and a craft show?” Phillips asked The Mercury.

Gee, I don’t know. A roof? Continue reading