The Virginian-Pilot
By Mike Tidwell
Imagine a teenager’s very messy room. Family members plead for a clean up. Finally, for a $10 “incentive” payment, the teen straightens up, declares compliance and dashes off to the 7-11 for $10 of snacks and soda. But sadly, family members enter the room only to find mounds of dirty dishes, soiled clothes and used tissues stuffed under the bed. A con job.
Now imagine that the room in question is Virginia’s historically polluted air and our over-reliance on dirty, unsustainable fossil fuels. Who’s the take-the-money-and-run offender in this case? Why, it’s Dominion Virginia Power.

Under a state law that provides “incentive” payments for utilities that provide more renewable energy to Virginia customers, Dominion has openly claimed to be bringing more wind power and solar energy to the state – collecting millions of your dollars in bonuses along the way. But actually the company hasn’t brought a single utility-scale wind or solar project to the commonwealth in all those years. It’s a con job.
Instead, the company mostly gets credit for controversial hydropower energy from out-of-state rivers, many of them built before World War II. It also takes credit for the burning of wood and garbage, also mostly out of state.
These are the dirty dishes under the bed that Dominion claims are cleaning up the room. But buying hydropower from an ancient, preexisting dam in Pennsylvania does not improve the pollution-hazy view at Shenandoah National Park. Only new energy projects that avoid the combustion of fossil fuels – solar, wind, geothermal power and new hydro – will clean the room.
By gaming the system in this way, Dominion has achieved one goal: expanding its profits. Over the next two years, Dominion will collect $76 million from ratepayers like you for its accomplishments – which, again, don’t add anything to the state’s share of truly clean and permanently renewable energy.
Maddeningly, this is all legal under Virginia’s “Voluntary Renewable Portfolio Standard” law, which passed in 2007.
I believe the lawmakers who supported the original bill intended for it to spur development of clean energy in the commonwealth. But the final version that passed, with the full support of Dominion lobbyists, provides the loopholes that thwart widespread public desire for cleaner air and energy security.
Dominion consistently misleads the public, meanwhile, on this issue. Last year, for example, the company ran big print ads with a beautiful photo of a wind turbine and the words, “Natural. Abundant. Renewable. Wind. That’s why we’re harnessing it to help power Virginia’s energy future.”
Nope, not true. Only when forced through a recent court proceeding did Dominion finally admit that, since 2007, it had not added a single kilowatt hour of wind power to the state’s grid as part of the lucrative bonuses it has received.
Obviously, this situation must change. A bipartisan bill introduced this month in the House of Delegates offers real reform. HB 657 would keep the basic structure of the 2007 legislation, leaving renewable energy development as a voluntary, not mandatory, action for utilities based on incentives. But it would reform the 2007 law to require that renewable energy projects actually exist within the state of Virginia in order to warrant a reward.
Also, the bill would require that participating utilities get a reasonable percentage of their renewable energy from wind and solar projects. Virginians don’t want to be left behind as these latest clean-energy industries develop. What better way to turbocharge investments in these technologies than with our renewable energy bonus?
The original 2007 law also makes deception possible, in part, by not requiring utilities to openly report to the public what type of “renewable” energy is being sold to ratepayers. Thankfully, a separate reform bill this year would fix this. HB 1166/SB 382 simply makes the process transparent so that customers will know, based on utility reports, whether the big wind power advertisements they see in newspapers and magazines are true.
Obviously these reform bills need to be passed as soon as possible for both moral and economic reasons. As thousands of Virginia families struggle financially during this economic downturn, it is fundamentally unfair that Dominion makes millions of dollars for doing almost nothing substantive.
Equally important is the fact that clean energy development creates real jobs. One 2010 study – conducted at the request of the General Assembly – showed that offshore wind power development alone in Virginia could create up to 10,000 jobs.
Now that’s how you clean up a messy room while creating real bonuses that help all Virginia families.