As election nears, Democrats campaign on high utility bills, energy plans

Clean Virginia’s “The Energy Bills are Too Damn High” tour of the state stopped in Richmond Thursday night. It was promoted as a way to allow community members to hear from Democratic elected officials and candidates about how they want to address rising utility bills in coming legislative sessions. It ultimately was a rally for Democrats leading into Election Day. 

“I implore the utility companies, elected officials and regulators to maintain electricity rates that every Virginian, regardless of their finances can afford,” said Hope Elliot, a Richmond community advocate. 

The event kicked off with a discussion between Clean Virginia’s Executive Director Brennan Gilmore and state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, about legislation and regulations that have been proposed in the General Assembly. The senator said one of the most pressing issues facing the legislature is how to manage data center growth which is putting a strain on the energy grid. He pointed to gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s stance in the Oct. 9 gubernatorial debate that data centers need to pay a fair amount of the energy infrastructure costs.

“They need to pay their fair share. But it needs to be more than that, it needs to be about energy standards and tying them to energy standards so they’re not using so damn much energy,” VanValkenburg said. “I think we really need to be thinking about if we are going to be a home for them. … We need to figure out how we’re going to make up our energy deficit.”

There have been multiple attempts to implement some kind of statewide oversight into the permitting and impacts of the data center industry – as over a third of the entire world’s data centers reside in the commonwealth. One bill vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, House Bill 1601, would have required certain environmental and sound studies in areas where data center companies were applying for zoning permits. 

The Virginia Clean Economy Act calls for the retirement of carbon energy production methods for utilities by 2045. Democrats have pushed to expand solar and wind production, but faced heavy opposition from Republicans. Conservatives believe that renewable energy sources are not reliable and should not be the priority. Gubernatorial candidate and current Lt. Gov. Winsome Earl-Sears said in the debate against Spanberger: “What happens when the sun goes down?”

“Thankfully, battery storage is getting more and more robust by the day,” VanValkenburg told the crowd Thursday night, as if in answer to Earl-Sears. “The governor vetoed a bill on that, which hopefully will pass (next year) and we’ll have more and more battery storage.” 

Also in attendance at the event was state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. She told the Virginia Mercury that while locals can benefit from the tax revenue from data centers, there are statewide implications to the energy use and how it can translate to everyone’s bills going up.

“We need to have some more regulations in place so that we can be more thoughtful in where we site data centers, that we know the actual environmental impact that’s going to happen, that we have full data and appreciation for the impact on our electric consumption,” Hashmi said.

Hashmi sponsored legislation in the 2024 session that focused on energy efficiency programs to help reduce the power being used by utility customers. It failed to pass but VanValkenburg said he plans to bring that bill back in the future.

The speakers denounced the proposed Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center project that is awaiting approval from the State Corporation Commission. The gas peaker plant has been a source of controversy with neighboring communities pushing back against new carbon power. Dominion Energy has said it is a necessary project to meet demand on the hottest and coldest days of the year when the grid is seeing strain.

Republican candidates have frequently echoed the message of an “all of the above” energy profile for Virginia that has been the talking point for Youngkin. They often put more emphasis on small nuclear reactors and gas plants as more reliable sources of energy than solar and wind. They also put the blame of rising costs on the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

“The so-called Virginia Clean Economy Act makes ratepayers foot the bill for energy that doesn’t deliver — solar panels that don’t work at night and wind farms that produce barely 40 percent of what they promise, at best,” said Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg, in a statement to the Virginia Mercury in response to questions about the discussions at the event.

Candidates running for the House of Delegates, Kimberly Pope Adams and Leslie Mehta, were invited to briefly speak about key issues in their districts which mostly centered on housing issues and connecting with voters.

Spanberger said in the debate that she supports the buildout of nuclear power as small nuclear reactors are being built in other states and Virginia utilities are asking the SCC to recover funds for future projects.

VanValkenburg said that Democrats in the General Assembly have to be more dedicated to building solar. He said there needs to be votes on allowing more third party companies to have a share in the solar portfolio as well as solar being put on rooftops, landfills, brownfields, and anywhere that is allowed.

“We voted for the Virginia Clean Economy Act, we have to make that real. That means building clean energy,” VanValkenburg said. “So if we want to say we don’t want gas plants, which I think ultimately, should be the goal, we have to build out the clean energy that we want. We have to take the hard votes to do that.” 

There is on-going back and forth around the desire for statewide regulations on solar projects while respecting local authority over siting projects.

“Democrats even tried to strip local governments of their right to decide where massive solar farms can go. That decision belongs to local communities, not Richmond bureaucrats.

The way forward is clear: restore local control, end costly ‘net-zero’ mandates, and put affordability and reliability first,” Taylor said in her statement to the Mercury.

The discussion at the rally also centered on campaign finance reform to not allow utility companies to donate to political campaigns. Some said such donations allow the companies to have unfair sway over legislators.

“We are one of only five states in the country where there are unlimited political contributions from corporations to the folks that represent you all,” Gilmore said in his panel with VanValkenburg. “And this is particularly egregious and acute when it comes to a public utility, a monopoly that you all regulate and are elected to regulate in the general assembly.”

VanValkenburg said he agrees that political campaigns should not be allowed to accept corporate donations from those they are tasked to regulate. Campaign finance reform has been a topic of discussion for years, but little has advanced in the General Assembly.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.