This is the last of my iii-part review of energy legislation introduced in Virginia's 2018 session. The first post covered solar bills; the second focused on free energy efficiency, storage, and electric vehicles. I'k concluding with bills from the miscellaneous file–some of which, however, will probable be among the most significant energy bills addressed this year.

Energy Choice

Readers will call back the ruckus at the SCC that ensued when third-party electricity provider Directly Energy proposed to offering renewable energy to current Dominion customers. The SCC confirmed terminal leap that this is allowed under the Virginia Code, but only until Dominion wins approving for its own renewable energy tariff. Rule immediately filed a tariff, though eight months later, the SCC has nevertheless to rule on it. Irked by the filibuster, Dominion has gotten 2 of its best friends to introduce bills forcing the SCC to human action faster when Dominion wants something. The bills are SB 285 (Saslaw) and HB 1228 (Hugo).

Meanwhile, Senator Sutterlein has introduced SB 837, assuasive customers of Dominion and APCo to purchase electricity generated 100% from renewable energy from whatever supplier licensed to do business organisation in the state, and eliminating the condition that permits such purchases only if the utility itself does non offer a tariff for 100 percent renewable free energy. This would resolve Direct Energy's conundrum, since the approval of a similar Rule tariff would not nullify an existing—or time to come—renewable energy offering from Straight Free energy or anyone else. HB 1528 (Mullin) is the companion bill in the Firm.

Carbon trading

Last May, Governor McAuliffe announced Executive Directive xi, which started the procedure for drafting regulations that would take Virginia participate in a carbon emissions trading program known equally the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Electric utilities would exist allotted, or would buy, carbon emission allowances. This makes non-carbon-emitting sources and energy efficiency more attractive to utilities than fossil fuel generation. Draft regulations were released in late December, and a comment period runs until April 9, 2018. Governor Northam has pledged to follow through on the plan.

As part of this effort, the Assistants's bills include SB 696 (Lewis) and HB 1273 (Bulova), which provide for the country to bring together RGGI. The legislation is not necessary for Virginia to trade with RGGI, but in that location is an advantage to the state in doing then: RGGI member states sale off carbon allowances to polluters, rather than giving them away. That provides a significant source of income to the state that can be used to support make clean energy, climate adaptation, or other priorities. Accordingly, HB 1273 spells out how the auction revenues would be spent. Energy efficiency and renewable energy would both get pieces of the pie.

Republican critics have counter-attacked. HB 1270 (Poindexter) would prohibit Virginia from joining RGGI or implementing carbon rules. Delegate Yancey, whose lucky win following a tied election barely returned him to role, is affirming his Tea Party credentials with HB 1082, prohibiting state agencies from adopting any rules more stringent than what is required by federal police. Then at that place is HB 549 (Freitas), which tries to hobble the General Assembly itself, prohibiting whatsoever future laws that would direct country agencies to adopt regulations that "are likely to have a significant economic touch on" (defined as annihilation over $500!) unless they pass the bill twice to show they really, truly mean information technology.

None of these bills pose a existent threat to the Administration'south carbon initiative; the Governor will veto any that pass. A more serious claiming takes the form of a constitutional amendment, because information technology would not be subject to the Governor'due south veto. Concluding year, Republicans pushed through a bill approving a ramble amendment that would allow the General Assembly (read: the Republican majority) to nullify any existing regulations enacted by any Virginia state agency on any topic at whatever time. Since constitutional amendments have to be passed 2 years in a row before going to the voters for ratification, the same language (which Senator Vogel has reintroduced via SB 826 and SJ69) has to pass again this year.

Bills aimed at the SCC

Our investor-endemic utilities are not the only barrier to cleaner energy in Virginia; oftentimes the SCC does united states no favors either. Some of the free energy efficiency bills discussed in my last post would strength the SCC to evaluate utility efficiency programs differently. Two other bills are also worth noting:

HB 33 (Kory) repeals a provision prohibiting the SCC from imposing environmental conditions that go across what is in a permit, and expressly permits (though it does not require) the SCC to consider environmental effects, including carbon impacts, when evaluating new generating sources.

HB 975 (Guzman) would prohibit the SCC from approving new fossil fuel generating plants unless at to the lowest degree twenty% of the generating capacity approved that twelvemonth uses renewable energy. Too bad we didn't have a rule like this a few years ago, when Dominion sought (and got) approval for the last of its giant combined-cycle gas plants. Today, however, this could be moot. No utility has proposed a new fossil fuel plant other than relatively minor gas combustion turbines (peaker plants), which could meet the 20% rule when paired with even the pocket-size levels of solar generation Rule contemplates.

Coal subsidies

Y'all think yous killed the zombie, simply it pops right support. HB 665 (Kilgore) and SB 378 (Chafin) would reinstate the expired tax subsidies for the mining companies who despoil Virginia mountains. There is petty risk of this corporate welfare becoming law again, considering the governor would surely veto the legislation if it passes. The more interesting question is whether it gets through this yr's more closely divided General Assembly.

Undoing the Dominion handouts

The boondoggle Rule won in 2015—the now infamous SB 1349, which allowed the utility to continue overearnings and avert SCC rate reviews until into the next decade—has been in the news a lot lately. Under force per unit area from legislators and the media, Rule has agreed to revisit the so-chosen "charge per unit freeze." That doesn't mean information technology wants to requite the coin back. We hear the company is working on a deal with House and Senate leaders that lets it spend its ill-gotten gains on things it wants to do anyway: some for renewables, some for grid upgrades, anything but refunds.

