Latest news with #VCEA
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The war on woke…energy?
An electrical substation near Imboden, Va. (Sarah Vogelsong/Virginia Mercury) I've been thinking a lot about language lately, and the strange way words that used to mean good things are now attacked as bad, and vice-versa. Diversity, equity and inclusion are radioactive. Mentioning environmental justice or climate change will get your federal program canceled. Coal is clean, even beautiful, and pointing out the connection to global warming makes you an alarmist, because speaking up when your government steers you towards disaster is now a bad thing to do. Recently I received an email excoriating 'woke' energy policy, which seemed especially curious. I can see how awareness of historic racial injustice against Black people might nudge policy makers into greater support for renewable energy, given that pollution from fossil fuels tends to have a disparate impact on communities of color. But judging from the hostile tone of the email, I believe we may have different understandings of wokeness. Sometimes, though, words mean different things to different people without anyone realizing they aren't using the same definition. That may be the case when Virginia leaders talk about the reliability of the electricity supply. Everyone agrees reliability is critical – but they may not be talking about the same thing. We suspected data centers were creating an energy crisis for Virginia. Now it's official. Virginia's need for power is growing at a terrific pace. Data centers consume so much electricity that our utilities can't keep up, causing them to increase imports from out of state. That's okay for now; West Virginia is not a hostile foreign nation. Also, Virginia is a member of a larger grid, the 13-state (plus D.C.) PJM Interconnection, which manages thousands of generating facilities to ensure output matches demand across the region. But even across this wider area, demand is increasing faster than supply, pushing up prices and threatening a shortfall. Unless we tell data centers to go elsewhere, we need more generation, and fast. Democrats and Republicans are divided over how to increase the power supply. Democrats remain committed to the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires Virginia's electricity to decarbonize by 2050. Meeting the VCEA's milestones requires investments in renewable energy and storage, both to address climate change and to save ratepayers from the high costs of coal and fracked gas. Gov. Glenn Youngkin and members of his party counter that fossil fuels are tried-and-true, baseload sources of energy. They advocate abandoning the VCEA and building more gas plants, arguing that renewable energy just isn't reliable. Note that these Republicans are not alarmists, so they ignore climate change. If they were the proverbial frog in a pot of water on the stove, they would consider it a point of pride that they boiled to death without acknowledging the reason. Youngkin takes every chance he gets to slam the VCEA. As I've previously described, the governor sought to amend various energy-related legislation to become VCEA repeal bills, regardless of the original subject matter or how much good it could do. With vetoes and destructive amendments, Youngkin acts to deepen Virginia's energy woes Last month, Youngkin's Director of the Department of Energy sent a report on performance-based utility regulation to the State Corporation Commission. With it was a cover letter that had nothing to say about performance-based regulation, but a lot to say about the big, bad VCEA. The letter insists that 'By all models, VCEA is unable to meet Virginia's growing energy demand' and urges the SCC to 'prioritize ratepayer affordability and grid reliability over long-term VCEA compliance.' Unfortunately for the Youngkin administration, affordability hasn't been an argument in favor of fossil fuels for many years now. A new solar farm generates a megawatt of electricity more cheaply than a new fossil gas plant, and that will still be true even if Congress revokes renewable energy subsidies – though doing so will make electricity less affordable. The argument from fossil fuel defenders then becomes that the cheapest megawatt is not a reliable megawatt. And that's where meaning matters. Reliability is so important that even the decarbonization mandate of the VCEA contains an important exception: a utility can build fossil fuel generation under certain circumstances, if it is the only way to keep the lights on. Dominion Energy is relying on this escape clause as it seeks regulatory approval to build new fossil gas combustion turbines on the site of an old coal plant in Chesterfield. The move is opposed by local residents, environmental justice advocates and climate activists. (No word on whether they are alarmists or simply alarmed.) They argue Dominion hasn't met the conditions set out in the VCEA to trigger the escape clause, including achieving energy efficiency targets and proving it can't meet its needs with renewable energy, energy storage and demand response programs. Virginia Republicans not only side with Dominion on this, they increasingly favor building gas plants over renewables as a general matter, urging the reliability point. It's an argument that never made much sense for me, given that renewables make up only 5% of PJM's electricity. That's way less than the national average of over 21%, and other grids aren't crashing right and left. The light bulb went off for me while I was watching the May meeting of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation. A PJM representative showed a chart of how the grid operator assigns numbers to different resources according to how they contribute to the electricity supply. Nuclear plants get the highest score because they run constantly, intermittent wind and solar sources get lower scores, with fossil fuel plants in the middle. PJM calls that a reliability score. For some Republicans, that's a slam-dunk: the