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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a front organization, in essence, for pay-to-play corporate interests to get slavish state legislators to submit cookie-cutter, lobbyist-written legislation in state after state after state. From promoting for-profit prisons to criminalizing exposure of factory-farm animal-rights abuses to anti-labor, the ALEC legislative agenda promotes privatization of profits and socialization of costs. With the Republican takeover of the Virginia House of Delegates and Governor’s mansion, ALEC had the door opened to push their anti-society agenda on issue after issue. The Democratic Senate’s Brick Wall has put the kibosh to many of these destructive items passed by the extremist House Republicans.

Today, there is a major waypoint in one of ALEC’s focus arenas: undermining efforts to act on climate through promotion of fossil-foolish agenda items. The Virginia Senate’s Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee is scheduled to vote today on HB 1257 which is the Guarantee the Right to New Methane Polluting Stranded Assets in Buildings Act. Promoted with an appeal to ‘protect a person’s right to choose’, HB1257 would ban Virginia localities from enacting bans on future natural gas installation in the built infrastructure. ALEC has been using conservative, anti-science state legislatures to preempt more liberal communities seeking to move to protect local health and pursue tools to reduce climate (and other) emissions. The most fruitful path for the United States to boost its economic performance, improve human health, increase energy resiliency and security, and act to remove emissions is to “electrify everything while cleaning up the electricity supply”. Banning natural gas in new construction, a path adopted in an increasing number of localities and states, is a key part of this strategy.

Preventing this is a key objective of the methane (incorrectly called “natural gas”) industry. Building gas connections to new buildings opens the door for decades of additional sales with building (home, commercial, industrial) owners facing future dilemmas as to whether to stay with polluting and increasingly expensive to operate gas appliances or take the significant financial cost to retrofit and eliminate their methane stranded assets. Far more efficient (financially, energy, and otherwise) is to not dump money into gas hookups and go all-electric from the get-go. HB1257 wants to preempt local communities from even having the right to consider whether this is the best path forward for their community.

If you wish to urge Virginia Senate legislators to reject HB1257, here is a quick tool to contact the Committee’s Senators.

As the international community struggles with paths to respond and deal with Putin’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, looking to reinvigorate the Joint Common Plan of Action (JCPOA) (-Russia) agreement could provide an interesting part of the package. In addition to reducing potential Iranian movement toward Putin in a ‘coalition of the sanctioned’, ending of Iranian sanctions could reduce pressures in the global oil market (e.g., help contain/reduce price increases) due to Russia sanctions and could help reduce Russian revenue streams from oil exports.

Iranian oil exports are the range of one million barrels a day (mb/d) currently under the sanctions’ region with the portion exported going at a discounted rate to, for example, China (under the table) as part of sanctions’ busting efforts.

Iran has kept some exports flowing despite sanctions as intermediaries find ways to disguise the origin of the imports. Tanker tracking companies say China is the destination of most of those shipments.

Ending the sanctions, already well underway in discussions prior to Russia’s invasion, has the potential to lead to a rather rapid growth in Iranian oil exports from 1 to 2.5 mb/d. That additional Iranian oil could replace about one-third of Russia’s oil exports (which were about 4.3 mb/d in 2021) and ease the international (European, North American, developing world) economic pain created by serious sanctions against Russian oil and natural gas exports and revenues.

While the sanctions on Russia will foster new sanctions-busting activities (expanded Russian fossil fuel (oil and methane (natural gas)) exports to China at discounted from legal market rates seem likely), the United States entering back into the JCPOA offers the potential for somewhat fencing in Iranian nuclear weapons development activity while ending Iranian oil moving at discounted rates to global prices in ways that potentially are subsidizing the Chinese economy to the tune of $2-3B per year (with price discounts estimated to be between $4-$10 per barrel).

Bringing Iran back under international nuclear inspections and agreements is a risk-reduction move. The value of this is seriously increased

To be clear, this is not part and parcel of moves to address the climate crisis and accelerate the clean energy transition. A well-thought through engagement with Iran would include agreement for significant Iranian investment (using the resources from increased oil export revenues) in electrification, clean power, energy efficiency, and other moves to act on climate. And, while boosted global fossil-fuel use and production is not in humanity’s interest, a clean electron powered Iranian economy would free up more of Iranian production for export into the global market and help reduce ONG price pressures on global economic activity due to sanctioning Russia for Putin’s War of Aggression against Ukraine.

