Get Energy Smart! NOW!

The Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) Facilities Planning Advisory Council (FPAC) focused on transportation issues in its 4 February meeting and, within that, discussed some issues related to an Electric School Bus (ESB) program.

The Old Dominion’s political system and culture is often referred to as The Virginia Way which is nostalgically promoted as one “of honor, gentility and democracy”. Just like “MAGA” glosses over (ignores or even embraces) ugly parts of American history,

 In reality, this ideology bred a corrupt political class, a runaway electricity company, a university that reflected the values of donors and a school system that suffered from cronyism. This Virginia Way prevented rather than promoted the success of its stated democratic ideals.

From The Dominion Tax being whitewashed by captive legislators (many Virginia GOP) in The Dominion Scam to allowing construction of and charging ratepayers for unnecessary fossil gas power plants to building momentum for a blanket check for Dominion excess profiteering from Offshore Wind, that “runaway electricity company” certainly seems to leverage political power to boost significantly profitability. Perhaps a better description of the Old Dominion’s political structure would be “The Dominion Way” since, like Lolo, ‘whatever Dominion wants, Dominion gets’.

In the Commonwealth, sometimes it is difficult to determine whether it is the regulated utility or the regulators driving public policy. Sometimes there is greater clarity. School bus seat belts is one example.

School bus seat belts have long been a controversial and emotional issue. Analysis has been conflicted as to whether seat belts pass reasonable cost-benefit analyses (see below). Virginia does not require school buses to have seat belts (though at least one school district, Henrico County, requires them). While even without seat belts, school buses remain the safest way to transport K-12 students to school on the roads, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) “recommended that 42 states that don’t require for lap and shoulder belts on large school buses add such a requirement.” (Though, to be clear, the NHTSA does not require seat belts.) Even so, when considering school budgets and safety issues, at least some School Boards (and/or the professional staffs) have balked at the $7,000-$11,000 cost for installing seat belts (or roughly 10% additional cost to the standard diesel-powered school bus) even in the face of the NTSB recommendation and some (mainly parent) passionate citizen activist calls for them.

Enter Dominion and the Dominion Electric School Bus program. The Dominion-provided ESBs will have seat belts. Point blank. In fact, Dominion will not partner with any school system that doesn’t allow seat belts.

one of the requirements to participate in our program is the school buses must be equipped with three point safety belts. Virginia does not require seatbelts in our buses, but safety is our top priority at Dominion and we’ve said if you want to participate in our program you have got to be willing to install seatbelts on the new buses moving forward. [Dan Weekley, Dominion, 27 Jan 2020]

While this has generated enthusiasm about the Dominion ESB program, few seem to have noticed or remarked on how this is a blunt example of The Dominion Way. Leveraging resources gained via excessive profiteering from ratepayers, Dominion is dictating to public entities items that are quite explicitly public policy issues and that merit determination by public officials, accountable to the public, after discussions open to and engaging stakeholders.

To be clear, no matter where one falls in a ‘to seat belt or not to seat belt’ debate, it should concern all Virginians when a private Corporation is able to (quite literally) dictate public policy and government investment.

Fossil-fools attack Green New Deal (GND) proposals by focusing on (exaggerated and unrealistic) cost analysis without any serious assessment of the benefit streams. As with any investment, looking at the price paid without any examination of return secured is an absurdity and such analysis shouldn’t be taken seriously, should be rejected out of hand.

Regretfully, though not as seriously, proponents of (clean-energy, climate-addressing) action often are cautious and circumspect in responding to fossil-foolish propaganda. And, such caution can lead to understating benefit streams and weaken the case (public support) for action.

Over 20 years ago, General Motors introduced the EV1. This all-electric car quickly won passionate enthusiasm from its drivers and seemed like a wedge into creating a clean electric vehicle future. Just a few years in, GM killed the program (literally crushing the vehicles) and the EV1 disappeared from the streets.

As explored in Who Killed The Electric Car?, a complex set of players, motivations, and actions undermined EV1 deployment and viability of success which combined to ‘kill the electric car’.

Electric Vehicles are deploying, around the world, in increasing numbers and the ‘case’ for them mounts with every passing moment. Even with this, real challenges to EV deployment continue from fossil-foolish efforts to squash electric vehicles, misguided commentators with a poor understanding of EV Benefits, to buyers finding it hard to buy an EV as dealers don’t stock them, salesmen don’t understand them, and so on. Thus, the saga of “Who Killed The Electric Car” still has relevancy.

Buses are an electric vehicle arena seeing electrifying growth. And, now, electric school bus (ESB) deployment seems on the cusp of moving from one-off, small-scale demonstrations to mass deployment.

Even so, key ESB players seem — perhaps inadvertently — involved in the same sort of actions that helped ‘kill the electric car’. Thomas Built Buses (a Daimler subsidiary using Proterra technology) is the provider for Dominion Power’s Virginia ESB demonstration program, with 50 ESBs already ordered and potentially well over 10,000 to follow in the coming decade.

