The following is cross-posted from Ivy Main’s superb Power for the People VA. Note how corporate media (e.g., the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Washington Post, etc, etc.) almost never lay a glove on Dominion Energy, but independent writers like Ivy Main – and yours truly, for many years now! – do? Fascinating how that works…
On October 15, Dominion Energy Virginia filed its 2024 integrated resource plan (IRP), and just as in 2023, the company shows no inclination to meet the carbon-cutting requirements of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). Blaming soaring load growth from data centers, Dominion models only scenarios with increasing amounts of fossil fuel generation to supplement its investments in renewable energy and nuclear. A scenario that would actually comply with the law is discussed only as something stakeholders asked for, then dismissed as “infeasible.”
Tellingly, the company notes casually that its own scenarios “evaluate the impacts of” the VCEA, as if the law were merely advisory, while the utility retained the final say. It’s kind of like a driver thoughtfully “evaluating the impact” of a speed limit – and then accelerating.
To be fair, this used to work for Dominion. The State Corporation Commission (SCC) has a long history of criticizing Dominion’s IRPs and ordering the company to do better next time, but never outright rejecting a plan. If traffic cops only ever gave out warnings, you would expect to see more scofflaws.
This year, though, the three-member SCC has two new commissioners, and already they have shown they intend to take their oversight role seriously. The commission didn’t even wait to see what Dominion would come up with before demanding improvements. On October 11, four days before Dominion submitted its IRP, the SCC issued an order instructing the utility to supplement its filing with additional work, to be submitted by November 15.
The task list includes modeling plans that meet the requirements of the VCEA, with at least one that incorporates data center load and one that doesn’t, as well as least-cost plans with and without data centers. In addition, the SCC wants Dominion to break down the costs of new transmission projects to identify the expenses that are primarily due to data center demand.
The order tacitly acknowledges that the staggering growth of the data center industry in Virginia has upended utility planning. At the same time, the SCC is not giving Dominion a free pass, either on costs or on VCEA requirements. If Dominion believes it can only meet demand reliably by adding expensive gas peaker plants, it is going to have to prove it.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, the SCC plans to convene a technical conference in December to examine issues around serving data center load. Of paramount interest to the commission are the questions of how much it will cost to meet the burgeoning demand, and how to protect other consumers from rate increases for new generation and transmission infrastructure needed only because of one industry.
The SCC is not alone in its concerns about Dominion’s cavalier approach to its IRP obligations. Last year, with a goal of improving utility oversight, the General Assembly revitalized its Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, which formerly served as a graveyard for utility reform bills. (CEUR used to be pronounced “sewer,” but commission members would dearly love it if you would now call it “the cure.”)
In a September 16 memo, CEUR director Carrie Hearne recommended members consider a list of reforms that would, among other things, require Dominion to include in its IRP “a VCEA conforming scenario that does not assume to exercise an immediate exemption due to reliability concerns.” This scenario would have to incorporate the social cost of carbon, meet energy efficiency metrics (another area where Dominion has fallen short), plan for the retirement of fossil fuel plants targeted for closure in the VCEA, and assume an “unobstructed” buildout of renewable energy and storage (removing the artificial caps Dominion currently employs).
In other words, CEUR would like Dominion to follow the law.
Ratepayer and environmental advocates have applauded the more muscular approach being taken by CEUR and the SCC. Dominion, however, has remained steadfastly oblivious to the hints flung at it from all sides.
The company remains unapologetic. In an op-ed, Dominion Energy Chairman Bob Blue insists the company is pursuing an “all of the above” strategy that will produce electricity that is “reliable, affordable and increasingly clean” – an assertion he repeats three times, as if saying it often enough makes it true.
As the IRP puts it, however, “perceptions of affordability are subjective.” Analyzing its favored scenario using the methodology directed by the SCC, Dominion projects residential bills will rise over the next 15 years from an average of $142.77 today to $315.25 in 2039.
Let’s be charitable, though. Maybe when Mr. Blue said the company was committed to affordable energy, he meant for data centers.
“Increasingly clean” is even more counter-factual. As reported in the Mercury, “The utility’s previous plan projection said about 95% of electricity generation would be pulled from renewable sources. Tuesday’s updated plan calls for about 80% of generation to be spurred by renewables.” And as with the 2023 IRP, Dominion plans to keep expensive and highly polluting coal plants operating beyond their previous retirement dates, putting the company even further away from “clean.”
Dominion’s 2023 IRP received considerable criticism for projecting a doubling of greenhouse gas emissions by 2048, a year when they should be at zero under the terms of the VCEA. Dominion appears to have learned a lesson from that public shaming, but not the right lesson. The 2024 plan shortens the emissions time frame to 5 years, cutting out reporting for the later years when the proposed new methane gas plants would be in service and spewing out CO2. Instead, the IRP brags about lowering “emissions intensity,” a success it can achieve without cutting carbon, just by selling more electricity.
So much for affordable and increasingly clean. As for reliable, burning more methane will only exacerbate the climate change and extreme weather that have been wreaking havoc on southeastern utilities’ ability to keep the lights on. The recent storms should be a wake-up call for utilities to ramp up renewables, including distributed solar generation and storage to serve communities, rather than building more centralized, carbon-intensive fossil fuel plants to power data centers.
But some companies, like some people, never learn. Finding itself deep in a hole, Dominion proposes to keep on digging.
This article was first published in the Virginia Mercury on October 28, 2024.
A message to my Northern Virginia friends and climate advocates: please consider joining me at a fundraiser on Sunday, November 10 from 5-7 pm to support the work of the Sierra Club’s Virginia Chapter. Special guests include the fabulous Connor Kish, chapter director, and Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous. RSVP and get more information here. Hope to see you there!
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