Imagine adopting “Democracy dies in darkness” as a motto, and then running opinions echoing those who’ve dedicated their lives to blowing smoke–literally.

The DC area, yet again, made global news through a massive traffic clusterf–k during a snowstorm as I-95, in Northern Virginia, got so clogged that drivers were stuck upwards of an entire day. Not surprisingly, in addition to climate denier joking about ‘where’s global warming’, anti-electric voices stepped up with false assertions. Rather than truthful discussion of how EVs can keep their drivers warm (especially with heated seats) for days if stuck and making clear that people in internal combustion engines (ICE) vehicles regularly die from asphyxiation when tailpipes get clogged by snow, it is too easy to find anti-clean energy diatribes making false assertions that ICE cars are safer if stuck in the snow. Sadly, but not surprisingly, The Washington Post prominently joined this crowd with a piece from passionately dedicated anti-electric vehicle editorial writer Charles Lane.

Every time our outdated systems for managing *all the things* fail — TX's winter gas crisis; summertime CA grid shutoffs; decapitation of all transportation in a VA storm — at least one mope with an audience will opine that if we try to improve, everything will just get worse. pic.twitter.com/p8DWDkgMVZ

— John Upton (@johnupton) January 5, 2022

Here, as a guest post from Climate Denier Round Up, is a dissection of Lane’s truthiness-laden column.

Imagine Electric Cars Stuck In Snow Instead Of Gas Ones,
Washington Post Acting Just Like Online Trolls

No one wants to get stuck in traffic. Or in the snow. Getting stuck in an all-day traffic jam because it snowed, well, that’s pretty much the worst. And that’s exactly what happened in Virginia this week, when thousands of people spent all day stuck on the highway after a severe snowstorm turned a jackknifed semi from a relatively routine highway occurrence to a major SNAFU.

Fortunately, everyone was okay. But imagine if they weren’t! Wouldn’t that have been terrible! Imagine if zombies had attacked while they were stranded, or if a horde of chuds emerged from the frozen sewers to convert everyone to Scientology, or, and this may be worst of all …

What if the cars stuck in the snow were all electric???

Everyone would surely be dead, or something!

At least that’s what the Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane is scared of, judging by a column on Tuesday that turned a rightwing meme into his weekly column. “Imagine Virginia’s icy traffic catastrophe – but with only electric vehicles,” implores the headline, as though the issue here were a lack of access to electricity and not, you know, an overturned semi and snowfall that prevented emergency responders from doing their jobs.

The basis for his scary story? A trucker tweeted that he gave someone “driving a Tesla” some water and blankets. Apparently this anecdote “illustrates an important point: If everyone had been driving electric vehicles, this mess could well have been worse.”

Except, of course, that’s not true at all. As both Reuters and Politifact pointed out last year when rightwing shitposters pushed the same scare story, EVs are fine when stuck in traffic jams because sitting there doesn’t run down the battery. (And a reply to the trucker that Lane must have missed linked to a video showing a fully charged EV keeping warm for 70 hours at -3C.)

Idling your gas car does burn fuel though, something that even Lane acknowledged, writing that “of course, cold also affects the performance of gas-powered vehicles; many were left stranded in Virginia after they ran out of fuel or their batteries died.”

Oh!

Nevertheless, Lane used the Tesla driver for his clever kicker complaining that EVs aren’t already cheaper, easier and better than gas cars, saying that like that driver “on I-95 in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, we’re not there yet.”

Except the Tesla family probably drove off fine, but a bunch of people who didn’t have electric vehicles were stuck, by Lane’s own accounting!

Still though, apparently old cars have the advantage because it’s easier to deliver gas to stranded motorists than charge an EV. But that’s only because gas is currently the norm! Can you imagine if the situation were reversed, and gas cars were replacing electric cars?

