To power data centers, the state’s largest utility is proposing a massive 3-gigawatt gas plant that tests the limits of the Virginia Clean Economy Act.
Even as data centers spike energy demand and electricity rates rise, Virginia has stood by its landmark climate targets when other states, from New York to Hawaii, have wavered. Legislators in the data center capital of the world didn’t just preserve the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act earlier this year; they strengthened it — expanding requirements for energy providers to invest in battery storage, community solar, and energy efficiency.
But now, Virginia’s largest electric utility is putting the law to its toughest test yet. In rural Cumberland County, Dominion Energy is proposing to build one of the nation’s biggest natural gas facilities, even though the statute prevents new fossil fuel plants and says all of them must shut down within two decades.
Utility regulators can waive the rules on fossil fuel generation if they determine grid reliability is at stake, a loophole Dominion exploited last year to win approval for another gas facility, in Chesterfield County outside Richmond, that is a third of the size of the proposed Cumberland project. If the company uses that same escape clause to build an even larger plant and operate it into midcentury, it will add to worries that the 2020 law’s fossil fuel phaseout is a mere paper tiger: still on the books but lacking any real teeth…