What Recession? Dominion Wants Raises, Guaranteed Profits

From The Green Miles

“The sustainability of our economic development successes are dependent on having a reliable energy source,” — Delacey Skinner, Gov. Tim Kaine’s communications director, talking about coal-fired power, March 31, 2008

I think of that quote every time I hear about how our continued dependence on coal-fired power is hurting consumers and businesses and leaving Virginians in the dark. The only thing dependable these days about coal-fired power is that it keeps getting more expensive. And the only thing reliable is Dominion’s guaranteed profits

RICHMOND, March 31 — Dominion Virginia Power is seeking to raise electricity rates 6.9 percent during the next 14 months to pay for equipment, salaries, plant construction and conservation projects. […]

Dominion said incremental increases proposed for Sept. 1 and Jan. 1 will pay for operating costs, power plants in Buckingham and Wise counties and conservation programs. The increase also includes a 13.5 percent profit for the company and its investors.

Dominion: Global Warming Starts HereAt a time when Virginia businesses are laying off workers, Dominion is asking them to divert more money away from their payrolls and towards Dominion’s payroll and profit.

The proposed 7 percent hike would be on top of the 18 percent rate increase we just got hit with in September. Oddly, the Washington Post article doesn’t mention the 1.5 percent fee Dominion quietly added in January to cover the cost of the new $2 billion coal-fired power plant in Wise County. Compounding the rate hikes, it would be more than a 28 percent total increase.

But surely our elected officials will take a stand for consumers … right?

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who does not have a formal role in reviewing the request, said Dominion officials informed him they would be seeking an increase.

“The SCC is a strong body with a great staff, and I think they will do due diligence on this,” he said. “It’s difficult because the cost of energy is going up.”

Wow. Dominion wants to raise customers’ energy bills more than 28 percent in the worst economy since the Great Depression, and all Gov. Kaine can muster is a shrugging “well, what’re ya gonna do”?

Our continuing dependence on dirty coal is taking money out of consumers’ pockets, costing Virginia jobs, stripping our natural resources, polluting our air, and warming our planet. Remember that the next time anyone tries to tell you we can’t switch to clean energy.

MilesGrant2009.com

Clean Water: A blow against mountain top removal mining

black mountain, mtr
In what could be a major victory for Virginia’s mountains, the Clean Water Protection Act was introduced in the Senate today with a record 115 co-sponsors. The act would outlaw the act of dumping mining waste into streams, a crucial and destructive step in mountain top removal mining.

607 Virginia students attended Power Shift this weekend, and lobbied their representatives to end the destructive practice of MTR. Many of these students are from areas in Virginia that have been devastated by this practice, which blows the tops off mountains and dumps the waste in the valleys and streams below, just to get at a seam of coal that could be only 4 inches thick. Wise County, where Dominion is planning to build a new coal plant, has already seen

Virginia is for…. Missed Opportunities?

$268,656,969,377

Looks like a lot of money, right? Again, that’s two hundred and sixty-eight billion, six hundred and fifty-six million, nine hundred and sixty-nine thousand, three hundred and seventy-seven dollars. No one in their right mind would walk away from the table and leave that much behind, right?

Actually, it represents the money that the U.S. economy has lost by not adopting smart energy policies suggested by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) in 2001 as of 1pm last Thursday.

Given the state of Virginia’s economy — with our potential $4 billion deficit — you’d think our leaders would jump at the chance to save Virginia taxpayers money through smart energy policies. Think again.

Last night, the Virginia General Assembly missed an extraordinary opportunity by voting to kill the only mandatory efficiency bill in the GA this year – Senate Bill 1447.

We all know that investments in energy efficiency are the quickest, cleanest and most cost effective way to meet our rising energy demands here in Virginia. An independent study done by the ACEEE found that with a little help from our leaders in Richmond, the Commonwealth had the potential to stabilize its rising energy demands, avoid the need for costly new generation and provide thousands of jobs. Investments in efficiency cost 3 cents per kilowatt hour versus the 12 cents per kilowatt hour required to build a coal-fired power plant. I may not be good at math but upon first inspection 3 is less than 12. This bill could have saved Virginians approximately $15 billion on electricity bills by 2025.

SB 1447 was the only bill that would definitively put Virginia on the path towards a clean energy economy. It was the strongest piece of efficiency legislation before the committee, and it would have made the Commonwealth an efficiency leader both among our neighboring states and across the country.

Senator McEachin’s strong bill died in committee last night — by one vote. ONE VOTE?!?!?! Guess who voted to skip this amazing opportunity?

Senator Saslaw.

State Senator Dick Saslaw (D-35), the Senate Majority leader and Chair of the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, cast the deciding vote against the bill. In fact, he was the only Democratic on the committee to vote to kill the bill.

This man represents parts of Fairfax County, a district that overwhelmingly voted for change when they elected President Barack Obama by almost 70 percent in some areas. So why, one might ask, is this man voting against policies that would usher in real change for Virginia?

I can think of 85,000 reasons.

Dominion Virginia Power donated $85,000 to Senator Saslaw’s campaign between 2004 and 2009. Dominion, the largest utility in Virginia and one of the largest in the U.S., is profiting hand over fist from Virginia’s long-term addiction to coal. This is an addiction that Senator Saslaw helped solidify into state law, and an addiction that can only be defined as self destructive. So destructive, in fact, that instead of jump-starting our economy as investments in efficiency would, investing in coal actually shrinks the economy. By the state’s own estimates, building Dominion’s proposed coal-fired power plant in Wise County will actually contract Virginia’s economy by 1500 jobs.