How would you possibly convince people that toting around gallons of liquid explosives is the safe and easy alternative to a battery or extension cord?

More realistically though, why is the Washington Post publishing this kind of nonsense? Do they really think that double-fact-checked memes are the sort of content deserving of their pages? Worse, are they aware that they’re offering the exact same sort of content as climate denial blogs? Watts Up With That ran a functionally identical post asking readers to “imagine you were stuck in an EV,” and the professional industrial disinformation peddlers at CFACT, who also are just begging people to ignore that it’s gas cars that got stuck and instead “imagine electric vehicles in bad weather.”

And of course, for the coup de grace, you know you’ve gotten something badly wrong when it’s approvingly tweeted by Steve Milloy from his “@Junkscience” account, a handle that originates in his work for Big Tobacco to oppose regulations on smoking in the ‘90s.

Imagine adopting “Democracy dies in darkness” as a motto, and then running opinions echoing those who’ve dedicated their lives to blowing smoke–literally.

NOTEs:

• For a related discussion, see Climate Denier Roundup’s Dec 2021 piece “While both options stink, you’d Be Better Off Getting Stranded In The Snow With An Electric Car than an ICE vehicle“.

“While an internal-combustion car’s engine stays on and burns fuel while idling, electric vehicles use little battery power when at a standstill.” … an EV battery could power the average house for two days, and that even half-charged, an EV battery could provide 10 to 15 hours of heating. And, of course, don’t forget: an electric F-150 can power a wedding!

A gas car, on the other hand, burns gas just sitting around, making it less efficient than an electric vehicle.

Most efficient, though, and a great way to avoid getting stuck in traffic jams all together, if we were to get really serious, is of course public transit.

• For a taste of truth, Tesla might use 10% of its battery capacity to keep a stopped car warm for 7-9 hours of warmth.

• And, from ILSR’s John Farrell

• See this Tesla owner’s discussion of Which is better when stuck in a traffic jam in winter: combusion vehicle or Tesla? comparing his Hyundai Tucson with Teslas in terms of heating demand if stuck in a snow storm.

My Hyundai would use (1.6l * 0.6) = 0.96 liters every hour while idling.
So with a full tank, it could generate heat for (62 liters/0.96 liters per hour =) 64 hours.

Model 3s and Ys have a 82kWh battery … only needs 735 watts to maintain temperature.
… can run the heater for 111 hours.

• A Tesla driver (two cars) was sparked by Lane to do a test and, well, heating the cabin to 60 degrees when it is 15 degrees outside, a full charge would keep the car heated for “about” 60 hours.

The pinned comment to his video:

A pregnant woman from the Facebook Tesla divas group posted… “Hey Divas, I hope you’re all doing well. Monday at around 5pm I was in traffic heading home on 95 south in Virginia and got stuck due to the snow storm. I ended up stuck in traffic for 16hrs! Thank goodness for my tesla. I was initially at 74% when I was able to get home I was around 61%. It was a nightmare being stuck in the traffic jam but I’m glad I was stuck in my tesla. I turned on camp mode and napped for a bit.”

Update: 17 Jan: An excellent eye-witness discussion from an EV driver who was caught on I95;

I am especially grateful that I was driving my EV when I got stuck on I-95. I watched countless vehicles slide across the road, but my EV expertly navigated the ice. While fellow drivers burned gasoline running their engines to stay warm, my EV intelligently directed power solely to temperature regulation—I did not have to inefficiently burn fuel to power my entire engine in order to keep us safe. As other drivers then fretted about their dwindling gas reserves, my EV intuitively monitored my power supply, giving me the peace of mind that other drivers did not have. Throughout my entire experience in the I-95 quagmire, I knew exactly how much power my EV was using, how much power remained in its battery, and how far I could drive. …

When the traffic nightmare finally ended, gas-powered vehicle drivers scrambled to wait in long lines at snowed-in and overwhelmed gas stations, but my EV’s navigation system directed me to a nearby open charger; these charging stations were conveniently installed every ten miles along the traffic corridor. Despite the extreme conditions my EV endured that day, I nevertheless made it to the charger with a fifty-mile range surplus.