And then far, Rule's friends in the Senate have its back. Under the guidance of Frank Wagner, the original SB 1349 patron, and Dick Saslaw, Dominion'south summit ally amid the Democrats, the Commerce and Labor Committee today killed Chap Petersen's SB 9, which would have restored the SCC'south ability to review utility spending and order refunds. The Business firm companion nib, HB 96 (Rasoul) has not yet been taken up. Currently, no other bills are on file addressing the overearnings, but both Saslaw and Republican Tommy Norment take promised they have first-class bills in the works.

UPDATE January 23: On the last day to file legislation, Terry Kilgore presented the states with the offset of the new utility boondoggle bills. HB 1558 calls for a modest portion of the overcharges to be rebated to customers, after which overcharging would go back to being the normal form of business concern. Wagner, Saslaw and Newman filed their own bills, supposedly on January 19, though these evaded posting on the website until today. I hear they are similar but haven't ha time to read them. Petersen, meanwhile, played a new card, introducing SB 955, which would empower the SCC to review the overearnings and gild refunds as appropriate.

Over the past few days the Richmond Times-Dispatch has run a three-role special report detailing Dominion Energy'due south grip on the Virginia Full general Assembly and the visitor'southward abuse of that power to enrich itself at the expense of its captive customers. Journalists Robert Zullo and Michael Martz examine how Dominion'south utilise of business and personal connections, campaign contributions and lobbying led to a serial of laws that enriched the company and eroded the State Corporation Commission's regulatory authority.

And Dominion still gets off too piece of cake.

But earlier we get into that, first let me praise the RTD for fifty-fifty running this serial. As recently as a few years ago, the paper assiduously avoided printing anything critical of Dominion exterior the narrow confines of letters to the editor. News articles almost invariably adopted Dominion'due south messaging and quoted Dominion spokespersons with no attempt at independent verification. A single quote from an environmentalist or other critic, cached deep in the text, represented the only nod towards journalistic residual.

This has changed, equally the paper's remarkable exposé demonstrates. Zullo and Martz are not alone; columnist Jeff Schapiro frequently criticizes Dominion in means that would never take seen impress before. Somehow the RTD'due south editors have found their spine.

The authors don't editorialize. They quote a wide array of insiders and observers, though the absenteeism of voices from the ecology customs is hitting. The coverage of personalities is sometimes even positive; Dominion CEO Tom Farrell, for instance, comes off more than as an upstanding citizen than every bit a chief manipulator.

Indeed, many of the critics interviewed for the series pull their punches. Nigh of those quoted are full participants in the "Virginia Fashion," a system in which going along to go along is embedded in the political civilisation. They are conscientious when criticizing Dominion, unwilling to tar their colleagues and, perhaps, aware they owe their ain professional success to the same system that got us into this mess.

Overall, still, Dominion is correct to hate the hot white light of journalistic scrutiny. Corporate greed doesn't expect good in impress when the readers are its victims, and Dominion'southward machinations are recorded here in excruciating item. They culminate in the passage of 2015's SB 1349, the constabulary stripping the Country Corporation Commission of its authorisation to review utility base of operations rates and order refunds until 2022.

Dominion positioned its pecker as a way to "protect" customers from the costs of complying with the federal Make clean Power Program, but it was not hard to recognize the Clean Power Plan equally a politically charged fig leaf. SB 1349 was always about letting Dominion keep excess earnings. The Clean Ability Plan, after all, was not scheduled to kick in until 2022, when rates would unfreeze. Meanwhile, as 1 SCC commissioner estimates, Rule will go on as much equally a billion dollars of money it has not earned.

All the same by concentrating on the money, the RTD misses bigger implications. Dominion'southward corruption of our legislative process doesn't just mean consumers are getting ripped off. It ways Dominion has been able to undermine efforts to reduce energy use, protect our electric grid, motion to greater employ of renewable free energy, and gratis us from dependence on fossil fuels.

Heck, under Dominion'southward influence, elected leaders don't fifty-fifty appreciate why these should be their priorities. Politicians genuinely think building fracked-gas pipelines like the Atlantic Declension and Mountain Valley pipelines will lower energy costs. (In case you missed it, they won't.) This is the real harm Dominion does, that legislators don't even know they've internalized the utility's propaganda. This is the practise of the "third dimension of power," the hidden blazon of power described in old UVA professor Vivian Thomson'due south recent book Climate of Capitulation.

As a outcome it doesn't occur to our elected leaders to inquire questions when Dominion promises to reduce carbon emissions while planning to build more fossil fuel generation. (The answer to the question is in the fine print; or if you prefer blunt voice communication, it's a lie.)

These leaders acquiesce when Rule lobbyists urge them to reject mandatory free energy efficiency standards on the footing that Virginia has such low-price electricity (wrong) that nosotros can't succeed at energy efficiency the way other states do (and anyway the SCC won't let u.s.a., so we shouldn't fifty-fifty try).

Rule takes baby steps on renewable free energy, and elected officials express their gratitude without noticing how dismally far behind our neighboring states we remain. (How kind of Dominion! Let'south requite them some more money!) Democrats used to try to laissez passer renewable energy mandates; they don't any more than. Dominion doesn't similar to be told what to practise. And so rather than fight and lose, legislators now say they don't like mandates. That's a true climate of capitulation.

In short, the people's representatives laissez passer bills Rule wants, or reject ones Dominion opposes, and persuade themselves the legislature is in accuse.

The RTD cites one especially telling example of this. "Since 1996, Dominion has been [Delegate Ken Plum's] elevation political donor, contributing $105,750, according to the Virginia Public Access Project." Nonetheless, "'I've never felt squeezed by them,' Plum said of the utility's lobbying corps. 'I take felt informed by them.'"

That's what yous call good lobbying. The lobbied official never feels squeezed, just informed.

