Virginia’s Latest Session Is a Milestone for the State’s Clean Energy Advocates

With legislative sessions disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, state legislatures have passed significantly fewer energy-related laws in 2020 than in 2019. However, Virginia defied this trend.

During Virginia’s 2020 legislative session, Governor Ralph Northam signed multiple bills into law that expanded access to clean energy. One such bill, SB 754, permits electric cooperatives (co-ops) throughout the state to create on-bill tariff programs beginning January 1, 2021. This on-bill tariff program will allow co-ops to implement energy efficiency measures in any participating customer’s premises (homes, office buildings, etc.), thus lowering their monthly energy usage and costs. Rather than the customer paying the cost of these measures up front, they are able to repay the cost over a period of several years as an “energy savings charge” line item on their utility bill. On-bill tariff programs allow low- and middle-income houses to afford energy efficiency measures, as well as reduce total fossil fuel usage for participating premises.

Governor Northam also signed into law the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). This act combines several energy standards, investments, and policies with the aim to achieve a 100 percent clean energy powered electric grid by 2050. Two of Virginia’s largest utilities, Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power, are required to be 100 percent carbon-free by 2045 and 2050 respectively. The act also declared several thousand megawatts of offshore wind and solar energy to be “in the public interest,” thus ensuring that wind and solar farms will be built. Supporters of the bill hail it as the most ambitious clean energy bill ever passed in Virginia; according to Advanced Energy Works, the VCEA will create up to 13,000 jobs per year and save an average of $3,500 per household over 30 years, in addition to benefiting the environment.

Other laws passed by Virginia in its 2020 session include the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act, which commits Virginia to joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon trading market formed by like-minded states; HB 1042, which establishes the Virginia Council on Environmental Justice as a permanent advisory council to the executive branch; and HB 654, which expands access to Virginia’s statewide clean energy financing program.

The 2020 legislative session was Virginia’s first since the 2019 election, which resulted in Democrats controlling both the legislature and the governorship for the first time since 1993. The Democrat’s new majority was a primary contributor to the clean energy bills passing, as support for several of the bills fell mostly along party lines; however, the on-bill tariff bill passed unanimously in the Senate.

States looking to pass ambitious clean energy legislation can look to Virginia as an example.

Author: Maia Crook