To: Interested parties
From: Lee Francis, Virginia League of Conservation Voters
Re: Virginia Clean Economy Act Truth Vs. Fiction
Date: Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025
On Monday, Jan. 13, Governor Youngkin issued his “State of the Commonwealth,” where he made false claims about the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), our state’s blueprint to reach 100% clean electricity generation by mid-century.
Passed in 2020, the VCEA is a flexible framework that directs our big electric utilities to invest in clean, renewable and carbon-free energy generation, alongside energy efficiency and energy storage, while also expanding distributed generation sources like rooftop solar, and bringing more competition to our energy marketplace – all while gradually phasing out fossil fuel generation. From its outset the VCEA prioritized reliability and also kept the door open to new energy technologies – necessary components in a law intended to guide energy decision-making for three decades – while also ensuring energy needs are being met in the most cost-effective way.
As legislative attacks continue at the General Assembly seeking a wholesale repeal of the VCEA or to undermine key components of the Act, Youngkin’s allies at the General Assembly will continue to spread misinformation and disinformation – efforts likely to continue after session in the lead-up to the 2025 elections.
Please keep the following facts in mind when reporting on this topic:
Claim: The Virginia Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, simply is not working.
Truth: After the VCEA was passed, clean energy jobs in Virginia grew more than 3.5 times faster than overall employment in Virginia. In 2022, there were 113,565 jobs in clean energy in Virginia, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Made possible by the VCEA, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project alone accounts for nearly 1,000 jobs and $143 million in annual economic output. When complete, CVOW will generate enough clean energy to power 660,000 homes.
While it is driving clean energy jobs and investment, the long-term success or failure of the VCEA will hinge on how well it is implemented and whether decision-makers and regulators hold our utilities accountable to meeting its benchmarks. Dominion Energy, for example, is already not meeting the VCEA’s energy efficiency resource standard.
Claim: Today, Virginia’s demand for power is growing because Virginia is now growing rapidly.
Virginia’s annual population growth rate hasn’t exceeded 1% since 2012. See the below chart with U.S. Census Bureau Data going back to 2020:
| Virginia Population Growth 2020-2024 (U.S. Census Bureau) | ||
| Year | Population | Growth Rate |
| 2024 | 8,811,195 | .88% |
| 2023 | 8,734,685 | .59% |
| 2022 | 8,683,414 | .28% |
| 2021 | 8,658,910 | .25% |
| 2020 | 8,637,615 | .95% |
So Virginia’s human population isn’t driving energy demand – at least not at anywhere near the scale that Youngkin claims.
It’s true that demand projections are higher than when the VCEA passed, but that’s because of out-of-control energy demand from the data center industry – the same sector that Youngkin applauds and encourages in his State of the Commonwealth while discouraging legislative action to secure a more responsible and sustainable industry.
This demand would exist with or without the VCEA, as would issues around transmission and siting. But it’s a myth to assume that we can’t meet rising demand with clean generation – it’s been done before. And it’s irresponsible policy to increase energy costs on Virginia ratepayers in order to subsidize and meet the demands of one of the wealthiest industries in the world – an industry that already pays no sales or use taxes in Virginia – as Youngkin has proposed by opposing any legislative intervention.
Claim: [The VCEA] is driving up rates, driving down reliability, and constricting our economic growth.
Virginia’s economy has grown while the VCEA has been law. Our GDP increased by nearly 11 percent from 2020 – the year the VCEA was passed – to 2023, moving from $533.8B to $590.8B.
The largest driver of bill increases in Virginia in recent years has been from the cost of volatile fossil fuels, costs that our utilities recover and then some, which spiked in 2022 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The legislature recognized this issue in 2023 when they passed utility rate reform (SB 1265 and HB 1770) – legislation that the Youngkin Administration helped negotiate. These reforms included ordering the State Corporation Commission to review rates for big electric utilities every two years instead of three, and authorizing the SCC to roll Rate Adjustment Clauses, or RACs, into base rates, while amortizing fuel costs. This legislation also shifted from a peer group review model to determine utilities’ profit margins to a performance based model, cut allowable overearnings in half and gave the SCC more authority to cut rates even further.
These protections, paired with consumer protections already built into the VCEA that cap how much ratepayers can be charged and the law’s energy efficiency measures, serve as a hedge against bill spikes.
Household energy costs would be astronomically higher to double our electric generation, and build more natural gas generation,“lots of it,” as Youngkin has proposed, alongside other speculative, unproven and costly technology. According to a report by the International Energy Agency, utility-scale solar projects now cost an average of around $40 per megawatt hour, roughly half the price of coal or natural gas projects.
Investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency (using less energy), are our best hedge against higher electric bills while meeting energy demands.
About us:
The Virginia League of Conservation Voters serves as the political voice of the state’s conservation community, working to make sure Virginia’s elected officials recognize that our natural heritage is an environmental and economic treasure for all. Virginia LCV works with conservation leaders across Virginia and strives for a conservation majority in state government. We secure good public policies on the state level and hold public officials accountable for their positions on environmental issues. For more information, visit www.valcv.org.
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