From that author, Dan Kammenan, his letter to the editor in the Post.

This disaster was precipitated by snow and poor management, not EVs. Let’s not forget that pollution from gas-powered vehicles is exacerbating extreme weather. Fortunately, my EV performed admirably during this crisis. But if everyone drove EVs, perhaps we would have avoided this debacle in the first place.

As to Lane …

Sadly, there is little reason to expect reality to interfere with Lane’s anti-EV ideology.

In this guest post, Climate Denier Roundup tackles some of the perennial deceitful material from anti-electric vehicle climate deniers/deceivers including making clear that EVs will do better than ICE vehicles in

You don’t see whether it’s a wind turbine or gas turbine that sends the electrons to your home, you just plug in your appliances. But lots of people have a very personal relationship with the internal combustion engine, in that the car remains a steadfast relic of mid-century (manly) Americana that we just can’t seem to shake.

That makes electric vehicles one of the biggest consumer-facing targets for climate disinformation, an issue that brings otherwise esoteric policy discussions home for many, particularly those in prized suburban voting blocks.

Teed up by Chuck Todd’s abysmal climate change question (about flood insurance prices) in the Virginia gubernatorial debate, Glenn Youngkin lived up to what one would expect from the Virginian Republican (Grand Oil Party) nominee for Governor: predatory delay truthiness.

In summary, Youngkin

• Avoided saying “climate change” and directly acknowledging basic reality which would risk alienating his climate-science denying base.
• Propagandistically described methane as “clean burning natural gas”.
• Misrepresented the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).
• Failed to acknowledge the health, economic benefits, and other from moving to a clean-energy economy.
• Played Trump-ian “I’ve been told by someone” games to claim falsely that the VCEA’s achievable clean power targets are unrealistic.
• Falsely asserted that moving to a clean-power system will lower Virginia’s energy resiliency.

All of this, and more, in just 60 seconds!

The climate crisis made a brief appearance in last evening’s Virginia gubernatorial debate (see here for commentary on other portions of the debate) An oddball question from NBC’s Chuck Todd sparked strong comments from Democrat Terry McAuliffe and shallow predatory-delay, deceptive climate-truthiness from Trump-wannabe Glenn Youngkin.

In a southern state that, under Democratic Party leadership, has moved from significant trailer to a southern trailblazer on clean energy and climate policy, Todd’s question focused on — at best — a secondary issue. Rather than asking how, as Governor, the candidates would boost Virginia’s economy through clean-energy adoption or how they saw the Commonwealth government’s role in investing in and balancing climate mitigation and adaptation, Todd’s laser-like focus: flood insurance costs.

Before turning to dissecting Todd’s horrid question, something to highlight is his introduction to the question: “this is one minute to each of you as we’re getting a little low on time”. Yup, when it comes to what is (one of) the most critical issue facing humanity, let’s treat it as an ‘oh by the way’ issue less worthy of (a whopping) 90 seconds than, well, seemingly anything else.

Dissecting Todd’s horrific question

Okay, now take a look at the question:

Virginians underpay for flood insurance. But overpaying also could reduce home prices. Dealing with climate change, the state, country, entire world are dealing with this, who should be paying more when it comes to these issues of flood insurance? Should it be the government? Should it be wealthier taxpayers? Is it someone else? How do we pay for this adaptation and mitigation?

Before delving into this, a question to wonder: Does Todd have a beachfront property in Virginia Beach and is annoyed with increasing flood insurance bills or what? Seriously, why ‘this’ question over so many other others?

Now for some dissection:

