Benjamin Uttenweiler, Contributing Writer
Northern Virginia-based AI data center growth has Dominion Energy scrambling to meet demand. They must increase their capacity to generate power, and they want the rest of Virginia to foot the bill.
Dominion proposed a series of small methane plants that could be turned on to meet spikes in demand. The site of the coal-fired Chesterfield Power Station already has the infrastructure to accommodate the first such plant, The Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center (CERC).
I attended a public hearing on the Department of Environmental Quality’s decision regarding the CERC’s Air Pollution Permit. After notable politicians, like Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi, spoke against the CERC, and slick, reptilian lawyer-types from Dominion argued for it, the floor opened for public comment.
Despite the droll reputation of local politics, the comments were highly entertaining, albeit in the voyeuristic, repulsed-yet-enthralling way a video of a pimple being popped is.
The CEO of Columbia Gas was in attendance, and he actually had the gall to give a folksy speech posing as a local homeowner going on about what a good neighbor Dominion is. There were a number of elderly, uniformly white men who spoke in favor of the plant in impassioned tirades — one such old man shouted “what is your alternative?” at other attendees when the mediator asked those in opposition to the CERC to stand up.
Interspersed were the environmentally-minded, speaking about the questionable legality of the plant and mourning its future contributions to climate change.
Dominion must transition to zero-carbon energy by 2045 under the Clean Economy Act, which makes their decision to build not just one new methane plant, but potentially the first of eight, perplexing. Methane is far from the only way to generate reliable power, and it is certainly not the easiest for us to live next to.
Dominion has had great success integrating into communities in the past — the area around their Lake Anna reactor is so nice that the parts of its shores that aren’t a state park are lined with vacation homes. They are not hurting for new clean power options: there are plans for the world’s first commercial fusion reactor and the largest offshore wind farm in US history to be built in Virginia. If we must allow data centers unlimited, immediate access to our grid, it can be done without a toxic methane plant in our backyard.
Even after dodging over a billion dollars in Virginia taxes, few of the generative AI ventures that data centers facilitate have turned a profit. The CERC would have the Richmond area suffer higher electricity bills, greater air pollution and accelerated global climate change, in service of a technology with few applications beyond being a vehicle for market speculation.
Dominion receives reimbursement (in the form of higher rates) for new construction, but not for repairs. This incentivises such reckless expansion as a methane plant with a sub-20-year shelf life. Even the CERC’s most redeeming feature — that it would at times be turned off — is a ploy to increase energy bills: its designation as a “peaker-plant” allows Dominion to charge higher rates whenever it’s fired up.
One striking feature of the hearing was that VCU students were largely absent. Maybe 15 attendees were in college and the rest were in college when the Berlin Wall was still up. I don’t mean to disparage senior citizens here; I draw attention to the advanced age of the crowd because I am shocked these people had the energy to show up in such numbers and speak with such intensity when our college-aged cohort did not.
The fact of the matter is this: 20-year-olds have a lot more on the line for environmental issues like this than 70-year-olds. The effects of climate change are often years or decades delayed.
It will be the younger generations like us that have to live through the worst of it — yet we are outnumbered ten to one at these meetings.
Though permits for the CERC have been granted, the issue of it and the other methane plants isn’t settled. There is litigation in progress over the zoning approval the CERC needs, and each subsequent plant Dominion builds will require public comment on its DEQ air pollution permits and its SCC certificates of public convenience.
A baby boomer and an oil executive worked to influence the future of the climate today, will you?
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