Episode 44: So what's the state of Virginia's environmental laws?

Here in Virginia, many of us have been shielded from the worst effects of climate change. So far. But we know - or we should know - that the planet is burning. And that without major policy changes, it’s going to get much worse. And so much human suffering could follow.

So what’s a state to do? What policies can Virginia enact? After all, this is a global issue, and the operations of one mid-sized state can feel rather small in the grand scheme of things.

For many years, Virginia’s answer was ‘not much.’ The state wasn’t doing a whole lot to address the root issues around climate change. But with Democratic majorities in the General Assembly for the last two years, that has started to shift. Lawmakers and activists are championing the fight to keep our planet fit for human habitation. So how exactly does meaningful environmental change happen?

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT

Translated by a robot. Apologies for typos and mistakes.

Nathan Moore 0:00

This is Bold Dominon, an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore. When it comes to climate and the environment, we know a few things. We know that the average temperature around the world keeps going up. We know that in an average summer, we're seeing more really hot days in Virginia than a decade ago, which had more really hot days than two decades ago, which had more than three decades ago. So, in fact, that average keeps going up. We know that more and more monstrous hurricanes have been making landfall in the United States. We know that huge and uncontrolled wildfires are burning across California and the American West. Here in Virginia, many of us have been shielded from the worst effects of climate change so far, but we know or we should know that the planet is burning, and that without major policy changes, it's going to get much worse. So what's the state to do? What policies can Virginia enact? After all, this is a global issue and the operations of one mid sized state can feel rather small in the grand scheme of things? Well, for many years, Virginia's answer was not much, the state wasn't doing a whole lot to address the root issues around climate change. But with democratic majorities in the General Assembly for the last two years that has started to shift. Lawmakers and activists are championing the fight to keep our planet fit for human habitation. So how exactly does meaningful environmental change happen?

Narissa Turner 1:30

the environmental community has agreed that we do not want this sea change to be done in a way that enforcement reinforces the status quo. Because a lot of the inequities and injustices to be seen currently can be directly tied to historically how we've powered our economy.

Nathan Moore 1:48

That's an Narissa Turner. She works for the Virginia conservation network as the policy and campaigns manager for clean energy and climate. In the second half of today's episode, she'll tell us more about the work being done in Virginia as we move toward a greener and more equitable economy. But first, we turn to Virginia mercury reporter Sarah Fogle song, she's spoke with Bold Dominon, Producer Aaryan Balu, to give us a breakdown of where Virginia's environmental policy is right now, and the inner workings of our energy economy.

Sarah Vogelsong 2:20

There's been a lot of big changes in Virginia in the last two years, when democrats took control of both chambers and the general assembly back in 2020. So one of the big pieces of legislation that we are still seeing unfold today is the Virginia clean Economy Act, which passed the legislature in 2020. And what that did was commit the state's electric utilities to make the electric grid carbon free by 2050. I think previously, there wasn't really a statewide recognition that climate change was even happening. And the bcea was very much framed as a climate change bill. So some of the top level things that it does, is that it joins Virginia to a carbon market, what ended up happening was that Virginia joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas appliance, which is I believe, at this point, 10 states in the Mid Atlantic and New England regions. And essentially, it puts a price on carbon for power producers. So this applies to all power plants, they have to pay to emit carbon, and then the proceeds from those payments come back to the state. So Virginia just got its first round of payments this spring, and is still putting in place some of the frameworks for how those funds are going to be specifically spent. The Virginia clean Economy Act also set what's called a renewable portfolio standard, but basically means that every year the electric utilities have to get a certain specific percentage of their power from renewable sources. There is also a energy efficiency standard that was part of that bill, which just basically requires the utilities to hit targets for how much energy can kind of be saved by other methods.

Aaryan Balu 4:17

Okay, so you just mentioned a lot of different things that have come about in the last couple of years. Where does that stack up relative to what sort of Climate and Energy activists have been, have been trying to push things?

