In his Aug. 10 opinion piece in the DN-R, State Senator Mark Obenshain relates the proposed merger of Dominion and NextEra to Virginia’s policies on climate change, namely, its participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Virginia Clean Economy Act. He is echoing Trump’s attempt to return the economy to one based on fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas.
H. Bishop Dansby
For the past couple of decades, the demand for electricity had been dropping in the United States due to the adoption of energy efficient technologies, from LED lightbulbs to Energy Star appliances to heat pumps. The emergence of AI and the need for power hungry data centers to support it has drastically changed that. Virginia is the site of far more data centers than any state in the country. Surely, this is driving the merger of Dominion and NextEra.
The response to climate change has meant the need to electrify the economy, such as the replacement of gas-powered vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) and oil and gas furnaces with heat pumps. For the transition to be effective, the electricity has to be generated by non-fossil sources, such as solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and hydro. AI and data centers now put so much pressure on increasing the electric energy generated that it will be tempting to go back to the heavy use of fossil fuels, mainly natural gas.
NextEra Energy, world’s largest generator of renewable energy from wind and solar, develops utility-scale wind, solar and battery storage solutions across North America. Nevertheless, in a recent interview of NextEra and Dominion CEOs on CNBC, in response to the question of how the enormous energy needs of data centers will be met, the CEO of NextEra, John Ketchum, said, with “all of the above” sources of energy. Dominion CEO, Robert Blue, eagerly nodded in agreement. Fortunately, Ketchum did not list coal among the “all of the above,” but there was a clear emphasis on natural gas. Years ago at a conference, I confronted Blue on Dominion’s reliance on natural gas, and he was visibly irritated by the question. Governor Spanberger has filed to intervene in the approval process of the merger. To her credit, one of her goals is to ensure that Virginia’s renewable energy initiatives such as the offshore wind project are not abandoned.
Of course, Obenshain does not share Spanberger’s sentiments. In 2015 in his state senate race against April Moore, he said that solar was “at least 20 years away.” Since then, the state has been inundated with utility scale solar applications and installations. Solar is now the cheapest source of electric power, and plummeting battery storage costs allow solar-battery systems to compete with natural gas peaking plants.
The demand by AI data centers for electricity is truly unprecedented and comes right out of the blue as the latest obstacle to real progress on climate change. While NextEra leads the world in the development of renewable energy, its emphasis has been on utility scale solar. Given the enormous demand for electricity due to the data centers, EVs, and the electrification of the economy in general, we truly do need an “all of the above” strategy, but I suspect not the kind that gets Robert Blue eagerly nodding his head. In Australia, 43% of rooftops have solar PV systems, with the result that 12:00-3:00 pm Australians get free energy. France now requires all parking lots, existing as well as planned, to be covered with solar arrays.
Our “all of the above” should mean rooftop and parking lot solar, as well as utility-scale solar, and on and offshore wind. It is hard to imagine buildings more suited for solar panels than these data centers. Further, if the data centers want to assure the public that they will not increase the cost of electricity and pollution, would it not make sense for each facility to be responsible for its own power production?
Trump has an explicit, unapologetic policy to return the economy to one based on fossil fuels. Republicans have been the “drill baby, drill” party for decades. I gave a speech to the local Bar Association on climate change years ago and that included the National Research Council’s prediction of a dramatic increase in the risk of western fires as climate change progressed. For several years, now, it feels as if we are living in a disaster movie.
Are Obenshain and his Republican colleagues affected by the apocalyptic scenes with which we are now regularly confronted? Is it worth burning up the planet to keep the fossil fuel constituency?
I highly recommend “The Miracles (and Maddening Politics) of the Clean Energy Revolution,” The Ezra Klein Show, on YouTube
H. Bishop Dansby lives in Keezletown.