• “Virginians underpay for flood insurance”
  • is pretty much true across so much of the United States.
  • Flood-risk maps aren’t keeping up with climate risks (from sea-level rise to increasing share of rainfall in severe events) and flood insurance has for far too long been subsidized by the taxpayer enabling people to live in high-risk areas in yet another privatized gain, socialized cost domain.
  • Note that Todd’s phrasing doesn’t make this point clearly: that someone else (individuals, businesses, government) is making up for those “underpaying”.
  • Now, we (as a society) are facing ever higher flood risks and can no longer afford the increasingly high bills for subsidizing high-risk property owners.
• “Overpaying …”
  • Huh, where and how is anyone indicating that properties in flood risk areas should or will be “overpaying” as opposed to starting to pay something closer to reality-based insurance premiums?
• “also could reduce home prices”.
  • Todd is implicitly stating a truth: that at-risk homes are overpriced because they are not required to pay (anything close) to risk-based insurance prices. Certainly, having to pay fair insurance prices could lead to truer market values for properties (homes) at greater flood risk.
  • Having reality-based insurance pricing could (would) also drive other things such as building with flood-risks in mind (whether not building in flood plains, building on stilts, or otherwise).
• “Dealing with climate change, the state, country, entire world are dealing with this …”
  • Putting aside Todd’s seemingly inability to form grammatically correct sentences, perhaps we can just say “yes”.
  • And, btw, what does Todd mean by “dealing with climate change”?
• “Who should be paying more when it comes to these issues of flood insurance? Should it be the government? Should it be wealthier taxpayers? Is it someone else?”
  • So, let’s be clear, dealing with “climate” is about “paying” rather than implications of not paying or about benefits from action.
  • Again, as per above, Todd’s question sidesteps the reality that (already) others are “paying more” than they should because the beneficiaries aren’t paying their fair share.
• “How do we pay for this adaptation and mitigation?”
  • And, Todd closes with a standard way that is truly horrific: in Todd’s limited weltanschauung, acting on climate is about costs and not about benefits (the benefits of reduced risks, reduced pollution, improved health, improved workforce and student productivity, improved resiliency, …) of climate action.
  • “All costs, no benefits” is one of the most egregious and damaging pundit and analytical ways to think about, analyze, discuss, and frame discussions of public policy.
  • Is this purposeful, on his part, or does Todd simply fail to realize how seriously he misrepresents the equation before us (the U.S. and us all)?

Even before the candidates got to utter a syllable, Todd provided a trash heap of mediocrity requiring dissection. Sigh, this post looks at Youngkin’s predatory-delay truthiness and McAuliffe’s strong statement in support of needed climate leadership.

When it comes to the post disaster space, a major ‘lesson’ from the 1980s and 1990s U.S. military humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations is that effectiveness (protecting lives and property, reducing future risks, efficient resource use) requires coordination across organizations and coordination across phases.

By ‘phases’, these can be summarized as the Three Rs:

• Relief: Life saving and getting minimal functions going for preserving life and reducing damage risks.
• Recovery: Help society move into a functioning stage so that people don’t need to leave and outside assistance can be reduced.
• Reconstruction: Measures to boost economic and social strength to pre-disaster levels (or, even better, better than pre-disaster).

In terms of efficiency resources use and increasing the odds for a successful outcome (which includes a lesser likelihood of having to do another relief operation tomorrow), integrating across these phases as much as (reasonably) possible is key.  If one can do something in “relief” that  contributes to “recovery” and is lays foundations for “reconstruction”, it is like getting a triple play.

For example, think housing. Tarps and tents are great for immediate shelter – fantastic for relief, marginal for recovery, and perhaps even negative for reconstruction. Having a container housing unit, like the US and allied militaries have used in places like Bosnia-i-Herzegovina and Iraq, blends from relief (quickly on site, quick to install) into recovery (housing elements that can stay around awhile). Deploying such ‘container’ units with plans and ways to incorporate into rebuilt infrastructure with (let’s say) high-wind and earthquake resistance takes that ‘shelter’ investment into a triple-whammy solution.

Now, a container is more expensive than a tent — but that is a lasting investment rather than a (hopefully very) temporary path to the problem. A less expensive option comes from leveraging disaster-focused architectural options that can put local labor to work and leverage local materials to have permanent structures up in a day with about the same amount of transported in materials and total financial cost as occurs with a tent (and far less than a container).  And, many such disaster architecture options will be less likely to suffer damage in the next disaster.

That lead to a fourth R: Resiliency: if that measure helps contributes to the potential for reducing future risks, we could hit a grand slam.