Sarah Vogelsong 4:30

Yeah, absolutely. There was and still continues to be, I think, a lot of tension between climate activists in terms of how far and how fast this transition from fossil fuels to renewables should go. And what I think is going to be really interesting to see is how this sort of federal shift that we're seeing on energy plays into that because obviously, when the clean Economy Act was passed, we were under the Trump administration. And there was a very different focus on energy issues. And so you know, Virginia was the first state in the south to join a carbon market to establish this renewable portfolio standard in the energy efficiency resource standard. And also to set this sort of what at the time for the South was considered this aggressive path towards 2045 2050 decarbonisation. Now, of course, we have the Biden administration, which is pushing for 2030 2035 targets. And that's really, I think, shifted some of the conversation, I don't think that people are quite sure how that's all going to shake out. But there have also been activists in Virginia, who were opposed to the clean Economy Act because they wanted something faster. That, of course, is the Virginia green New Deal coalition, they have put forward their version of that bill two years running in 2020. It was basically just died in committee. I know that there is also a feeling amongst many of the supporters of the clean Economy Act that it was a huge fight just to get that through the legislature and that there was no chance of the green New Deal getting through

Aaryan Balu 6:11

with all this going on. What has dominion been up to in the last couple of years to reflect that

Sarah Vogelsong 6:18

Dominion has made some commitments of its own. So they also independently established a decarbonisation target of 2050. There's two really big moves that Dominion has made in recent years that are notable. The first of course, is last July, when Dominion very publicly canceled the Atlantic coast pipeline and sold off. Its the majority of its gas transmission and storage assets. That was a really big pivot that obviously got a lot of national attention. The Atlantic coast pipeline was a huge project, it's supposed to be 600 miles long, I think it was up to $8 billion, by the time that it was cancelled, and, you know, caused a huge amount of political controversy and Virginia. And I think that a lot of people really interpreted that cancellation as a clear sign that dominion is pivoting away from fossil fuels and towards renewables. I think that is certainly how Dominion has cast it and investor calls. And so related to that, the second really big move that Dominion has made is its commitment to offshore wind. And it first announced, I think, these much grander plans to build this 2.6 gigawatt wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach. It first announced those about two years ago. But what is unique, really about dominions plans is that all of the other wind farms that are in the works up and down the East Coast are led by non utility companies are led by offshore wind developers,

Aaryan Balu 7:58

when is that planned to kind of come to completion?

Sarah Vogelsong 8:01

2026, I believe is when it's planned to be fully deployed.

Aaryan Balu 8:08

We're talking about dominion. And I want to kind of delve into the the regional the capacity market. I barely know what that means. But I would love to try and tackle it and wrap my head around what that what's going on there.

Sarah Vogelsong 8:22

Yeah, the capacity market, I think, is a really complicated topic. But essentially, Virginia is part of this regional electric grid, as is basically every state in every part of the country except for Texas. So Virginia is part of what's called the PJM interconnection, and it's a regional transmission organization. But there are several markets that PJM runs. And essentially, this is how our energy system operates is through markets. And the point of that is to bring the cost of energy down. So power producers will bid in the power that they have to offer. Essentially, what PJM will do is figure out the lowest price that they can get the power that they need for. But there's different markets that are associated with different sort of planning targets. So there's what's called a day ahead energy market where what's being traded is enough energy is that's anticipated to be needed for the next day. There's all sorts of different constructs that these markets have set up. But one of the markets that PJM has is called the capacity market. And what essentially it is, is ensuring that there is enough energy in the long term. So PJM capacity market is a three year market. It's looking at what are we going to need in three years, let's make sure that that power is in place when PJM capacity market was created. There has always been this other option for utilities, that they can opt out of the capacity market and use this mechanism, which is called the fixed resource requirement, or FRR. And it hadn't been heavily used. But about, I guess a year and a half ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission passed an extremely controversial rule, it was called the minimum offer price rule, Loper. And what it essentially did was to make a lot of renewables not competitive on the marketplace. And so there was and against still is a lot of tension between states in PJM, who have these clean energy goals, and mopa, which essentially ensures that those resources won't clear the market.

