Dominion
is skimping on solar and wind as it aims to build a fracked-gas pipeline and
another nuclear reactor.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article gives you more background on the company that owns the troubled Millstone Nuclear Power plant, only 20 miles west of Charlestown.
If you live in Virginia and would like to shrink your carbon
footprint, here’s what passes for good news: We’re now officially free to ban fracking. For two years, Old Dominion communities
weren’t at liberty to prevent that kind of oil and gas drilling.
After the cities of Staunton, Lynchburg, and several other local governments expressed reservations over fracking or
tried to prevent it, former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said they lacked
the authority to block Big Fossil. In early May, Virginia Attorney General Mark
Herring overrode his predecessor’s position and asserted that these local
policies adhere to state law.
Either way, Richmond-based Dominion Resources, which wields near-monopoly power over
Virginia’s electric grid, wants to boost demand for this environmentally
hazardous drilling. It’s partnering with other companies on a $5 billion pipeline that will funnel gas fracked in West
Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania over a 550-mile route to Virginia and North
Carolina.
Dominion’s dirty-energy ambitions for its home state don’t stop
there. The company also intends to drop $10 billion on a third nuclear reactor at a site within 50 miles of
Richmond, Charlottesville, and Fredericksburg.
The firm Clean Edge ranks big utilities according to how much power they draw from solar, wind, and other renewable options and their energy efficiency efforts. Dominion made the bottom of the list.
While it recently minted a plan to invest $700 million in solar
projects in Virginia, that would barely chip away at the state’s reliance on
power derived from coal, natural gas, and nuclear. And the company just shelved
an offshore wind
pilot just as the first project of that kind is getting
underway off the Rhode Island
coast.
Why is Dominion getting away with paying lip service to green
energy?
It’s not Virginia’s voters. Thanks to the coexistence of
progressive areas near Washington, D.C. like Arlington, where I live — and
conservative regions of the kind that surround Roanoke — Virginia is deep
purple. Democrats and Republicans rotate through our governor’s mansion. While
the GOP holds a slim majority in the state senate, both of our U.S. senators
are Democrats.
Nor is it denial. Two out of three
of Virginians, in line with the U.S. average, believe climate change
is happening. The vast majority support policies that would force Dominion to
get serious about wind and solar power. Yet we’ve got one of the country’sweakest renewable energy standards.
It’s about corporate campaign money. Dominion ranks among the
state’s biggest donors to both major parties, according to the Virginia Public
Access Project. The power company’s largesse makes most politicians
— with the notable exception of a few Democrats who hail from Northern
Virginia, like State Senator Adam Ebbin and
Delegate Patrick Hope — willing to do its bidding.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, beat Cuccinelli,
his Republican opponent, in 2013 partly by harping on his opponent’s climate
denial. Yet McAuliffe fullysupports Dominion’s plans to spend heavily on nuclear
reactors and power plants fueled by fracked natural
gas instead of making the big investments in wind and solar
that would actually cut the state’s carbon footprint.
What could turn things around?
That brings me to another news flash. Some leading opponents of
that big fracking pipeline are Republican landowners. They’re annoyed by Dominion’s failure
to engage with people whose property is in its way, and they doubt it will help
Virginians.
Now, the protests that erupt at Dominion’s shareholder meetings are becoming bipartisan. Even if
Virginia’s dominant power company can buy political loyalty, at some point its
customers and investors may force the company to clean up its act.
Columnist
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit
national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.