You’ve no doubt noticed your energy bill increasing in the last year, and Dominion Energy is hoping to slow that increase by adding new power generation. But environmental groups are not thrilled by the idea.
“Look, I think this is a great thing for Cumberland County and for the Commonwealth as well. Reliable, affordable energy is in short supply in Virginia,” said Republican state Senator Luther Cifers whose Central Virginia district includes the location for a newly proposed, three-gigawatt natural gas plant from Dominion Energy.
Pitched to regulators last week, Dominion’s Jeremy Slayton says the plant is part of a suite of new energy providing sources that need to generate more than 30 gigawatts in the next 20 years.
“75% of that new power generation is planned to be carbon free: wind, solar, battery storage, advanced technology nuclear," Slayton said. "And the remaining 25% of that is natural gas.”
"We need to grow our energy generation fleet to meet that demand," he added. "By building projects [like these] will lesson our reliance on imported power."
Brennan Gilmore with the environmental group Clean Virginia thinks investment in natural gas is a mistake. He said solar and other renewables can be built quicker and cheaper. And ongoing international conflicts and erratic weather have shown US reliance on fossil fuels is costly for ratepayers. So much so Dominion asked regulators for the ability to spread the cost of recently purchased fuel over several months of bills to avoid sticker shock.
Gilmore said more natural gas plants won't solve that problem.
“We will continue to see this negative impact on what people are paying for their bills, particularly now because of the crisis in Iran,” Gilmore told Radio IQ.
But Senator Cifers said it was actually renewables and legislative Democrats’ commitment to them under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that was costing Virginians money.
“We've created a scheme to collect a lot of money for the government coffers, environmental activists and the green energy market,” he said.
Meanwhile, impacts from Democrats' legislative efforts to decrease power bills remain to be seen, including whether data centers will, as Governor Abigail Spanberger promised, pay their fair share.