Aaryan Balu 10:52

What's the kind of reasoning for over coming into existence, then,

Sarah Vogelsong 10:56

the reasoning that was provided was that it would provide a level playing field for all resources. And so what it did was it set a minimum price for all resources that it considers to be state subsidized. It had a very expansive definition of what a state subsidy was, which essentially made it apply to anything that a legislature incentivize. It's so really any renewable, you know, obviously, the attraction for many people of renewables has been, they're cheap, or certainly solar is cheap. So it really just made them uncompetitive. And what that would mean is that if those resources don't clear the capacity market, if they don't get selected by PJM, as three years from now, we're going to be depending on you, they don't get paid by the market for being there. So they're losing these payments. And it also means that for utilities who are planning for the future, they're having to meet their state's clean energy mandates, but they're trying to get payments from PJM, to have enough resources for the market down the road. And so one of the concerns with mopa had been that these companies were their customers were going to be paying twice, they're going to be paying for clean energy. And then they're also going to be paying for these long term energy commitments that are not coming from clean energy. So there were a number of states and utilities that were very wary of what this would mean for the markets and did talk publicly about pulling out of PJM capacity market. So that's been a topic of conversation. Well, I guess since the decision was handed down, since the Biden administration came in firk, has signaled that it is planning to either heavily revise or move away from them over. So I I know I heard from some people I talked to you that there was some confusion as to why Dominion would decide to pull out of the market now when mopa is probably not going to be around certainly not in this form for a long time, because the capacity market decision is a five year decision. They're committed to not being in it for the next five years.

Aaryan Balu 13:07

Right. So I think that Sorry, I think that's kind of the the bit of view information, though, is that Dominion pulled out as of a couple of weeks ago.

Sarah Vogelsong 13:14

Yes. It's lost in the weeds.

Aaryan Balu 13:17

Yeah. Okay. So So what? Yeah, so what was their their reasoning if they provided any?

Sarah Vogelsong 13:23

Yeah, their reasoning is that with the motor, it was going to make it very hard to meet the renewables targets that they had, and under the fixed resource requirement, you know, they still have to prove to work that they will have this capacity available.

Aaryan Balu 13:39

The fact that they pulled out of the market, what does that change for, you know, Virginia citizens?

Sarah Vogelsong 13:44

I think the short answer is we don't completely know. It was a decision that I think caught a lot of people off guard. I mean, I will say that Dominion has told regulators in the past that it was a matter of when not if they would exit the capacity market. So the idea of them leaving did not come out of nowhere. But I think the fact that it happened now, there was a sense of surprise that this had occurred, and dominion does not need under Virginia law regulators to sign off in that decision. dominion is still part of the PJM interconnection, this does not separate us from the regional grid. So I do want to make that clear.

Aaryan Balu 14:29

Right. And sorry, remind me what it means for it to be still part of the PJM. But out of the capacity market,

Sarah Vogelsong 14:35

I mean, we are just we're still part of a larger grid where energy is flowing, you know, throughout this, all of the states that are involved in PJM, Virginia is not, you know, going it alone or by any means on energy. This just means that in terms of long term planning, dominion is not participating in that market. So I think that the impacts that we're going to see are What does This mean for energy prices in general, what does this mean for renewables developers and the price of renewables in Virginia? I think it's going to take a while for people to work all of those those things out.

Nathan Moore 15:18

Sara vogelsong is a reporter at Virginia mercury. Stick around in the second half of today's episode, we've got Narissa Turner explaining some of the boots on the ground environmental work happening here in Virginia. You're listening to Bold Dominon, a state politics explainer for changing Virginia, visit us online at Bold dominon.org. I have a friend who's trying to get into state politics. Well tell him about this show. And then subscribe. Find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever find podcasts are served up. Hey, and while you're there, go ahead and give us a five star review. We love it. Bold. Dominon is a member of Virginia audio collective online at Virginia audio.org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective from science to history to music to community affairs. we amplify the voices of people in our community and help them tell stories that matter. You can listen and subscribe at Virginia audio.org. Well, a moment ago, we heard journalist Sarah Vogel song describe the breadth of recent changes in Virginia's environmental policy. So what does passing this legislation actually entail? In the second half of this episode, we hear from Narissa Turner, policy and campaigns manager for clean energy and climate at the Virginia conservation network.

Aaryan Balu 16:36

Jumping jumping right into it, what do you do with the Virginia conservation network? What does that work entail?

Narissa Turner 16:42

I'll kind of give you the rough your schedule during the winter, we are usually actively lobbying and advocating for environmental policies to legislators while they're working on legislation. When we are out of session, sort of what's considered the quote unquote offseason, from the end of winter. through to the start of next winter, we started the start laying the foundation for getting our partners together to figure out what we want to work on for the following General Assembly session. So in spring, we start with sort of regional meetings with our partners, we kind of divide the state up along rough regional boundaries, you often see among different regions of the state, they have different environmental issues, because the landscape is different, the history is different. So we start in the spring, with meetings around among our regional partners. And that sort of gives us an idea of what issues kind of were very salient during the prior general summer session, and then what people think they might want to work on for the following General Assembly session. From there, then we have what we call like workgroup planning meetings. So we divvy up our work along the three main buckets of work. So in my case, climate and clean energy is a big broad bucket, there's water and land conservation to some extent, Wildlife, and then transportation and land use. And so we have large planning meetings towards later in the spring, we actually just finished those. And those planning meetings launch our briefing book process, which we publish on every year. And this is kind of the heads up notice to not just legislators, but people across the Commonwealth who might be involved with falling environmental policy. So that process continues through till, usually till the beginning of August, and then from there from August till the end of the year. We're basically that's sort of the campaign part. So that when General Assembly starts in January, we hit the ground running.

