According to the US EIA (Energy Information Association), current Virginia’s energy production stand on 8.5GW. 53% from Natural Gas, 31% from nuclear power, 10% from coal fueled and nearly 7% from Renewable Energy (RE).

On April 12, 2020 , Governor Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Clean Energy Act (VCEA), to accelerate Virginia’s transition to a clean energy environment.

The VCEA sets Virginia on the path for being 100% carbon free by 2045. By reducing carbon pollution, creating new jobs (estimated by additional 30,000 new jobs), developing the  (RE) economy, improving health outcomes for all Virginians, and saving Virginia families and businesses money on their utility bills.

The act has 4 pillars which called the four E’s, that address both the demand and supply of our energy resources:

  1. Enacting a RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) target to make the grid 100% carbon free –. RE defined as electricity from wind, solar, falling water, and other in-state resources. The VCEA requires the 2 major utilities in Virginia to become 100% carbon free, it set 2045 as the year target for Dominion Energy and 2050 for ApCo. This RPS target comes also with the benchmarking of 45% renewable in the non-nuclear load by 2030. For Dominion, 75% of all RE must come from the Commonwealth in 2025 and beyond. 

The VCEA create the pathway to Zero carbon in few ways:

  • No Emission permits may be issued post 2049
  • All coal fired generation should be retired by 2024
  • All biomass-fired generation should be retired by 2028
  • All other generations that emits carbon should be retired by 2045
  1. Establishing energy efficiency standards – the act intends to create an environment of energy efficiency programs to be “in the public interest”. The act includes a program to reduce energy burden for low-income customers. The act sets an energy efficiency resources standard, requiring third party review of whether energy companies meet savings goals. The VCEA sets energy efficiency renewable standards (EERS) and goals for 2022-2025.
Year Total annual savings (% of Retail Sales) of energy efficiency over a 2019 baseline
Dominion ApCo
2022 1.25% 0.5%
2023 2.5% 1%
2024 3.75% 1.5%
2025 5% 2%
  1. Advances offshore wind and other RE resources– the act defines that offshore wind generation is in “in the public interest”. The VCEA establishes offshore wind as a substantial portion of the RPS as offshore wind comes online and deploys 5,300 MW by 2034 making Virginia a leader in offshore wind state generators. It also includes labor provisions to require the use of the local labor. For Distribution solar, it establishes rooftop solar as a portion of the RP up to 1% of the annual goals beginning in 2021. The VCEA sets targets for energy storage of 3,100 MW of energy storage by 2035, including 2,700MW for Dominion and 400MW for ApCo. It also requires 10% of energy storage to be deployed directly “behind the meter” for power backups at hospitals, government facilities, and more.

Here is a snapshot of the RE requirement from Dominion and ApCp, through 2035
Year of petition to the SCC Onshore RE (Dominion) MW Onshore RE (ApCo) MW
2023 200
2024 3,000
2027 3,000 200
2030 4,000 200
2035 6,100
Year of petition to the SCC Storage (Dominion) MW Storage (ApCo) MW
2035 2,700 400
Year in service Offshore (Dominion) MW Offshore (ApCo) MW
2028 2,500-3,000
2034 2,100-2,600

35% of all RE mw shown in the table above must be third party owned and operated.

The utilities can use RECS generated by these resources to fulfill their RPS obligation.

Storage targets are technology agnostic. The primary limitation is that no one storage facilities may comprise over then 500MW of the utilities target with the exception of 1 storage facility of 800MW in Dominion’s territory.

  1. Expanding Distributed Clean Power Generation – The VCEA set new rules for the Distribution Generation (DG):

  2. 1% of the RPS’s will be allocated for DG. 

  3. Raises the Net Energy Metering (NEM) projects cap of the utility projects from 1% to 6%. In addition, not after 2024 (for Dominion) and 2025 (for ApCo), the SCC (Virginia State Corporation Commission) should revisit and set new tariffs for the NEM.

  4. Raises the ceiling size of individual DG projects from 1MW to 3MW.

  5. Raises to cap of the PPA from 50MW to 1,000MW, for Dominion (split 50-50 between jurisdictions such as school and municipalities, and 500MW to non-jurisdictional) and 40MW to ApCo.

 Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh2VyLuktxQ#action=share

https://ccanactionfund.org/media/Virginia-Clean-Economy-Act-update-factsheet.pdf