Distributed renewable energy is the blaring example of how to integrate across Disaster’s 4Rs  As the grid gets knocked down, in places around the world, the diesel generators kick in and disaster relief organizations send in even more generators. That translates into high-cost and high-pollution demand for diesel fuel — which, by the way, undermines the Three Rs through resource demands (transportation of that diesel fuel that conflicts with other demands on the logistics’ system and, of course, the cost of fuel).  With the price revolution in renewables (especially, in this context, solar photovoltaiics and associated systems), the costs of going ‘green’ in the disaster relief are lower than polluting diesel generators. The clean-energy option is price-advantaged.

And, unlike the diesel generator, it is quite straightforward to integrate a solar system across the 4Rs. Deploying distributed systems that have the ability to grid-connect become, as the grid reestablishes itself, part of the grid system – generating electricity throughout all phases and providing assurance of (at least limited) electrical services in the face of the next disaster.

And, also unlike the diesel generators, such renewable energy systems boost economic prospects in the recovery and reconstruction phases: free electrons from the sun not only save money compared to imported diesel, they also don’t contribute to transportation bottlenecks.

Hurricane Ida has seriously hit the Louisiana (especially New Orlean’s) electrical system, with a million(+) people without power. Generators and diesel fuel for generators are almost certainly a major element of early relief deliveries.  Solar panels, however, do not appear to be a major element in US government relief efforts. (There are non-profits who are doing this. For example, prior to Ida’s landfall, the Footprint Project had “four solar trailers and 60 portable battery packs staged in Nashville to respond in the aftermath of the hurricane.)

Hurricane Ida’s impact on the Gulf Coast is serious – in the New Orleans’ area, initial reporting suggest that there is not a single sector, not a single community without major (even crippling) damage. On some New Orleans’ blocks, the only lights on are private homes with solar panels and batteries. (Note, an Entergy methane gas peak power plant that was justified on the basis of being able to handle emergencies like this isn’t currently offline providing another example of how fossil fuel plants aren’t necessarily reliable amid disaster even as their pollution worsens future disaster risks.) Energy is critical to the 3Rs across all sectors. Looking at New Orlean’s electricity situation, any honest analysis would conclude (differing, of course, as to specifics designs, how much, ..) that a rapid deployment of micro-grid solar would prove a 4R grand slam.

For US disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needs to update its approaches — clean energy systems need to be an ever-growing part of the ‘fly away’ kit for helping get emergency power to communities blacked-out by disasters (like New York/New Jersey post Sandy, Puerto Rico post-Maria, fire-ravaged Western communities, Gulf Coast post Ida).  And, the US government requires an integrated approach to this so the ‘fly-away’ solar is done in a way that enables rapid creation of renewable-powered micro-grids, ready to be hooked into a reestablished grid, to address relief that facilities recovery and contributes to reconstruction.   And, the installations should proceed down a path so that the next time a climate-enhanced disaster hits the community, the solar keeps the lights on and lowers the costs/challenges of that next disaster’s 3Rs … truly a grand slam payoff.

NOTE: This post is a long-running (a 2017 version re Puerto Rico post Maria) public service message (from me and others) about the value and power of integrating clean-energy into disaster relief. This message is more truthful with every passing day due to increased availability, quality, resiliency value, and affordability of clean-energy solutions along with ever-greater clarity of climate chaos risks.

Showing great “concern” about finding paths to pay for necessary infrastructure investments, Senator Susan Collins forcefully rejects revisiting the Republican’s fiscally damaging 2017 Corporate Subsidy Program and is offering up seemingly ‘moderate’ options like placing a fee on electric vehicles so that they will “pay their fair share” since, right now, “they are abusing our roads and bridges”. Putting aside the truth that fossil fuel (diesel and gas) vehicles are abusing our lungs and planet with their emissions while not paying even a smidgin of their “fair share” of the costs from their pollution, there is a basic common sense calculation here. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that a $100 per EV fee in 2019 would have brought in a total of $150 million in fees (putting aside the costs of establishing the program and collecting the fees) which is barely 1/10th of 1 percent of the cost of even the Republican infrastructure proposal. One might suggest, looking at that, ‘Get real, Susan Collins’. The diversion to such a footnote-like financial element is a typical game played by not-serious policy players. Another calculation makes the ‘lack of seriousness’ even clearer.