chart proves renewable energy is unreliable. But in spite of its label, the chart doesn't actually measure reliability; it gives points for availability, which is not the same thing. As I once heard a solar installer testify, few things are as reliable as the sun rising every morning (or rather, the earth rotating). With modern weather forecasting, grid operators can predict with great precision how much electricity from solar they can count on at any given time from solar facilities arrayed across the region. Solar energy is highly reliable, even though it is not always available. Add storage, and the availability issue is also resolved. Obviously, the grid would not be reliable if solar were the only resource operators had to work with. But it isn't. PJM calls on a mix of different sources, plus storage facilities and demand response, to ensure generation precisely matches the peaks and valleys of demand. Reliability is a matter of keeping resources in sync and ensuring a robust transmission and distribution system. The threat to reliability today comes from the mad rush to connect new data centers. PJM has been roundly criticized for not approving new generating and storage facilities' connection to the grid at a fast enough pace to keep up with the increase in demand and retirements of old, money-losing fossil fuel plants. Scrambling to recover, recently it decided to prioritize a smaller number of big, new gas plants over the thousands of megawatts of renewable energy and storage still languishing on its waiting list. Meanwhile, PJM wants utilities to keep operating coal plants even though it will make electricity less affordable and violate state climate laws. In this it is joined by the Trump administration, which wants to require utilities to keep running coal plants explicitly to support the coal industry. Analysts say this is the wrong way to achieve reliability. A recent report from the consulting firm Synapse estimates that PJM's approach will raise residential electricity bills by 60% by 2036-2040. By contrast, reforming its interconnection process and enabling more renewable energy and storage to come online would lower bills by 7%. By Synapse's calculation, Virginia would see the most savings of any state. In other words, Virginia Republicans are pursuing reliability the wrong way. Instead of pressuring Democrats to back away from the VCEA, they ought to be pressuring PJM to reform its approach. Reliable power doesn't have to be expensive, if you take the politics out of it. 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Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Youngkin vetoes clean energy bills supported by Dominion, environmental groups
The Virginia House of Delegates gather during the reconvene session on April 2. (Photo by Charles Paullin/Inside Climate News) RICHMOND, Va.–Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed two bills for the development of small solar projects and energy storage that had won bipartisan votes and support from Dominion Energy, environmental groups and farm and forestry representatives. The bills would have encouraged private homes and companies to initiate solar projects and bolstered the existing utility's efforts to capture electricity from renewable sources for later use. Dominion said in April, in an application to purchase electricity from third-party suppliers, that enhanced solar production and its own plans to store electricity would result in billions of dollars of fuel savings through 2035. Youngkin has described himself as an 'all-of-the-above' energy supporter with plans to support fossil fuel sources as well as renewable technologies. Critics said the vetoes last week raise questions about his commitment to clean energy and illustrate his disdain for the state's landmark decarbonization law, the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The Republican governor, enthusiastic about the development of data centers in the state, has in the past year supported a proposed natural gas peaker plant and renewable sources to encourage such development. But Youngkin rejected the current legislation over his concern that ratepayers for existing utilities, which are reliant on fossil fuel, would bear in part the cost of increased solar production, according to a statement released Tuesday. 'He does not support legislation that puts rate payers at risk,' Peter Finocchio, Youngkin's press secretary, said in an email. Regarding battery storage efforts, Youngkin said that he was relying on market forces. 'Long-duration energy storage is an expensive technology and if utilities believed it to be the best technology to meet demand, they would actively be seeking permission to build them. We must be vigilant to limit cost increases to Virginia's residents,' he said in a 'veto explanation' released on a state website. Josephus Allmond, a staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the governor's action fit a pattern. For months, Youngkin has supported legislation to weaken the VCEA or completely repeal it, he said. 'I think the amendments just show who he truly is: not an 'all-of-the-above' guy. He just doesn't like clean energy,' Allmond said. 'It's disappointing that the governor chose to engage with [the energy legislation] in such an unserious way. We thought we had good meetings.' Dominion Energy spokesperson Aaron Ruby did not respond to requests for comment. Legislation sponsored by Del. Katrina Callsen (D-Charlottesville) and Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-Henrico) would have increased small solar projects to further diversify the state's energy mix. 