It's obvious enough that Dominion distributes coin to legislators from both parties considering it expects to purchase influence. Legislators know this, and many acknowledge that information technology works on their colleagues. As for themselves, nonetheless, they are certain they can accept money without being influenced. Even Ken Cuccinelli, who advocates for the SCC to regain its authority over Dominion, dismisses the idea of banning campaign contributions from public utilities. (Heed you, he offers no other solutions.)

Voters are rightly more skeptical, as demonstrated by the groundswell of support for Senator Chap Petersen'due south proposals to repeal the rate freeze and to bar campaign contributions from regulated public utilities. Dozens of candidates seeking office this yr have pledged non to accept Dominion coin, and according to the group Activate Virginia, 8 incumbents and 46 Business firm candidates have promised to gyre dorsum the rate freeze.

In both cases, the question is why so few incumbents take signed on. Perhaps, after reading the RTD's report, they will empathize why they should. What'due south at stake goes mode beyond money.

DominionLogoA Senate committee apace killed SB 1095, a bill introduced past Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) that could have brought an early end to a v-year prohibition on regulators' power to review Dominion Virginia Ability's earnings and to order refunds where warranted. The prohibition, passed ii years ago as part of 2015's SB 1349 (Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach), volition mean every bit much as a billion dollars in extra cash to the utility—money that would otherwise be returned to customers.

After losing the vote on SB 1095 in Senate Commerce and Labor, Petersen introduced SB 1593, a bill that would have prohibited campaign contributions from public service corporations like Rule Power. He was forced to withdraw the bill when Senate leaders complained he had filed information technology late.

Score 2 for Rule. But in case you idea the utility giant might choose to prevarication low for a while, consider some other of this year'southward bills: HB 2291 (Terry Kilgore, R-Gate Urban center). The legislation allows Dominion to seek approval to accuse customers for billions of dollars in nuclear power found upgrades. Kilgore has nerveless $162,000 in campaign contributions from Rule's parent company over the years, fifty-fifty though he represents an area of the state that is not served past Dominion Virginia Power (meaning it won't be his constituents paying for his bill). Astoundingly, the neb passed the House of Delegates with only two dissenting votes (bandage by Mark Keam, D-Vienna, and Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke).

Plainly, there is a pattern here. It actually began at to the lowest degree every bit far dorsum as 2014, when some other Kilgore-sponsored pecker passed allowing Rule to shift onto its customers several hundred million dollars of nuclear development costs that otherwise would not accept been recovered for many years, if ever. The legislation inspired much criticism, merely little activeness.

Taken together, these legislative giveaways add together up to enormous sums of money. The 2015 legislation involved every bit much equally a billion dollars in customer payments that exceed the profit margin allowed by the Land Corporation Commission, according to an gauge offered by one commissioner. In the absence of SB 1349, Dominion would likely have had to issue refunds, lower rates, or both.

At the time, Rule claimed that the EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan would impose huge costs on ratepayers unless the General Assembly acted to finish base of operations rates from ascent. Legislators weren't told the real effect of SB 1349 would be to keep base rates from falling. And meanwhile, customers' utility bills could go on to rise because base rates make up but a portion of monthly bills.

Petersen's beak this year took discover of the fact that the Make clean Power Plan is now highly unlikely to accept upshot. SB 1095 would take reinstated the SCC'southward authority to review rates if and when the Clean Power Plan was deemed truly dead. This misses the mark but in being way too generous to Dominion. As the SCC has pointed out, the review freeze period will be over before the Clean Power Programme is slated to take outcome, and so SB 1349 could not possibly protect ratepayers from compliance costs anyway.

SB 1349 is currently beingness challenged in court as an unconstitutional abrogation of the SCC'southward power. Two former Attorneys General, Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Andy Miller, have weighed in on the side of consumers. The current Attorney Full general, Democrat Mark Herring, was harshly critical of the bill when it was before the General Assembly, but now says he is obligated to defend the law.

SB 1349 passed the General Assembly 2 years ago amongst great defoliation most what was in the pecker and what it all meant. Legislators padded it out with modest solar-energy and energy-efficiency provisions to make information technology palatable to skeptical Democrats and ensure it would be signed past Governor McAuliffe.

Merely this year, legislators have no such excuse. They cannot have missed the torrent of criticism the police force inspired, or the point that Dominion won't spend a dime of its ill-gotten gain on compliance with the Clean Power Plan. It is difficult to see the 9-two vote in Commerce and Labor to kill Petersen's SB 1095 as anything but a blatant, bipartisan souvenir to Dominion. (The dissenting votes came from Republicans Dick Black and Stephan Newman.)

Rule's corrosive effect on Virginia politics is i of the main threads of a volume published last year called Virginia Politics & Government in a New Century: The Price of Power. Author Jeff Thomas outlines a whole host of means in which Virginia politics have get mired in corruption. SB 1349 is Exhibit A.

Now the unearned largesse for Dominion—and the ignominious end to Senator Petersen'due south effort to rein in Rule's influence—have become an issue in this year's governor's race. Republicans Denver Riggleman and Corey Stewart and Democrat Tom Perriello are all taking aim at the connexion between Dominion'south entrada spending and the billion-dollar boondoggle it received from SB 1349. If Kilgore's HB 2291 passes the Senate this calendar month, they volition have some other example on which to build their case that Rule's campaign donations have corrupted Virginia's legislative process.

Legislators themselves publicly pass up the thought of a causal relationship between the steady stream of campaign cash and their votes in favor of the bills, while privately acknowledging the sway Dominion holds over the General Assembly. Indeed, the comfortable fiction that campaign donations don't affect a politician's votes is such an insult to voters' intelligence that the wonder is why it took so many years to become a entrada issue.