Putting aside the counter-productive nature of putting extra fees (at this time) on electric vehicles (which is a market which we are seeking to spark for economic, environmental, human health, and other reasons), there is an equity and fairness issue in terms of a potential fee. Consider the numbers

• $100 per vehicle re electric vehicle (EV)
• Gas tax 18.4 cents/gallon
• Requires 543.5 gallons for tax to equal $100
• Appropriate for comparison to “average EV” might be a 40 mpg car
• The internal combustion engine (ICE) version of the average EV would have to drive 21,740 miles for its mileage to use 543.5 gallons.
• The average US vehicle is somewhere ballpark 13,500 miles/year.

Thus, the EV driver would have to put in roughly 60% more than the ‘average’ vehicle (even as EVs are driven fewer miles than average) to even be ‘break even’ in this calculation of such a punitive and counter-productive (except for fossil-foolish interests) fee.

Upfront,

• Electric School Buses (ESBs) should be deployed as rapidly as possible — they make eminent sense on financial, environmental, safety, student performance and other grounds.
• Legislation proposed to the Virginia legislature (SB1380) was fatally flawed.

Regrettably but appropriately, the last legislative vote in the Virginia House of Delegates killed SB1380 by a 41 Yea, 49 Nay (28 Republican, 21 Democratic Delegates) margin.

• Appropriate because this legislation would have enabled (even more) Dominion excess profiteering, given (far too much) power to Dominion over school bus parameters, and placed Dominion’s interests and priorities over all other benefit streams from getting off diesel.
• Regrettable because ESBs should be deployed as rapidly as possible due to the tremendous benefit streams:
  • ESBs eliminate the diesel fumes that create serious health problems for students riding buses and the general community.
  • ESBs save money as electricity is cheaper than diesel and electric vehicles require less maintenance.
  • ESBs perform better — safer, quieter, smoother, better handling.
  • ESBs make the grid work better.
  • ESB deployment is a path to accelerate the transportation part of “Electrify Everything” which is a (perhaps the) key tool to mitigate the climate crisis.

While it was appropriate for the Virginia House to refuse to green light such a flawed bill, no one should be celebratory on SB1380’s death as this portends unaffordable delay in moving forward in replacing Virginia’s over 15,000 diesel school buses with cleaner, better performing, more affordable electric school buses.

To address this, Governor Northam should put together a task force to create a compromise path forward for rapid ESB deployment. That task should include stakeholders — concerned parents, environmental organizations, Dominion, educators, EV advocates, and others — who support ESBs even as, at this time, their ‘preferred paths forward’ have some radical differences. Compromise should be possible. Compromise that strengthens the grid, improves public school finance, provides Dominion with reasonable profits while treating ratepayers fairly, boosts Virginia’s economy, strengthens the grid, reduces pollution, boost student performance, and leads to healthier and happier Virginia school students. Working together, this task force should be tasked to have a report and recommended legislation before summer 2021.

And, Governor Northam should call for a special session to move this (and other issues to be discussed elsewhere) forward. While Virginia’s “part time” legislators are seriously underpaid for their clearly far from ‘just’ part-time work, ESB deployment matters and every day’s delay matters. Having legislation passed in July 2021, rather than February 2022, is worth this extra effort.

Let’s get some facts on the table first.

• Electrification of School Buses should be fast-tracked across the United States due to huge benefit streams
  • Improved student and community health due to
  • Significant reductions in diesel and particulate pollution with
  • a wide-range set of other benefits including
    • improved student performance outcomes;
    • reducing greenhouse gas and noise pollution;
    • safer and more comfortable bus transportation;
    • lowered operational costs;
    • real benefits in terms of environmental (and economic) justice; and,
    • enabling improved energy resiliency and power grid operations.
• While a ‘no-brainer’ path forward, significant obstacles exist for mass ESB deployments including
  • financial challenges of ‘who pays’ additional upfront costs;
  • business-as-usual ‘we’ve always done diesel’ incumbency, limited school district resources for decision-making, and risk aversion making introduction of ‘new’ difficult; and,
  • poor understanding of and discussion of how ESBs are one of the strongest multi-solving opportunities for a broad swath of the United States.
• Virginia is one of the leading states with potential for mass replacement of its diesel buses but, as per below, is
  • Is pursuing a sub-optimal path that
  • Will lead to higher-cost than necessary implementation,
  • Might well be driving sub-optimal solutions due, in no small part, to how it
  • Gives too much authority for public procurement and a public good to a private corporation.