Aaryan Balu 18:48

What are the current irons in the fire. two sessions ago, we

Narissa Turner 18:51

passed the clean Economy Act along with Sol freedom, which is a package legislation to increase solar generation, the Commonwealth and legislation to officially join the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative. What we saw both last year and then I'm hoping a stronger front this year, is trying to bolster and make stronger some of the things that we really got started those pieces of legislation. So last year, it was last General Assembly session. It was it was rough. Right. We were right after session ended in 2020 Coronavirus. Yeah, it fundamentally changed the way that we did a lot of our processes, it changed the way that General Assembly session ran, there had to be a special session that technically there were two there have been two special sessions now since 2020. And it put a damper on a lot of the work we had hoped to do. I will say that I think we still got some wins. But I think it's still the same and now I think we're gonna see more policy on strengthening provisions around solar energy generation, specifically around distributed energy generation. So that is not necessarily just these these large utility scale solar farms that we are just seeing, like, explosion and growth across the Commonwealth. But really trying to figure out how we can increase the amount of solar on already, like impacted or built environments. Seeing improvements to having a clean energy economy, how can we ensure that that transition happens very equitably. And in a way that is, not only is it great that we have all this real energy, it's great for the environment. But in a way, that's also great for like people's bottom lines, making sure that as again, as we make this commitment to clean energy, sort of this concept of what I feel like it's been referred to as several different things, utility, accountability, great reform, a whole host of things. But it's basically just saying that, like we don't necessary want to do things in the status quo way want more clean energy generation, we also want it in a way that's like, fair for people who have to pay for that generation, and also so that everyone has access to the energy generation generated.

Aaryan Balu 21:00

So you mentioned that we had some wins, even despite sort of the very abbreviated, very tough session this time around what, you know, can you dive in? What did that look like?

Narissa Turner 21:10

Yeah, we got several bills that dealt with like clarifying language of things, which is maybe a kind of boring, but it's like really important. Oftentimes, when you're when you're working with like, sometimes really long, wonky pieces of legislation, you will find that you pass this legislation, you think your work is done, everyone excited, and then you realize like on the ground, we have to try implement it, then it didn't work out the way you want it to where people feel like they're still left out. So a couple of bills that we got was one on clarifying language around power purchase agreements, which is a way for potentially like local governments, I think most commonly, it's used in the Commonwealth for like schools, it's a it's an affordable way for them to basically work their third party to get solar panels onto their buildings, but they don't have to put up the upfront investment, but they still could benefit from the cheaper energy energy generation. There was an issue in prior legislation that said, okay, like dominion, aapko, and Old Dominion power, which I think is technically known as Kentucky utilities. We said they had to do that. But it was unclear for Appalachian power and aapko and Old Dominion power, whether or not they had to actually offer that to what's known as an offshore sectional customer, until we got language clarified that like, in fact, they do have to offer that they do have to make that available to them. And that has a bit of an equity component, because you're talking about those utility service a part of the state, that's oftentimes it's it's very much considered, like economically disadvantaged, it houses some communities of color. We also got legislation authorizing localities to create what's known as like a Green Bank, we got approval for the what's called, I think it's called like the known as like the bright fields act. But it basically established a grant program for funding the creation of like renewable energy generation on abandoned coal mines, or previously developed sites, but then had been abandoned and need to have some reclamation efforts on them in order for him to be available. The caveat there, though, is that it was created, which is great. There is no money in it. Because the idea is that hopefully, with the trickling now that we have a change in federal administration, that potentially there might be money that comes into the Fed. So it's a great way to be like, we recognize that funds are limited. But if there's a way to go ahead and just like set up and be ready to utilize federal dollars, we want to do that. Oh, we also got clarification, we got some good clarifying language on another piece of legislation. It was a portion of the clean Economy Act. But so it's the PIP program, percentage of income payment program. So this was a mechanism that was supposed to cap and maintain affordability for low income ratepayers, as again, as we put more clean energy generation onto the grid, making sure that they, they their bills didn't disproportionately increase, but they could still afford their energy. And there's an argument made, that should happen regardless. And again, it was an issue where we thought we got it in we did it, it was clean. And then we realized that there were still some questions around who could qualify for that program, just making it easier to implement so we can actually get a program that can start helping helping people as soon as possible.