Given Wagner and Kilgore's leadership roles in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, the issue might not seem like obvious fodder for the Republican master campaign. Of course, Wagner is also running for governor on the Republican ticket, so the assaults of challengers Riggleman and Stewart might only be tactics designed to undermine the competition. If voters answer, though, nosotros can await to hear a lot more word of authorities corruption.

In today's chaotic political environment, Democrats who don't speak out could find themselves under fire, too. Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, the other Democrat running for Governor, has accepted over $97,000 from Dominion since 2008, according to VPAP.org, so far seems not to have joined the chorus of voices criticizing Dominion's influence.

The anti-corporate sentiments that fueled Bernie Sanders' entrada accept only intensified with Donald Trump'due south embrace of bankers and oil barons. Autonomous voters today are less likely than e'er to forgive leaders of their own party for cozying up to large corporations. If either Autonomous candidate for governor cedes the issue of clean government to the other—or to Republicans—this might exist the election in which it matters.

Students rally for climate action in Alexandria, Virginia. Photo courtesy of Sierra Club.

Students rally for climate action in Alexandria, Virginia. Photograph courtesy of Sierra Club.

Virginia's 2016 legislative session ended last calendar week with a ane-twenty-four hour period veto session, an ideological battleground where both sides fought lustily but nobody won.

Republicans could not muster the votes to overcome McAuliffe's veto of legislation extending taxpayer handouts for coal mining companies. Nor could they overcome vetoes of HB 2 and SB 21, bills requiring that any state programme implementing the EPA's Make clean Ability Plan exist submitted to the Full general Associates for approval.

They did, nevertheless, succeed in defending a budget item prohibiting the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) from developing a state implementation plan while a federal stay of the Clean Ability Plan remains in upshot. (For that they needed only a majority; overriding a veto requires a 2-thirds super-majority.)

These votes won't finish the skirmishing. The taxation credit for companies that mine Virginia coal doesn't elapse until the cease of 2016, and Terry Kilgore, Chairman of the Firm Commerce and Labor Committee and a reliable ally of the coal antechamber, has already promised another endeavor adjacent session to extend the handouts.

As for the Clean Ability Programme, the upkeep maneuver will cause headaches, as intended, but information technology'due south simply a stall tactic. Virginia may end up submitting a clumsier plan than it otherwise would, if it has to scramble to meet the borderline one time the stay is lifted. Even that isn't certain. DEQ has already completed much of the fact-gathering portion of its work, including issuance of a written report from the stakeholder grouping it convened to consider options. And the new fiscal yr, when the prohibition kicks in, doesn't brainstorm until July 1. A lot of work could go done in two months.

Moreover, Republicans seem to have a losing mitt here, even if they cake DEQ from completing its work. If the Make clean Power Plan survives assault in the courts and Virginia doesn't submit a plan, EPA volition write i for us. On the other hand, if the Clean Power Plan fails judicial scrutiny, EPA will have to rewrite it in a mode that might be fifty-fifty worse for coal.[1]

But the Republican attacks on the Make clean Power Programme have never been nigh protecting our ability to plan our ain energy future—or for that matter, about protecting ratepayers. Retrieve that a year ago the General Assembly passed Dominion Power's SB 1349, with its so-called "rate freeze," on the theory that the Clean Power Plan volition cost so much money that electric rates needed to be frozen betwixt now and the time the plan actually kicks in, and regulators forbidden from scrutinizing utilities' books in the meantime.

I know: that makes no sense. But don't ask me for a better caption; the rationale never stood up to scrutiny. And Republicans weren't the only ones supporting this peculiar legislation. Once the original anti-Make clean Power Plan elements were stripped out, plenty of Democrats got on board to prove their fealty to Rule.

We have since learned 2 things almost SB 1349 and one thing nearly the Clean Power Plan:

  • According to ane State Corporation Commission judge, SB 1349 volition toll Virginia ratepayers a billion dollars in overpayments to Rule.
  • Dominion Ability customers are about to run into their rates go up regardless of the "freeze," equally a event of Dominion getting approving to build a new gas-fired ability plant;
  • The terminal Clean Power Plan requires nigh nothing from Virginia, and compliance might even save u.s.a. money.

Now that we know all this, wouldn't you expect to hear legislators clamoring for the repeal of the simulated rate freeze?

Cock an ear. What do you hear?

Crickets.

To exist sure, many Republicans who pushed for SB 1349 were more than interested in the threat the Make clean Ability Plan posed to the coal industry. Their support for the coal tax subsidies shows Republicans have no qualms about charging taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually to help coal companies. Perhaps when you're in the business organisation of giving away other people's money, another billion dollars doesn't seem similar a stretch.

Still, if business organization for the people of coal country were really at work, we might accept expected success for McAuliffe'southward budget amendment that put one million dollars into funding for solar projects, with priority for those in Southwest Virginia. Compared to the coal subsidies, admittedly, this isn't much. In NoVa, a one thousand thousand dollars is one high-end home, green features actress. Spread around the coalfields, though, it could accept powered upwardly to a hundred homes with solar. Mayhap the symbolism was too hard to take. In whatever case, Republicans scuttled the funding.

Rhetoric triumphed over substance in other ways this session, likewise. The Full general Assembly voted to establish a Shoreline Resiliency Fund, but failed to fund information technology. Clean energy bills from both sides of the alley fizzled; with few exceptions, those that weren't killed outright were sent to a newly-appear subcommittee conceived as a dumping basis for solar bills. No meeting schedule has yet been announced for this subcommittee.

Given the urgency of the climate crunch and the pressing need to develop our clean energy sector, this twelvemonth's stalemate feels particularly frustrating. We should all ask for our money dorsum.