In the Virginia legislature, on its last day, there is pressure to drive through Senator Louise Lucas’ SB1380. An honest short-hand of that legislation: it is Dominion Power-written legislation that maximizes Dominion Energy profits while minimizing the role and power of public entities in decision-making about the nature of a public project.

As Ivy Main put it, Electric School Buses Would Be Good For Virginia, But It Has To Be Done Right, and SB1380 simply doesn’t do it right.

• It mandates that ESBs are “in the public interest”.
  • While, in truth, ESBs are ‘in the public interest’ in a commonly understood manner for most people, this is a powerful term in Virginia law.
  • Using this term drastically constrains the State Corporation Commission’s ability to provide oversight of a program, puts projects directly into the utility rate base, and enables program management that maximizes (well past the point of reasonableness) profits.
  • E.g., while writ large, a program very much worth purusing, declaring it “in the public interest” will make almost certainly make this a significantly more expensive program than necessary and lead to higher costs for Virginians and higher (than appropriate) guaranteed profitability for Dominion for decades to come.
• Puts public decision-making directly into a private entity’s essentially unilateral control.
  • For example, Dominion has mandated that all school buses bought through its program must have seat belts.
    • While, superficially, this might sound like a tremendous safety move, the research about real-world experiences raises significant questions about whether — due to systems-of-systems’ impacts — there are actual safety benefits.
    • And, questionable (if any) seat-belt safety benefits come at a significant financial (ballpark of $10,000 per bus which means over $900 of guaranteed profits for Dominion year-in, year-out, for every ESB) cost along with significant operational implications (seat-belts reduce bus capacity and slow operations).
    • School bus seat belts are a public-policy issue that should go through government decision-making processes, weighing the public good, and not be mandated by a private entity whose profitability will be boosted via it’s unilateral (and opaque to the public) decision-making.

There are many other challenges with this bill, such as giving Dominion essentially unilateral control over ESB batteries in a way that makes clear that grid benefits (and Dominion profitability) are given prioritization over all other benefit streams.

To be clear, ESB deployment merit massive acceleration. While ESBs might have been hard to justify even a few years ago, plunging battery prices and other advances in the industry have made the financial case a ‘no-brainer’ (while massively reducing risks of what was an uncertain and unknown technology space).

And, involving electric utilities with such projects makes a tremendous amount of sense. (And, to be clear, that includes that utilities should be able to profit reasonably from their roles in and with ESB deployment and operations–reasonable, rather than excess, profitability.) Utilities can use their financial power to address the ‘upfront cost’ challenge (which is what they do, essentially every day, with power plant and transmission line investments). And, utility close interaction with ESB deployment can enable energy grid resiliency (the importance of which were just dramatically demonstrated in Texas) while easing a path toward significant deployment of V2G (vehicle-to-grid) technologies and systems for even greater grid (and vehicle owner) benefit streams.

It is past the 11th hour in the Virginia legislature.

Simply put, SB1380 should not become law. Its problems are just too serious and costly.

However, ESBs are a critical arena for making progress due to all the real and significant benefit streams — for all stakeholders (other than, for example, oil companies, diesel distributors, and diesel-engine manufacturers). Putting off ESB decision-making for yet another year, after failures in the 2020 legislature, simply is not “in the public interest”.

Thus, with the legislative clock at 23:59 with an end at midnight, a hope that the legislature can find a last-minute compromise to mandate a private-public research team (commission) to conduct a 90-day project to develop legislation that will better balance public-private interests. And, to have materials to inform legislators for a short special session in perhaps June where this could be passed into law for Governor Northam’s signature.

Note: Clean Virginia petition calling on House to reject SB1380.