As consumers are getting hit with ballooning electricity bills and the economic crisis continues to slam Virginia hard, Senator McEachin’s bill would have made electricity bills go down while also ensuring that Virginia could meet its growing energy demands without constructing any new costly power plants.

Isn’t it time our elected leaders start representing their constituents and stop representing the interests of Dominion Virginia Power? What do you think Virginia?

Want to tell Sen. Saslaw how you feel? Here’s his number: 804-698-7535.

Get involved in our Virginia campaign>>

One Tiny Step Forward, Two Giant Steps Back

cars
Yesterday Gov. Kaine applauded Virginia’s electrical co-ops for donating energy efficient lights to Virginia State Parks, hailing it as “a major step forward” for Virginia.

It’s great that Virginia is taking strides to be more energy efficient. Considering Virginia spent just $84,000 statewide on efficiency measures in 2006, compared with $400,000 in Alabama and Mississippi and $3.8 billion in North Carolina, we certainly need to be stepping up our commitment to efficiency.

It’s also great that this is a “major step.” What exactly does that mean? Continue reading

Coal's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Poor King Coal can seem to get a break these days. After the election saw three global warming deniers lose their elections in VA, Thursday saw a huge shift toward a rational policy on coal. The Environmental Appeals Board ruled that the EPA must regulate CO2 as a pollutant from coal plants, and Virginia’s Climate Commission nearly banned new coal plants.

The EPA ruling sets a very persuasive precedent in our case against Dominion’s Wise County coal plant. The State Air Pollution Control Board did not include CO2 as a pollutant when they were permitting the plant

Can you spell c-o-a-l?

Essay by Mike Tidwell, published online at Grist

The dirty secret behind D.C.’s high-tech Virginia suburbs

There’s a chance the presidential election will come down to who wins the state of Virginia. And the key to winning Virginia comes down to who does well in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia. This area is an economic powerhouse where no fewer than one in three Virginia voters live. Just mention the words “northern Virginia” across the mid-Atlantic region and the hyphenated adjectives come back at you: Fast-growing, high-tech, well-educated, high-income.

No wonder the presidential candidates can’t seem to stay away from the area. Despite perennial traffic congestion, “NoVa” has that certain gleam of 21st century life, from the glitzy high-rises of Rosslyn to the corporate campuses around the Dulles airport to the performing arts stage at a place called Wolf Trap. Fairfax County alone, the heart of the region, has a higher percentage of high-tech workers than Silicon Valley.
Continue reading

Dominion's $500,000 influence

dominion logoDominion released their lobbying disclosure report yesterday and I wonder what they got with their $500,000. Eric Cantor has received nearly $25,000 from Dominion in the last year and he voted against environmental education, to eliminate a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, and against public transportation giving him an “ugly” rating by LCV.

But $25,000 is just a drop in the bucket compared to what Dominion has actually spent. They’ve spent nearly $500,000 was spent on lobbying expenses in just the last few months. Even this is a huge increase, compared to the $20,000 the previous quarter. View Dominion’s $500,000 disclosure report here>>

Obviously, the fight against climate change is between the people and Big Oil and Big Coal money. We can’t outspend the energy corporations but we can outnumber them.

Dominion Power vs. Basic Economics

The Associated Press reported the other day that the price of coal has gone through the roof from $40 to $90 per ton in just the last year. The causes of this increase are many, from short term problems (like floods in major Australian mines), emerging competition for the resource from China and India, and long term problems having to do with increased demand. The take home message is that coal is getting more expensive, and that is causing the electricty providers to raise rates.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the states and utilities that rely most heavily on coal are being the hardest hit by this growing energy boondoggle. States like West Virginia that get more than 90% of their energy from coal saw their electricity rates rise twice as fast as the national average in 2007 (4.6% vs. 2.3%). Rate increases like these impact the already stressed poor communities the most, the ones that are barely able to pay their utility bills in the first place.

To many of us that understand basic economics, the price increases that we are currently seeing with coal, gas and oil are not entirely surprising. All fossil fuels are fininte resources that are used and not replaced. As the world uses more and more of these resources, the scarcer and more valuable they become, and therefore the price goes up accordingly.

This is not wholly a bad thing if the economy is allowed to work its magic. Other forms of (renewable) energy will become more competitive, our reliance on fossil fuels will go down as we use more alternative energies to meet our needs, and as demand for fossil fuels drops so will the price. Pure magic.

But our utilities are not listening to the market and apparently are not big fans of Adam Smith.

In spite of fact that we are running out of coal and prices are skyrocketing, Dominion Power still wants to build a new coal plant to lock Virginians into 50 more years of dirty, inefficient, and expensive technology. The last time I checked, the price of solar and wind energy were coming down — they also provide the benefit of utilizing power sources (the sun and wind) that is not subject to price shocks. So it wouldn’t matter how much of the sun China is using, we will still get our fair share as well.

Dominion is not thinking like a rational consumer, they are mortgaging our future for short term gains (for why that is bad, see: the current housing foreclosure crisis). Wind and solar are predictable investments, coal is not.

Our Commonwealth would be better served by renewable energy, if only we had the leadership to help bring it here.