[1] Sure, at that place'due south a third possibility: the EPA plan could be withdrawn under a President Trump. Simply if that'due south our future, then defending the Clean Power Programme could be the least of our worries. Hoo-boy. Best not to recollect about it.

" data-medium-file="https://powerforthepeopleva.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/valdemar-melanko-1965-public-domain.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="https://powerforthepeopleva.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/valdemar-melanko-1965-public-domain.jpg?w=652" class="size-medium wp-image-829" src="https://powerforthepeopleva.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/valdemar-melanko-1965-public-domain.jpg?w=300&h=221" alt=""Keep counting, Mr. Farrell. There's a billion more where this came from." Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Valdemar-Melanko-1965 public domain. " width="300" height="221" srcset="https://powerforthepeopleva.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/valdemar-melanko-1965-public-domain.jpg?w=300&h=221 300w, https://powerforthepeopleva.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/valdemar-melanko-1965-public-domain.jpg?w=600&h=442 600w, https://powerforthepeopleva.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/valdemar-melanko-1965-public-domain.jpg?w=150&h=110 150w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px">

"Go on counting, Mr. Farrell. There's a billion more where this came from." Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Eatables Valdemar-Melanko-1965 public domain.

The Land Corporation Commission has ordered Rule Virginia Ability to refund $xix.7 million to customers, reflecting backlog earnings during 2013 and 2014. But according to the Nov 23 society, the company volition not have to lower its rates going forward, due to its success last winter in getting a nib passed that freezes base of operations rates and eliminates rate reviews until 2022.*

That legislation, SB 1349, was widely criticized (including by me) as a handout to Dominion. How big a handout is now clear: "over a billion dollars," according to the calculation of Judge James Dimitri, ane of the three SCC commissioners.

Writing in a partial dissent, Guess Dimitri called SB 1349 unconstitutional, noting that Article 9, Section 2 of Virginia's Constitution explicitly assigns rate-setting authority to the SCC. Thus, said Dimitri, the SCC should give no credence to SB 1349, and consequently should order a refund covering 2013 and 2014, and follow normal procedure to lower base of operations rates going frontwards.

A rate decrease is appropriate, according to Dimitri, considering "The tape in this instance and other biennial review proceedings demonstrate that, when conventional charge per unit standards are applied, there have been, and are projected to continue to exist, excessive base rates that are being paid by Dominion customers. "

And again: "The trend of current rates producing revenues over cost and a fair return has been standing. For 2015, the Commission Staff projects revenues over a fair render of $301 million, and $299 1000000 for 2016. . . The current rate levels, which the Committee has not been authorized to adjust, are designed to produce and have been producing annual excess revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars."

Equally a result, concludes Approximate Dimitri, "If base rates are stock-still at electric current levels for at to the lowest degree the next seven years, earnings over and higher up the Company's cost of service and a fair render have the potential to reach well over a billion dollars, at client expense."

The two other judges, Mark Christie and Judith Jagdmann, don't address the constitutionality issue in their opinion for the bulk. Indeed, it appears that none of the parties in the case raised the ramble question in the proceedings, nor did any of the judges asking briefing of the upshot after, every bit sometimes happens.

Taking a cue from Judge Dimitri, however, on December 11 the Virginia Committee for Fair Utility Rates, one of the parties to the rate example, filed a Petition for Rehearing or Reconsideration, objecting to the commission's order for failing to rule explicitly on the consequence. The Committee asked for a hearing on the constitutional issue and asking for an gild finding the provisions of SB 1349 unconstitutional.

Three days later, however, the SCC denied the petition in a 2nd social club, noting that the ramble argument had not been raised during the charge per unit example. Dmitri again dissented, saying he would grant afterthought.

What happens now? Unremarkably any conclusion issued by the SCC tin can be appealed to the Virginia Supreme Courtroom; just then, ordinarily you lot accept to heighten an issue during a proceeding before you tin appeal it. Information technology'southward not clear whether the Court will hold to hear an entreatment of these two orders if the Virginia Committee for Fair Utility Rates decides to pursue it.

With a billion dollars at stake, this is not an argument that should be ignored simply because it wasn't raised in time. But in that location is also a reason the claim wasn't raised earlier in the case: information technology'due south a rate case looking backwards, not forwards, so the SCC didn't really have to address SB 1349.

Legal experts tell me that the Virginia Commission for Fair Utility Rates—or anyone else for that matter—can still challenge the constitutionality of SB 1349 by filing a new and split up case seeking a declaratory judgment from the SCC. A new case, with new arguments, yielding a conclusion on the merits, would most certainly exist appealable to the Court.

__________________________

*The case is PUE-2015-00027. Links to documents on the SCC website work simply some of the time. That counts as an improvement.

Photo credit: Corrina Beall

Photo credit: Corrina Beall

On August 3 the EPA released the last version of its Clean Power Plan, the Obama Administration's endeavour to lower carbon pollution from existing power plants. It's a big, complex rule—in big measure considering it gives states so many options for compliance—but a few things are immediately clear. One, it'due south just as well I never got around to reading the fine impress of the proposed programme, because the last rule is practically a practise-over. Two, this do-over goes so piece of cake on Virginia that the Republican hissy fit almost the proposed rule was (and is) a total waste of time. And three, Dominion Virginia Ability's little "charge per unit freeze" risk, rushed through the General Assembly this year, is ready to pay off big for the visitor.

The proposed rule was never as tough for Virginia to meet as opponents asserted. Their claims of billions of dollars in added costs had little basis in fact—indeed, a recent University of Virginia analysis found numerous errors in the Virginia Tech cost written report that many detractors relied on. But the proposed rule had enough of a bite that it would have been a major commuter of new policies and investments. By contrast, the final rule is then soft on Virginia that it volition likely take a back seat to customer demand and market forces in shaping our energy future.

