See below for video at yesterday’s town hall meeting showing yet more b.s. by Senate Minority Leader “Dominion Dick” $Sa$law on the Dominion “rate freeze” bill. In fact, as an actual EXPERT on this stuff – Ivy Main of the Virginia Sierra Club – explains, $a$law’s/Dominion’s bill “tries to buy off environmentalists with a promise of up to 4,000 MW of solar by 2028, a figure that was already in play (and appears in other bills this year) as a result of negotiations between utilities and the solar industry.” Ivy Main adds:
“To put that in context, recall that The Solar Foundation analysis showed Virginia needs 15,000 MW of solar to equal just 10% of our electricity supply. Do the math: 4,000 MW is well under 5% under the best of circumstances. When a bunch of other states are getting 20% of their electricity from wind and solar resources today, the promise of less than 5% over ten years is not only grossly inadequate, it’s insulting. Perhaps we environmentalists can be bought, but not that cheaply.”
So yeah, when $a$law prattles on about Dominion reaching a whopping 4,000 MW of solar, you can now put that pathetically lame/low number in perspective. Of course $a$law probably doesn’t have a clue what a megawatt even is; but if he does, then he’s just flat-out spewing Dominion spin.
As for offshore wind power, there’s simply no excuse for Dominion’s slow walking their lease off the coast of southeastern Virginia, especially given that offshore wind costs have plummeted to the point where “A new McKinsey report predicts a 68 percent drop in offshore wind prices by 2020 and highlights European projects already hitting grid parity.” So I don’t buy $a$law’s b.s. on this front either – not should anyone else.
You’ve also gotta love $a$law’s excuses for Dominion’s overcharges and his nonsense about Dominion’s rates. In fact, as a study by the Virginia Poverty Law Center found, while Dominion and its bought-and-paid-for hacks like $a$law like to “[advertise] that they have some of the lowest rates in the region, yet data shows that Virginians experience the 10th-highest average residential electric bills in the nation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It almost makes you think that $a$law has received $328,000 from Dominion over the years.
In sum, $a$law is full of…well, Dominion $$$ — and he talks exactly as you’d expect someone who’s received shit tons of Dominion’s dirty money over the years WOULD talk. Get this guy outta here in 2019!
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