New environmental rules from the federal government may help clear the air here in Virginia.
Clean up your act or shut down. That's the message from the Environmental Protection Agency to power plants that use fossil fuels.
The new rules issued last week are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and Lee Francis at the League of Conservation Voters says they’ll also limit future plants that use natural gas.
"In a state that has plans to get completely away from fossil fuel generation by 2045, we don't think building new fossil fuel power plants is economical or in line with existing policy," says Francis.
Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith is a member of the Congressional Coal Caucus, and he says that the new EPA rules will have alarming consequences for the reliability of the electric grid. But Tim Cywinski at the Sierra Club disagrees.
"I'm glad that we’re talking about reliability because there’s an issue we need to talk about," Cywinski says. "But there's no substantial evidence that shows that limiting this amount of pollution and protecting people from air toxins is going to hurt our energy reliability. We have to increase power in the energy sector to keep the lights on. But we can do that without the tradeoff of making people sick."
He says the next step for the Biden administration should be to tighten rules for existing natural gas power plants, especially with the growing demand for power from data centers across Virginia.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