This is welcome news to some, like Governor Terry McAuliffe, who pushed EPA to go easier on Virginia and is trumpeting the results every bit a good outcome. It'due south a thwarting, though, to those who are worried nearly climate modify and who believe Virginia is well positioned to brand much steeper cuts in carbon pollution than the new rule requires.

Expect at EPA's table below and yous will see how easy our path is. The Clean Power Plan allows states to choose whether to mensurate carbon emissions by rate or by mass. Using rate, EPA's assay of the business organisation-as-usual instance projects Virginia would go far at an emissions charge per unit of 959 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hr by 2020 without the Make clean Power Programme. With the Plan in place, that number will have to drop to 934. That's a deviation of merely 3%, an easy target to encounter only past adding enough emissions-complimentary air current and solar to the existing fuel mix.

VA goals under CPP

Alternatively, the land can choose to measure CO2 emissions past mass (total curt tons of CO2 emitted). Using that approach, EPA says all Virginia has to do is ensure CO2 emissions are no higher in 2030 than they were in 2012. Indeed, the 2030 goal is higher than what EPA expects Virginia to accomplish under business organization equally usual without the program!

In other words, we can achieve our assigned goals simply by using energy a bit more efficiently and meeting any increase in electric demand with renewable energy. Lucky for us, this happens to exist exactly what customers are request for—especially the companies that are driving the growth in demand, including data centers and how-do-you-do-tech companies. Companies similar Apple, Google and Amazon are committed to running on wind and solar.

And given that leaders from both parties in Virginia back up energy efficiency and desire to see our utilities add together wind and solar to their portfolios, compliance with the Make clean Ability Plan is a no-brainer. Heck, if the utilities aren't interested in deploying renewables, the private sector will be glad to do it. The legislature could merely loosen upwards the utilities' monopoly protections, open up the solar and wind sectors to off-white competition, and permit private renewable companies and big utilities accept at it in an open up market.

But look, there's more: call up all the annoyed from legislators about how West Virginia and Kentucky had information technology so much easier than nosotros did nether the proposed rule? No longer.* Not only does the last rule make it harder for them than for u.s., only it also proposes a organization for buying and selling clean energy credits known as Emission Rate Credits, opening the possibility of a tidy petty profit opportunity. If Virginia ramps up renewable energy production beyond what we need for compliance, as we can hands do, there might be some eager buyers merely over the edge.

Of course, anyone truly concerned about climate change has to hope our neighbors will proudly surpass their carbon reduction goals and even set tougher ones for themselves. Even if they don't, we hope Virginia will set up ambitious climate goals for itself, foregoing the opportunity to profit from selling credits. But it'due south nice to know that if nosotros don't achieve these heights of virtue, in that location is money to be made.

For the moment, Virginia Republicans are still bashing the EPA as though the Make clean Power Program were anything but an opportunity. One has to wonder whether they've fifty-fifty read the new, final plan. In an op-ed published August 8, Delegates Israel O'Quinn and Scott Taylor claim the Clean Ability Plan volition have "severe" effects on Virginia's economy, citing the highly questionable claims of conservative State Corporation Committee staff, made months ago most the proposed plan.

No doubt the delegates wrote their piece before the final dominion came out, and didn't want to consign it to the dustbin but because the rule turned out to be a creampuff. That must likewise be why Virginia Republican leaders joined the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity at a rally at the Academy of Richmond on Monday evening to lambaste the EPA. There, they launched a neb that would crave General Assembly approving of any state implementation plan (an approval which, they assure usa, volition not exist forthcoming). Republicans don't intend to give up their talking points just considering information technology turns out their hysteria was misplaced. Anti-regulatory zealotry is impervious to reality.

They're non the just ones who don't want to admit the concluding rule volition be inexpensive to meet, and could even salve customers coin. Dominion lobbyists spent the whole of the 2015 legislative session ginning upward fears that the Clean Ability Plan would cause skyrocketing electricity bills unless legislators passed a constabulary (SB 1349) freezing rates and limiting regulatory review. The lobbyists' pitch was that the legislation would proceed Dominion from passing along compliance costs to ratepayers. The immediate effect, notwithstanding, was to protect the utility's excess earnings, avoiding rebates and charge per unit reductions for customers.

The upshot is that for the second year in a row, and for several years to come, the General Assembly will permit Dominion to overcharge consumers. Remember that in 2014, the utility won the ability to accuse ratepayers for seventy% of the hundreds of millions of dollars it had spent so far on a new nuclear plant that may never become approving (especially at present that we've seen the price tag). The maneuver soaked up enough of the company's excess earnings to avoid a refund.

A consultant for the Chaser General'south Office of Consumer Counsel has analyzed the effects of the 2014 and 2015 bills and ended that last year's nuclear boondoggle price ratepayers $188.4 million that would otherwise have been refunded, while the 2015 nib allows Rule to avert reducing rates every bit it would otherwise exist required to do. (Meet SCC Example PUE2015-00027 OAG Smith Testimony, available through the Land Corporation Commission website.)

As a result, concludes the annotator, Dominion volition rack upwardly excess earnings. "Looking forwards, projected revenues for the 2016 rate year will exceed the Company's cost, including a fair charge per unit of render, by approximately $229.4 million." But, he adds, "considering of Virginia constabulary, the Company'south base rates cannot be adjusted downwards prospectively in the current case." That'south just 2016. SB 1349 shields Dominion'due south earnings from review through the end of the decade and prevents rate adjustments until 2022.