'Regrettably, Governor Youngkin's veto indicates a prioritization of political motives aligned with Washington rather than the interest of Virginians,' Callsen said in a statement. The VCEA, passed in 2020, mandates that Dominion and Appalachian Power Company have carbon-free energy portfolios within three decades. The state utility regulator oversees an evolving system of credits that encourages utilities to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy production. Beginning in 2021, Dominion was required to obtain renewable energy credits, equaling a percentage of its electricity sales, from renewable energy sources. Dominion satisfied its annual credit requirement, including a 1 percent stipulation for small solar projects, according to a 2023 regulatory filing. Callsen and VanValkenburg's bill aimed to increase credit payments toward small solar projects and, in turn, generate such projects. Under the bill, Dominion would have been required by 2028 to pay 5 percent in renewable energy credits for small solar projects. From 2029 through 2031, and every three years after, the state utility regulator would have set the energy credits levels for utilities. The bill also considered some broader solar aims for Virginia. It sought more commercial solar projects, capable of providing up to 3 megawatts of electricity each, to comprise 1,100 megawatts in total. Those projects by private developers would contribute to the overall goal of 16,100 megawatts in solar power across the state by 2035. Solar projects planned for brownfields, including landfills and former industrial sites that are underutilized, would have been required to have a capacity for 600 megawatts, tripling the current 200-megawatt minimum. Dominion Energy, which supplies electricity in parts of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, supported the expansion of home solar users in part because the utility could benefit. The bill would have extended a deadline for Dominion to recover costs for its strategic program to install distribution lines underground from 2028 to 2032, and delayed a demand for Dominion to recover deficiency payments, or penalties for shortfalls in obtaining credits, from ratepayers. The utility expects an offshore wind project to be operational in 2026, which would offset its credit payments. Youngkin, in his veto memo, balked at the renewable credit plan. Customers would likely have to bear the cost of Dominion's renewable payments, he said, equalling billions of dollars over 10 years. Allmond, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Youngkin's cost numbers were inflated and ignored the benefits of new renewable sources, 'including lower fuel costs.' 'If you actually look at those benefits and put it in context—Dominion customers will pay over $20B for fossil fuel costs alone over the next decade,' Allmond said in an email. 'That number … does not include the health costs that those fossil fuels impose on the communities in which they are combusted.' Clean energy industry representatives saw the veto as a lost chance. The bills would have increased an individual's options for solar at home—by adding rooftop panels—and ease the overall demand in the state, said Jim Purekal, a director at Advanced Energy United, a national trade organization that represents clean-energy companies. 'If I'm putting solar panels on my house, I'm not charging Joe down the road for the solar panels. I'm paying for the solar panels,' Purekal said. 'The energy that I'm generating off of the solar panels, I'm contributing to the grid. I'm not asking for Joe to pay for my solar panels, I'm just asking Joe to pay for the electricity that I'm providing to the grid.' There are costs to changing the energy landscape, but time eases the burden, according to a recent report by the federal Energy Information Administration. 'Distributed generation systems often cost more per unit of capacity than utility-scale systems,' it said in a 2024 report, but noted that savings would follow. 'Cost reductions are expected to continue in the coming years as component markets stabilize, component efficiencies continue to improve, customers and developers take advantage of federal and state incentives, and developers achieve economies of scale through alternative sales strategies,' the report said. The second veto affected an energy storage and distribution bill, joint legislation from Del. Rip Sullivan (D-Fairfax) and Sen. Lamont Bagby (D-Richmond). Their bill would have almost doubled traditional battery facility targets for Dominion as well as Appalachian Power Co., which serves a million customers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Dominion's goal for battery storage facilities would have increased to 5,220 megawatts from 2,700 megawatts. Appalachian Power's goal would have risen to 780 megawatts, from 400. The bill would have also created long-duration energy storage targets so that electricity could be dispatched over a 10- to 24-hour period, including when sunshine and wind are not available. Sullivan described the veto as dismissive of clean energy and the VCEA: 'The governor just couldn't bring himself to do the right thing for Virginia.' 'Instead of signing 2537, or even suggesting to us constructive changes, which of course we'd have entertained,' Sullivan said, 'he has used it to give the Clean Economy Act one last sort of derisive swipe at the back of his hand as he prepares to walk out the door toward his next campaign.' Virginia's utility regulator, the State Corporation Commission, had approved Dominion's proposed construction of long-duration energy storage facilities in 2024. On April 15, Dominion was approved to purchase electricity from third-party storage suppliers. In its application leading to the regulator's approval in April, Dominion said its plan for a combination of solar and the storage projects would 'result in fuel savings of approximately $6.6 billion over the period of 2022 through 2035. Fuel savings for the full lives of all resources in this Development Plan which extend through 2073 are approximately $118.5 billion.' Tension over the VCEA has percolated for years. Youngkin has called the VCEA a 'quagmire,' and Republicans have derided the VCEA as a force that will increase electricity costs. Environmental groups have consistently played defense to prevent weakening of zero-carbon goals. Beyond the vetoes, Youngkin approved a bill from Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D-Richmond) and Rep. Phil Hernandez (D-Norfolk) to expand a 'virtual power plant' pilot program to be designed by the state regulator. The program would allow ratepayers to agree to share electricity with utilities during peak strains on the system. Utilities then would draw electricity from home or business battery storage devices and adjust on-site smart thermostats to ease demand on the electric grid. Angela Navarro, a former State Corporation Commission judge who has since opened up her own energy policy law firm, said thousands of customers could participate and help cope with electricity demand and their own energy costs. 