Aaryan Balu 24:36

Zooming out to the the Virginia clean Economy Act is something that passed a couple years ago. Could you tell me a little bit about sort of what that is and the broader why why it's needed in terms of energy and climate things?

Narissa Turner 24:50

Yeah, so and the thing I always have to remind folks is that Economy Act as great as it was, it's only one piece of the puzzle, right? Because it only it only deals with is like utility generated electricity. It didn't tackle transportation, it doesn't tackle independent power generation. It also largely leaves out electric cooperatives and things like that. So there are broad sectors of the economy that are not covered in the Virginia claim economy. But it was necessary because I think there has been a recognition, we needed to do something. And so this was kind of our foothold. This was like our big bold first step. And it was important because when you're building infrastructure, and you're working with energy generation, oftentimes you are building infrastructure, and that cost tons of money. And it's intended to last for decades. And hopefully, his people know that that window of time that we have to effectively tackle climate change is getting smaller, and smaller. So now that depending on who you ask, we have anywhere from a single decade to maybe a couple more decades, but the reality is we need to be doing something like right now. And so the idea behind the claim Economy Act is to basically start those steps and put in those targets to both sort of increase the amount of renewable energy that we are putting into the grid, while simultaneously ramping down the fossil fuel generating resources we have here in the state. But then within that, also, it has some provisions for increasing energy efficiency, because the only thing better than a quote unquote, green generated electron of energy is that electron you just didn't have to generate in the first place.

Aaryan Balu 26:43

What are you know, the the ideals for things that we would want to see done in the next couple of years?

Narissa Turner 26:50

If I had to summarize, I think there we are gonna want to do this faster. Like I said, claim economy was like the first big bold step. But there were I think there were many people who were like, this is not fast enough, not strong enough, all these different things. And I think quite honestly, I think many people who worked on it, realize that but we needed something, you have to get something out of the book so that you can keep pushing. The other thing is that now we've got to tackle all the other sectors. So last year, and I didn't speak to this because this isn't a split, actually, it touches my portfolio policy work, but it actually falls with one of my other colleagues. Translation is a big thing. Because even though we did a lot of work on energy, energy, I think, in the Commonwealth, I think it's maybe a little over a third, like electricity production, it's about a third of our emissions for transmission is actually the largest. So tackling transportation, but then not only transportation, I think there's now starting to be some rumblings of movement on tackling the built environment as well, because that has carbon implications as well. What does it mean exactly? So look, buildings every time you have to pour concrete build a thing. That's the those are emissions associated with that those are a little harder to deal with, I will say just because some of it is emissions generated, like here in Virginia soil, a lot of it is not a lot of it has to do with both national international markets and just state stuff because even though maybe you poured the concrete here, getting the component parts having a troubled heater may not have happened, and the same, so faster, tackling carbon and other parts of the economy. And then just making sure this is all done in an equitable way. The environmental community has agreed that we do not want this sea change to be done in a way that's enforced that reinforces the status quo. Because a lot of the inequities and injustices we see currently can be directly tied to historically how we've powered our economy, how we've sort of moved along, in the way that we've defined progress and building bigger and better things that also required more carbon pollution. We now want to change and dismantle that.

Nathan Moore 29:06

Narissa Turner is the policy and campaigns manager for clean energy and climate at the Virginia conservation network. Thank you to her and also Sarah vogelsong, for joining us this week. Thanks also to our editor for this episode, Katherine Hansen. And one last thanks to Producer Aaryan Balu. You've heard Aryans voice on this podcast off and on for a year and a half. I'm pleased to report that Aaryan graduated from UVA this year and he's been hired at an NPR affiliate station in Illinois called WVIK. I'm looking forward to following Aayan's bright future. My name is Nathan Moore, and I'm the host of Bold Dominon. You can find us online at Bold dominon.org. And don't forget to subscribe. It's just a click away.