During the fight over SB 1349, a lot of people voiced skepticism that the Clean Power Program would cause utility bills to rise by very much, if at all. But no one expected Rule'southward tactic to pay off so quickly. With compliance then easily attainable, Dominion's excuse for SB 1349 has crumbled, but the payoff is but get-go.**

*There is a delicious irony here. Under pressure to produce a dominion that volition withstand legal attacks from coal states, EPA inverse the approach to exist more even-handed and thus more defensible—simply with the event that it is now much harder for coal states to comply.

**Dominion'due south maneuvers may be bad for customers, but they have been very adept for shareholders. Dominion Resources just reported second-quarter earnings of $413 million, more twice as much equally the aforementioned period last year. SB 1349's patron, Senator Frank Wagner, did pretty well, too. Since January of this twelvemonth, Wagner has collected $6,000 in campaign contributions from Dominion and another $23,000 in contributions from several of its top executives—including CEO Tom Farrell, who can easily afford information technology out of his $17.3 million compensation.

photo by Peter Burke/Wikimedia

A nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Photograph past Peter Burke/Wikimedia

Rule Virginia Power is projecting that the capital cost of a third nuclear reactor at its North Anna facility will total over $19 billion, according to filings in its 2015 biennial review before the State Corporation Commission (PUE-2015-00027).

This works out to over $xiii,000 per installed kilowatt, according to the testimony of Scott Norwood, an energy consultant hired by the Attorney Full general's Department of Consumer Counsel to analyze Dominion'south earnings evaluations. He notes that this upper-case letter price is "approximately ten times the uppercase toll of the Company's new Brunswick combined cycle unit," which volition burn natural gas.

As a result of this loftier upper-case letter cost, the "total delivered cost of power from NA3 is more than than $190 per MWh in 2028." That translates into xix cents per kilowatt-hour.

By comparison, in 2014 the boilerplate wholesale price of electricity in the PJM region (which includes Virginia) was 5.3 cents per kWh. Dominion currently sells electricity to its customers at retail for between 5.v and eleven cents/kWh.

In other words, NA3 is ridiculously expensive.

Rule had kept its cost projections for NA3 secret until this rate case forced the disclosure. Previously, executives had acknowledged only that the cost would be "far northward of 10 billion."

This cost revelation may point to the real reason Dominion pushed and then hard for SB 1349, the 2015 legislation that insulates the company from charge per unit reviews until 2022.

As Norwood testifies, "DVP forecasts a dramatic increase in NA3 development costs over the next five years, during which there will be no biennial reviews."

These costs are dramatic. A table included in Norwood's testimony shows Rule expects to have spent $4.7 billion on NA3 development past the finish of 2020. Past the fourth dimension the SCC is immune to review this spending, more than one-quarter of the full toll volition accept been spent, and Dominion volition be looking to ratepayers to encompass the bills.

With perfect deadpan, meanwhile, Dominion executives told legislators this year that SB 1349 was necessary to protect ratepayers from higher costs to exist imposed by compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency'due south Clean Power Programme.

This isn't the first time legislators accept been snookered in the cause of NA3. Retrieve that in 2014 Dominion succeeded in lobbying for a law that allowed information technology to shift 70% of already-spent NA3 development costs onto ratepayers, some $323 one thousand thousand. The issue was to soak upwardly the company'southward over-earnings and so it would not have to rebate millions of dollars to customers.

This yr'south snookering was more comprehensive. Given that Dominion has continued to over-earn, those who opposed SB 1349 assumed it was this twelvemonth's version of the 2014 maneuver, designed to protect over-earnings this year and for years to come. Now information technology appears the existent purpose of SB 1349 was to allow Dominion to spend freely on NA3 development costs in amounts that it knew would exist unacceptable to country regulators, not to mention the public.

That Rule idea information technology could do then in secret is specially reprehensible. Lawmakers and the Governor should be outraged past this charade, whether they voted for SB 1349 or not.

The Attorney General's function is now trying to force Rule to justify NA3 to regulators before it racks up billions in sunk costs. Norwood recommends that the SCC "initiate a proceeding to accost the prudence of DVP'southward planned future investments for evolution of NA3. This proceeding would permit the Company to present its instance regarding the need for and price effectiveness of NA3, including the value of the proposed project from a fuel diversity perspective and as a ways to comply with whatsoever last version of the Environmental Protection Agency'southward proposed Make clean Power Plan and other potential time to come ecology regulations."

Photograph credit: Corrina Beall

The General Assembly made a mad dash to the stop of the 2015 legislative session last week. House Republicans were in a hurry to finish up a day early, even if bills suffered as a result, in the peculiar belief that prioritizing speed over quality would demonstrate their competence.

Plain they thought that would play to the anti-government oversupply. And I guess it does; if you lot weren't anti-government before they pulled a stunt like that, y'all probably are now.

Being in a blitz had to be their excuse for that ethics pecker they pushed through in the final hours. I can finally understand why Senator Dick Saslaw says, "Y'all can't legislate ideals." What he means is that the Virginia Full general Assembly can't legislate ethics. Most of the residue of u.s.a. would take no problem doing it. Our legislators, nonetheless, are just too fond of living well on the tab of corporate lobbyists.

So the new bill drops the gift limit from $250 to $100—but then removes the aggregate cap, allowing for an unlimited number of $99 gifts. Gifts that go over the limit only that are donated to charity now don't count, providing a nice way for a legislator to buy popularity at no expense to himself.