'It's expensive to provide power during those peak events,' Navarro said. 'There's scarcity on the grid. You are providing value, you are alleviating some of that scarcity and therefore you should be compensated for it.' This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News (hyperlink to the original story), a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Appalachian Power's effort to undermine rooftop solar meets stiff opposition
(Photo by) Virginia's investor-owned utilities thought 2025 would be the year they put an end to net metering – and with it, rooftop solar installers' modest competition with their monopoly.. The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) removed many barriers that residents and businesses installing solar panels under the state's net metering law had faced, but it also called for the State Corporation Commission to reevaluate the program, beginning right about now. Not surprisingly, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power are seizing this opportunity to push for changes that would undermine the economic calculus supporting customer-owned solar. Since at least 2007, Virginia law has required that customers of Dominion and APCo who have solar panels on their property be credited for surplus electricity they supply to the grid at the same retail rate they pay for electricity. The credit is applied against the cost of the electricity the customer draws from the grid at times when the panels aren't generating, reducing what they owe on their electric bill. But now that they have the chance, both utilities have filed proposals to end net metering. Both essentially propose to charge new solar customers the full retail rate for the electricity they draw from the grid (with Dominion using a more complicated half-hour 'netting'), but compensate them for electricity fed to the grid only at the utility's 'avoided cost,' or what it pays to buy electricity from other generators. By law, existing customers and new low-income customers with solar would be unaffected. Appalachian Power Company requests reduction to pay rate for net-metering solar customers APCo calculates avoided cost as the wholesale cost of energy and capacity, plus transmission and ancillary services, for a total of less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, a homeowner with solar panels would now pay the full retail rate of about 17 cents/kWh for electricity drawn from the grid, while being credited at less than one-third that amount for electricity put back on the grid. Dominion's approach instead pegs avoided cost to what it pays for solar generation and associated renewable energy certificates (RECs) bought from certain small producers under power purchase agreements, an average of about 9.5 cents/kWh. Dominion's residential rate currently averages about 14 cents/kWh, but would go up to more than 16 cents if its latest rate increase request is granted. The VCEA gave APCo the first swing at the piñata. APCo filed its proposal in September, and the SCC will hold an evidentiary hearing on May 20. Dominion only filed its petition last week, and no hearing date has been set yet. Not surprisingly, APCo's proposal generated fierce opposition from advocates and solar installers. They point out that it's hard enough to make the economics of home solar work with net metering at the retail rate; slashing the compensation for electricity returned to the grid by more than one-third, as Dominion proposes, or two-thirds, as APCo wants, would make solar a losing proposition for most homeowners. Maybe economies of scale and other factors would allow the market for commercial solar to survive under Dominion's program, though Dominion's insistence on confiscating customers' RECs won't make anyone happy. If solar owners definitely lose under APCo's plan, advocates say other ratepayers don't necessarily win. A homeowner's surplus generation travels only the short distance to the nearest neighbor, lessening the need for the utility to generate and transmit power to meet the neighbor's demand. Since the utility charges that neighbor the regular retail rate for the electricity, without having to bring it from somewhere else, the utility saves on transmission costs. On top of that, the surplus solar comes in during the day, when demand is typically higher than at night and electricity is more costly, making solar more valuable to the utility. Plus, it is clean and renewable, and the customer bears all the cost and risk of the investment. Utilities do not share this rosy view. By their way of thinking, solar customers use the grid as free energy storage and backup power, without paying their fair share of grid costs. Not only does this deprive the utility of revenue, but those grid costs now have to be spread out among the remaining customers. This, they say, creates a cost shift from solar owners to everyone else. More than a decade ago, Virginia took tentative steps towards resolving the dispute, with the Department of Environmental Quality setting up a stakeholder group to work towards a 'value of solar' analysis. The process was never completed — the utilities walked away from the table when it appeared the results weren't going to be what they wanted, and the group's work product did not include numeric values or policy recommendations. Virginia is hardly alone in navigating these