He said that the Virginia Clean Economy Act passed in 2020 is simply not working. He was referring to Democrat governor Ralph Northam’s 2020 legislation which would He continued:

It is causing rates to rise, reliability to decrease, and limiting our economic growth. The 2020 forecasts assumed a very low growth in power demand because leaders planned for very small economic growth and job growth. Due to this:

“We need to stop decommissioning baseload generators, build lots of natural gas generation and build small modular reactors, yes.”

Before the day ended, one of Governor Youngkin’s appointed agency heads put his words into practice. Glenn Davis, former legislator and now director of the Department of Energy in Virginia, spoke to a Virginia Senate Committee on behalf of a bill which would have severely weakened VCEA

Senate bill 902 eliminated a key enforcement measure within the law. It would have prevented Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachi Davis’s support for Youngkin on behalf of the committee was a welcome change.

Davis, during his testimony, revealed Dominion told him that fines, called “deficiency payment” in statute, He said that the fines could total $450 million, at $45 per megawatt of green power not produced or for each renewable energy certificate not bought. The utility will proceed to collect this from its customers. Ratepayers spend money on nothing, regardless of whether Dominion is paying a fine, or purchasing renewable energy certificates from an outside company.

The State Corporation Commission’s records did not reveal any specific predictions from Dominion regarding the amount of the deficiency payment. The utility told regulators it could owe some fines in the coming year. has more information on the issue of deficiency payments.. It is clear that despite the construction of new solar and wind power plants, the VCEA’s renewable energy targets will not be achieved with utility-owned and utility-leased generators It will either have to pay fines, or buy RECs from outside.

The failure of Dominion to reach their targets can be attributed to the low performance of its existing solar installations, and how rarely they are actually used. The chart in this Dominion file was hidden. The facilities have only been operational for a small percentage of time. Many of them barely reach 20%. The VCEA still demands that miles and miles of solar be installed.

The number of bills on energy issues that have been introduced by legislators this session is staggering. It’s probably more than the previous three sessions combined. In addition to the usual bills that deal with utility regulation, mandates and non-carbon emitting energy sources, a number of proposals also address the potential regulation of a growing data center Democrats are particularly appalled by the explosion of data centers, which makes it clear that hydrocarbon energy is here to stay.

The extra-deep flood of bills will not change the equation. According to their actions in the first few days of the short session the Democrats are still united in their support for the VCEA. They are likely to reject any and all proposed changes, as well as new versions of past efforts to remove Virginia’s electric vehicle mandate or prevent local bans of the use of gas.