A report from the group ProgressVA analyzes the bill's issue and concludes that some 70% of lobbyists' 2014 giving would even so be legal under the new law, while opening up some brand-new loopholes. Amidst the most egregious is that lobbyists and their clients will at present exist able to pay for legislators to fly around the state for official meetings without the travel having to exist disclosed, much less reimbursed. This means legislators from southwest Virginia can expect even more than face time with coal lobbyists, but now on corporate jets—and their constituents will never know near it.

Addressing (or not) the outcome of extravagant vacations paid for by companies with business before the legislature, the beak imposes a requirement that there be "a reasonable human relationship between the purpose of the travel and the official duties of the requester." That ways junkets to France paid for by Virginia Uranium are nevertheless okay. So is letting corporate America pay for you to attend meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where lobbyists can teach y'all how to hobble environmental regulators and suppress voting.

If you lot can't figure out a manner to meet the reasonable relationship examination (and I'yard embarrassed for you if you have then little imagination), you tin can still accept a fun travel adventure as long every bit Virginia's toothless ethics council approves it—or just doesn't act within five days of your request.

And of course, this and so-called ethics reform makes no attempt to accost the biggest obstacles to honest authorities in Virginia: the flood of corporate money into campaign chests and the ability of legislators to use campaign money for personal expenses. Even if Governor McAuliffe fixes the serious flaws in the ethics bill, zippo in information technology will end companies like Dominion Resources from continuing to use cash to corrupt the democratic process.

Which brings us to energy legislation. The Associated Press summed upwards the situation very nicely: "Virginia'due south 2015 legislative session was a good one for energy giant Rule Resource Inc., the country's most politically influential company. Legislation information technology wanted passed, passed. Bills information technology didn't like did not."

Primary among the legislation Dominion wanted was Senator Wagner's SB 1349, which spares Rule from having to refund excess profits for the next v years. Pretty much every newspaper in the country editorialized against it, so I'll spare you a rehash of its failings.

Sadly, Governor McAuliffe signed the bill without amendments. He told reporters, "It was clear to Dominion that at the terminate of the day a veto would have been devastating for them." If so, that's a lot of leverage the Administration squandered.

And really, Governor, "devastating"? Simply since you savage for that, can I interest y'all in a bridge in Brooklyn?

SB 1349 does contain some welcome language calling solar free energy projects of at least i MW in size, and up to an amass of 500 MW, "in the public interest," a phrase that will help utilities when they seek approval for these projects at the State Corporation Committee. But nothing actually requires the utilities to build these projects, and the ane MW size minimum has been carefully crafted to be to a higher place the limit for internet-metered solar projects. Rule wrote the bill for itself, not for ordinary people who want to go solar on their own.

The solar language was non originally part of SB 1349; it was imported from another Dominion bill, Delegate Yancey's HB 2237, every bit a way to get buy-in from the solar industry and Democrats.

Every bit for customer-owned solar, this was another bad yr. The only concession won from Dominion was an increment in the size cap for net-metered projects from 500 kW to 1 MW, a compromise from the initial proposal of two MW.

Wherever else solar advocates faced utility opposition, they lost. That includes bills on community net metering, solar gardens, RPS improvements, expanded 3d party PPA availability, and a higher hurdle for standby charges. Also going down to early on defeat was the renewable free energy grant program that had been celebrated last yr as a nearly-triumph (it only lacked passage again this year, plus—oh aye—funding).

The GA did pass one of the Governor's solar priorities, establishing the Virginia Solar Energy Development Authority (HB 2267 and others). The Authority is explicitly tasked with helping utilities observe financing for solar projects; in that location is no like linguistic communication about supporting customer-endemic solar. The Potency is supposed to identify barriers to solar, but isn't given any tools to remove them. And then we shall see.

Bills that did non require Dominion'due south approval did better. Chief among these was legislation enabling Holding Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans for commercial customers. This should help bring depression-price financing to energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at the commercial level.

And while Dominion'south sole concession to energy efficiency this year was agreeing to a "pilot program" of unspecified size as office of the SB1349 deal, natural gas utilities sought and won legislation (SB 1331) that makes it easier to win regulatory approval for energy efficiency programs that could benefit lots of customers. The departure is that natural gas companies take "decoupled" profits from sales, so it's in their interest to help customers use energy more wisely. Rule and Appalachian Power, past contrast, have a turn a profit model that requires ever-increasing sales, making efficiency bad for concern.

While legislators repeatedly shot down any solar bills that might be characterized as subsidies, they dropped their free market principles when it came to subsidies for coal mining. Unless the governor vetoes HB 1879, Virginia taxpayers will continue to pay tens of millions of dollars annually to prop upward an uncompetitive industry with a long legacy of poisoning our air, land and h2o. Anyone who is ever tempted to believe a Virginia Republican's claim to legislate based on his conservative principles and non only on politics should check how they voted on this bill. (Hither are the House votes, and here are the Senate votes.)

The limited progress made this year towards greening our energy supply does not bode well for compliance with the EPA's Clean Ability Programme. The only legislation that would have moved Virginia decisively towards compliance, by having us join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, died in committee. On the other hand, a number of bills that would have hindered compliance besides died. True, SB 1349 makes the process harder by adding a hurdle to the closure of coal plants. Republicans also pushed through a bill that requires the Department of Environmental Quality to waste time and coin studying whether the federal carbon reduction rules have wellness benefits across those gained past regulating conventional pollutants.

But overall, the session ended in a describe on climate issues. On the one manus, that's bad, given that 2014 was the hottest twelvemonth on record globally.* On the other mitt, this is Virginia. Merely not regressing counts as progress here.

———————–

*I know, 2014 was not hot in eastern North America, and 2015 has started out with ane of those winters that brand people say they could use a lilliputian global warming. Nature has a smashing sense of irony. Merely while you lot were shivering, the ascent sea ate a little more of our shoreline.