by Jeff Reynolds

Virginia has re-joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and residential ratepayers are going to feel it again.

Virginians spent more than 600 million dollars over three years during the last time Virginia was part of the program. The electric bill was the only place where every penny went. The Democratic leadership of the Assembly, Senate and Governor’s Mansion have re-enrolled the state into the “cap and invest” scheme. According to the latest estimates, the annual cost will be more than $500,000,000 in the future. This figure does not include the rising costs of credit now that Virginia has returned to the market.

Analysis has shown that the impact on households is north of $1500 per year.

Glenn Davis, the director of Virginia’s Department of Energy who helped to shape Virginia’s policy on energy, is not shy about what it means for families.

He told Restoration News, “We all know that everyone’s bills will go up.”

Your power bills will skyrocket

In his 2008 presidential campaign, former President Barack Obama laid the foundation for a cap and trade system. He said that “under my plan, electricity rates will skyrocket”. These schemes are well known to have negative consequences for anyone who uses electricity. They also do not benefit the climate.

Democrats have still pushed them.

Other RGGI-states at least acknowledge the obvious: The program increases power costs. They rebate a portion of the revenues back to ratepayers in order to soften this blow. Virginia’s leaders will not accept the basic premise. They deny that the cost increases even exist, whereas every neighboring Democrat run state acknowledges them and writes checks.

Environmental irony is brutal. RGGI regulates only in-state generation. The program does not affect coal plants that are outside Virginia’s boundaries but still provide power to Virginians. During their last participation in the program Virginia’s largest power companies, Dominion, and AEP, reduced the gas-fired plant capacity in the state, subject to penalties, while increasing coal-fired production at West Virginia facilities such as Mount Storm.

Davis’ calculations at the Department of Energy are damning. Virginia’s participation in the program added around two billion extra pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere when compared to staying out. He noted that emissions were 10x higher between coal and gas.

The responsible parties escape the consequences

The program, which was sold as a win for climate change, actually made the air more polluted by forcing utilities into chasing cheaper and dirtier power from out of state. Who pays the penalties? The utilities.

Davis asked: “It would be like me telling you that I wanted to lose weight but every calorie I ate was going to you. How much cake will I eat?” You’re paying for the bill. You’re not penalizing utility companies because the penalty is paid by the ratepayer.

The same ideological overreach which revived RGGI is now strangling the future supply. Virginia must shut down all “fossil” fuel generation, 45 percent of its current capacity by 2045. This is less than 20 year away. Utilities are already building gas plants in West Virginia, whose output will go straight to Virginia’s customers. Building within the state would be a regulatory suicide.

It is easy to predict the outcome: higher costs and less reliability. A regulatory regime will treat molecules that are burned outside of the country as if they were cleaner by magic. A West Virginia co-op has just opened a gas plant that will supply 100 percent of the power to Virginia. The electrons may cross state lines, but the regulatory headaches conveniently remain outside the border.

One paragraph about offshore wind is enough to show the futility. Virginia’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project (CVOW), the only active lease in Virginia, had already reached 70 percent completion at the time that Trump halted East Coast projects. Davis says that “it was allowed to proceed” and that was the right decision at that time because it was 70% completed. The ratepayers were paying every dollar. “You might as well finish the damn thing by that point.”

Davis is blunt about the cost: “It’s the most expensive electronic I will use in my home.” We shouldn’t have done it in the first place.

Hacking the system

Virginia Democrats did not have the power to force offshore wind over reliable and affordable options for energy, so they changed the law in 2020. The Democrats declared offshore wind to be “in the public’s interest” and removed the State Corporation Commission from its duty to choose the most affordable, reliable option for the ratepayers.

Davis explained that “the Democrats in the General Assembly declared the wind to be in the public’s interest and mandated by law that our utility companies build a specific amount of wind before a particular date.” At that point, SCC lost the ability to evaluate it according to the best alternative power generation.

In the 2030s, more wind leases are expected. It’s the same pattern: Political fiat is more important than economics and Virginians are paying a premium for intermittent energy that still requires fossil backup, which the Clean Economy Act aims to ban. Ratepayers will be forced to subsidise the least efficient form of power generation. Since the wind does not blow when needed, the grid needs fossil plants that the law is trying to eliminate.

There is no real gain in reliability. Davis has seen the movie before. When we were in RGGI previously, Dominion used significantly more of its coal-powered facilities in West Virginia than its gas-powered facilities in Virginia.

The program did not clean the air. The program shifted emissions and costs to those least able absorb them.

The new estimates have already started to trickle in and are more than four-times higher than those from the previous stint at RGGI.

The first time, it cost the ratepayers about 2.39 dollars per month.

The state is pretending that the rise in bills is not real, while ratepayers are watching their bills increase across the commonwealth. Virginia’s energy policies have turned out to be a masterclass in good intentions that has produced the opposite of what they intended–higher costs, increased emissions, and less control over their own grid.

Facts are beyond dispute. Only one question remains: for how long will families continue to subsidise the experiment?

Jeff Reynolds, Senior Editor at Restoration News, is a specialist in energy, science, and dark money policy. This column was republished by Restoration News with their permission.