We interrupt this legislative session for some good news
The Biden administration's goal to have half of all U.S. vehicles be electric by 2030, will require increased production of minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt used in batteries. (Photo by Sarah Vogelsong/Virginia Mercury)
After two decades following Virginia's General Assembly, I understand why people say the legislative process is like sausage-making, both being things it's better not to watch. And while you can count on the sausage factories to feed every little morsel into the grinder, the legislature often leaves the healthiest ingredients rotting on the capitol's marble floors.
But not always! Sometimes Richmond's sausage factory comes out with products truly worth savoring. So, after my recent assessments of the sorry state of solar and data center legislation, I want to take a moment to celebrate a few of the good bills that are making their way through the House and Senate, often with bipartisan support.
Since I'm an environment and energy advocate, these bills all relate to those topics at least loosely. With any luck, all of these should soon be on their way to the governor's desk.
Let's start with legislation reforming the way Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power do their resource planning. No, don't stop reading! This is really more interesting than it sounds! Let me give you an example.
One of the reasons customers of APCo are complaining about sky-high power bills is that the public utility commission over in West Virginia approved expensive upgrades to APCO's coal plants while insisting that the utility run those plants at least 69% of the time, even though both actions increase costs that customers have to pay. Because those coal plants serve Virginia customers as well, that means higher bills here too. But you won't find out from APCo's filings how much of its electricity even comes from coal. The integrated resource plans (IRPs) the utility filed with the SCC never revealed that information. Two years ago, APCo even got the Virginia General Assembly to excuse it from having to file the plans altogether.
Dominion Energy's IRPs have caused their share of frustration, too, to the point where an SCC hearing examiner recommended rejection of the company's 2023 plan, and the commission ordered a supplement to the 2024 plan even before it was filed.
The Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, a legislative body that is also more interesting than it sounds, set out this year to raise the bar for what has to go into an IRP. The result is HB2413 from Del. Candi Munyon-King, D-Dumfries, and SB1021 from Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax. The legislation doesn't just restore the IRP requirement for APCo and demand greater transparency from both utilities, it also makes it possible for other stakeholders to review and question the assumptions that go into the utilities' planning.
The result is that regulators and legislators will finally have the information they need to ensure the utilities are acting in the public interest and not just their own. With data centers already pushing up energy costs, the need for this reform is urgent. As of this writing, both bills have passed their respective chambers, the House version with strong bipartisan support.
Another pair of bills that are faring well deal with energy storage. As battery prices drop and innovations multiply, storage has become one of the brightest of the new energy technologies. Batteries are now the method of choice for filling in gaps in solar and wind production and allowing utilities to meet peaks in demand more precisely, cleanly and at less expense than burning fossil fuel in short spurts.
And whether it's batteries or other kinds of storage (gravity-based, hydrogen, or thermal), the technology is also critical to the buildout of new nuclear plants, should that occur. Small modular reactors will have to run close to 100% of the time to make their capital cost tolerable, so utilities need the ability to store surplus electricity at night, when demand is low.
SB1394 from Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond, and HB2537 from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, increase the amount of short-duration energy storage Dominion and APCo must develop and add new amounts for long-duration storage, defined as 10 hours or more. The requirement is technology-neutral, and the timelines are generous. There are also provisions for working groups to develop financial incentives, model ordinances, fire prevention strategies and demonstration projects. SB1394 passed the Senate unanimously. HB2537 passed the House 54-44.
Speaking of promising new technologies popular on both the right and the left, a bill to add electric generation using geothermal energy to the list of resources qualifying for Virginia's renewable portfolio standard passed the Senate unanimously. So-called 'enhanced geothermal systems' use technology derived from oil and gas fracking methods, perhaps accounting for it earning a place of favor among the otherwise old-school technologies favored by the Trump Administration. This clean energy is taking off in western states, providing power to data centers owned by Google and Meta. SB1316 from Jeremy McPike, D-Woodbridge, passed the Senate unanimously and was reported out of a House Labor and Commerce subcommittee with only one dissenting vote.
Electric vehicles are not yet a bipartisan priority, but awareness is growing that tourists in EVs need to be able to charge their cars and won't travel to areas where they can't. This likely explains why a bill from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, setting up an EV rural infrastructure program to support private investment in charging stations, passed the House with the support of several rural Republicans. This is at least the third year that Sullivan has introduced legislation like this, only to get shot down each year in the money committees. Third time's a charm?
Finally, I've written a lot about the pernicious influence of campaign donations on the legislative process, especially when the donations come from public utilities seeking favors from the legislators they give money to. My own periodic bouts of outrage haven't moved the needle; in fact, the sums of money at stake have only grown. Every year bills to reform campaign finance get introduced, and every year they get killed, often due to backroom machinations that keep any individual legislator from having to take blame.
This year, as in past years, all efforts to limit campaign contributions failed. Regrettably, this includes HB2607 from Lee Ware, R-Powhatan, which would have barred contributions to candidates from Dominion and APCo, but did not even get a hearing in a (Democratic-majority) subcommittee of Labor and Commerce.
Remarkably, however, the General Assembly is finally poised to prohibit legislators from using campaign funds for personal spending. The practice is so obviously outrageous that it pains me to say it has actually been legal in Virginia for as long as I can remember. Year after year, legislation to end it has hit a dead end. This year, however, HB2165 from Joshua Cole, D-Fredericksburg, passed the House unanimously. The Senate companion, SB1002 from Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, passed 36-4. This leaves only four members of the General Assembly – Republican Sens. Bill DeSteph of Virginia Beach, Christopher Head of Roanoke, Tammy Mulchi of Mecklenburg and Mark Peake of Lynchburg – willing to stand up for the ignoble tradition of using campaign war chests as personal piggy banks.
A couple of other campaign finance bills are also worth noting here. HB2140 from Paul Krizek, D-Alexandria, requires creation of an easily-searchable campaign finance information portal. I don't think anyone should kid themselves that transparency will cure the evil of money in politics, since corporations tend to give money to members of both parties. Still, I'll celebrate anything that heads in the right direction.
In addition to Krizek's bill, that includes SJ255 from Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, which tasks the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) with a study of Virginia's campaign finance laws. The scope of the study seems disappointingly narrow, so it may not result in recommendations for the kind of reform we need to limit the influence of utilities, corporations and other special interests. And of course, studies are a notorious way to kick a can down the road.
But next year Virginia will have a new governor, and new members in the House of Delegates. So who knows? Maybe real campaign finance reform will happen in 2026, giving us news we can really celebrate.
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