RICHMOND, VA-Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s “2022 Virginia Energy Plan” – released today – is a veiled threat to Virginia’s clean-energy progress in recent years and threatens to move the Commonwealth backwards during the world’s last-chance decade to solve climate change. The 29-page report takes a supposedly “all-of-the-above” approach to energy, calling for support for more coal and gas and nuclear while calling for changes to the state’s landmark “Clean Economy Act of 2020” and “Clean Cars Act of 2021.”
Mike Tidwell, Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, issued the following statement in response to the new energy plan from the Virginia Department of Energy:
“As hurricanes bash the U.S. in the east and wildfires torch the west, Governor Youngkin’s new energy plan for Virginia fails to meet the challenge of cleaning our air and solving the climate crisis. His ‘all-of-the-above’ approach would have been fine in 1950 but has no place in the year 2022. Methane gas is not ‘clean’ and nuclear power is fantastically expensive and will not protect consumers or the environment. Instead of embracing false solutions like gas and nuclear, the Governor should be embracing and implementing the Virginia Clean Economy Act and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – policies already on the books and benefiting Virginians. Instead, he calls for review and changes to these fully functioning and successful policies. The people of Virginia want serious solutions, not games, when it comes to energy. They want low-cost wind and solar and the electric vehicles Detroit is all-in on manufacturing. Glenn Youngkin should catch up to modern Virginia and leave 1900s Virginia behind.”
The 2022 Virginia Energy Plan can be read here.
Contact:
Mike Tidwell, Executive Director, CCAN, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org, 240-460-5838
KC Chartrand, Communications Director, CCAN, kc@chesapeakeclimate.org, 240-620-7144
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