CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Dominion Energy’s newly proposed gas-powered plant in Chesterfield County has environmentalists across the state worried the company is fighting fire with fire.
Summer 2023 introduced dangerously high temperatures to Central Virginia, causing many residents to rely heavily on resources like air conditioning. Dominion Energy’s plans for a Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center aim to ensure customers always have access to that crucial energy, but the facility would also emit harmful gasses, so environmentalists warn — it could do more harm than good in the long-term.
Back in 2020, Virginia leaders outlined goals like 100% clean energy and zero carbon emissions by 2045. Environmentalists said these plans helped make Virginia a ‘climate leader’ in the South.
Meanwhile, in August 2023, Central Virginia is coming out of one of the hottest summers yet. Dominion Energy spokesperson Jeremy Slayton said there’s an energy reliability crisis — the catalyst for the Chesterfield proposal.
The proposal’s four gas-powered turbines aimed at promising customers reliable, stable access to energy even in their most vulnerable moments.
“It’s going to be used on those hottest and coldest days of the year,” Slayton said.
However, Virginia code has “decarbonization” statutes, which mandate companies switch to a zero-carbon emission grid by 2045. Therefore, some environmentalists — like Cale Jaffe with University of Virginia Law School — are puzzled by the plan to launch a carbon-emitting plant that would go up just 18 years before a legal deadline would require it be taken down.
“Either the company is planning to retire this plant early,” Jaffe began. “[Or] the other possibility is Dominion [Energy] is not planning to meet the Virginia Clean Economy Act target.”
Emergency conditions could allow it to stay up come 2045, but this brought about questions of cost, potential health risks, and efficiency. Jaffe said seeing as it’s only 2023, Dominion Energy and its competitors have time to find ways to comply with Virginia’s environmental goals, rather than planning to rely on emergency exceptions.
“They should be planning, of course, how they’re going to get to zero by 2045 as the law requires,” Jaffe.
Environmentalists also brought up the importance of a stronger reliance on alternative methods, like solar power — something Dominion Energy reinforced they do care about.
Slayton reminded the community of Dominion Energy’s pursuit of a large-scale offshore wind project and their existing large solar panel fleets. He said the recently proposed Chesterfield gas-plant project is about constant, ensured reliability, so customers are never left without vital things like air conditioning.
“Offshore wind only works about 50% of the time,” Slayton explained. “Solar works about 25% of the time, and battery storage only stores electricity for 4 to 6 hours.”
In response to that notion, Jaffe argued that facilities like the newly proposed plant are part of why climate conditions have gotten to this point in the first place.
“They’re exacerbating their problem,” Jaffe laughed. “And then to say the only solution to the problem we’ve we’ve helped build is to make that problem worse. I don’t know what more to say than that.”
Experts brought up a Harvard University study that found one in five deaths is from fossil fuel emissions.
Dominion said the company is still finalizing costs for the project, but added that the company’s current customer rates are 20% below the national average — suggesting there’s some room to work with.