clashing narratives. Other states and regulators have arrived at very different conclusions as to the 'correct' value of distributed solar to utilities, ratepayers, and society as a whole. States like Maryland kept net metering after a value of solar analysis concluded the benefits outweighed the costs. On the other hand, California famously ended its net metering program in 2022 when solar comprised almost 20% of electricity generated in the state and created a mid-day surplus without enough storage to absorb it; at the time, 45% of that solar was distributed. That same year, however, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed an unpopular bill that would have phased out net metering in the state. The experience of other states, combined with an abundance of research and analysis conducted over the years, gives the SCC a lot to work with as it considers the fate of net metering for APCo's customers this year, and later for Dominion's. Will Virginia's residential solar market survive the coming year? Countering the arguments of the utility's hired witnesses, solar industry and environmental organizations have weighed in on the APCo docket with testimony from experts with nationwide experience. The experts pointed out a range of errors and omissions in the utility's work product. They also presented their own benefit-cost analyses demonstrating a value for distributed solar in excess of the retail price of electricity, using tests often applied to energy efficiency and demand-response programs. Perhaps even more significantly, SCC staff also filed an analysis that found many of the same problems with APCo's proposal, including failures to comply with statutory requirements. The staff report did not include a quantitative analysis, but it urged the importance of considering benefits that APCo had ignored. Like the intervenors, staff recommended the commission reject APCo's plan and retain its net metering program as it is, at least for now. Although the staff report would seem likely to carry weight with the commissioners, it's never easy to predict what the SCC will do in any case before it. But in Virginia, unlike California, distributed solar makes up vanishingly little of total electric generation. Even taking the utilities' arguments at face value, it seems foolish to upend this small but important market to remedy a perceived harm that is, at least for now, more theoretical than real. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Sydney Morning Herald
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Catholic schools election intervention in key seats sparks independents' ire
The Catholic Church in Victoria has intervened in the federal election campaign, attempting to dissuade their school parents from voting for Greens or independent candidates in seven hotly contested electorates. A series of letters written by the Victorian Catholic Education Authority and distributed to parents of Catholic school students in the seats of Monash, Wannon, Goldstein, Kooyong, Cooper, Wills and McNamara, highlights the support provided for Catholic school funding by major party candidates while raising uncertainly about the position of independents and minor party candidates. It urges parents to 'take this letter into consideration' when they vote. The VCEA, as a registered charity, is prohibited by Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) rules from promoting or opposing a political party or candidate for political office. Organisations can be stripped of their charitable status and generous tax treatment if found to have acted for a political purpose. VCEA chairman James Merlino, a former Labor deputy premier of Victoria, defended the intervention. 'The information provided to parents and carers was factually correct and focused on the positions of the main candidates, as this would be most relevant to parents,' he said in a statement. 'It does not endorse a particular candidate. 'It is entirely up to parents how they use the information that has been provided to them. We make no apology for representing the best interests of Catholic schools, parents, teachers and students.' Independent MPs or candidates in three of those electorates have accused the VCEA of misrepresenting their position.
The Age
30-04-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Catholic schools election intervention in key seats sparks independents' ire
The Catholic Church in Victoria has intervened in the federal election campaign, attempting to dissuade their school parents from voting for Greens or independent candidates in seven hotly contested electorates. A series of letters written by the Victorian Catholic Education Authority and distributed to parents of Catholic school students in the seats of Monash, Wannon, Goldstein, Kooyong, Cooper, Wills and McNamara, highlights the support provided for Catholic school funding by major party candidates while raising uncertainly about the position of independents and minor party candidates. It urges parents to 'take this letter into consideration' when they vote. The VCEA, as a registered charity, is prohibited by Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) rules from promoting or opposing a political party or candidate for political office. Organisations can be stripped of their charitable status and generous tax treatment if found to have acted for a political purpose. VCEA chairman James Merlino, a former Labor deputy premier of Victoria, defended the intervention. 'The information provided to parents and carers was factually correct and focused on the positions of the main candidates, as this would be most relevant to parents,' he said in a statement. 'It does not endorse a particular candidate. 'It is entirely up to parents how they use the information that has been provided to them. We make no apology for representing the best interests of Catholic schools, parents, teachers and students.' Independent MPs or candidates in three of those electorates have accused the VCEA of misrepresenting their position.