A key reason for large vehicle (especially school bus) electrification is the displacement of diesel fuels (with a multitude of value streams deriving from reduced diesel usage ranging from reduced costs and pollution to improved student health and educational performance). The benefits are quite clear:

With ESBs on the cusp of real momentum, a reasonable expectation would be that key industry players supportive of ESB deployment would highlight the benefits of moving off diesel fuels and that only those against ESB deployment would be dismissing the implications of burning diesel fuels. Yet, consider what greets visitors to ThomasBuiltBuses.com:

To make clear, the following video is not about “corrected … myths” but about providing misdirection about the risks of diesel fuels to undermine efforts to electrify school bus fleets.

One has to ask whether Thomas Built Buses is serious about electric school bus electrification or, in fact, is intent on being featured in a future documentary about “Who Killed The Electric School Bus?”

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The Commonwealth is en route to what might well be a game-changing electric school bus (ESB) program. Through creation of a large and long term program (somewhere in the range of 10-15,000 school buses over a decade), Virginia’s ESB acquisition could be the key project to drive down acquisition costs and thus accelerate moves from diesel to electric buses across the country with serious health, educational performance, energy resiliency, environmental, and economic benefit streams.

Key points

• Going electric with school buses is now a ‘no-brainer’ smart move
• There are huge, complex, intertwined ESB value streams
• ESB discussions can be caught up in (sometimes irrelevant) details which make focusing on the huge value streams harder.
• “We’ poorly understand this complexity.
• Virginia (the legislator, school systems, the Governor, Dominion Power) should
  • move forward with ESB deployment with
    • a structure that enables future ‘course corrections’
  • create a path for better defining and understand ESB value streams
    • to support improving ESB deployment to support and reward stakeholders in an equitable and effective manner.

Between a Dominion Power Electric School Bus (ESB) project and Governor Northam ESB demonstration programs, Virginia is on the cusp of becoming the national leader of ESB adoption and, through a major acquisition program, could change the game nationally when it comes ESBs and, potentially, government investment in electrifying large vehicle fleets. There are, at this time, at least two ESB bills in the Virginia legislature. One, from Delegate Kaye Kory, essentially legislates the Dominion program. The other (HB1140), from Delegate Mark Keam, would expand ESBs across the Commonwealth, foster prioritizing community (rather than solely utility) value streams in ESB investments, and mandate 100% ESBs by 2030. Considering that transitioning 15,000 or so diesel school buses to electricity will provide, perhaps, $10s of billions in return and value for Virginia, involve $2-$5B in investment along with $Bs in additional government expenditures, and literally have impacts on Virginia and Virginians for decades to come, it is understandable that people have questions and uncertainties about ESBs, these pieces of legislation, and how to move forward.

As someone with a long history interested in and promoting electrification of school buses (until a few years ago, Plug-In Hybrid Electric School Buses (PHESBs) and now, with a strong technological and business case, ESBs), I have received in questions from some trying to better understand and influence Virginia legislature ESB options and actions. Below is based on one such interaction.

About ESBs: Some things to remember/consider

A critical thing to keep in mind is that ESBs have / will have a huge range of benefit streams. And, calculating and understanding the systems-of-systems benefits and value streams of multi-solving paths is a complicated challenge and, I would assert, poorly understood as Virginia moves forward toward a market-leading, decade+-long, multi-billion dollar (set of) ESB program(s).

Trying to place a true “value” on an ESB program is hard because, when it comes to value and cost streams, some are

• Relatively straightforward to monetize/calculate in spreadsheets
  • Savings/cash value streams:
    • significantly reduced fuel costs,
    • reduced maintenance costs,
    • arbitrage
      • using the batteries to shift time of electrons to enable using move cheap electrons to peak demand periods,
    • grid stabilization,
    • demand management
      • reducing peak energy demands by drawing down batteries rather than buying high-cost electricity
  • Costs
    • Additional capital cost for buying buses (key: battery) and V2G (vehicle-to-grid) equipment and costs to retrain maintenance staff.
      • Note: additional costs are almost all upfront and, while more than offset by O&M (operations and maintenance) saving, the CtB (Cost-to-Buy) often has more weight in procurement decision making than the CtO (Cost-to-Own)
• Possible but more complex to monetize
  • Resilience/emergency power value to provide power amid grid disruptions;
  • Reduced diesel pollution
    • w/commensurate reductions in health impacts to children and larger community
    • environmental benefits
      • reduced impact on flora/fauna
      • reduced climate change pollution
        • Note: this is relatively straightforward to include in a cost-benefit equation but requires a choice to include a social cost of carbon (SCC) in decision-making and to agree on that SCC value.
• Potentially major (potentially much higher than above) value streams that are difficult to calculate with confidence and even harder to get ‘green-eye shades’ to include in calculations 
  • Such as better performing students
    • not just due to reduced asthma but also quieter, more comfortable rides on better performing buses 
    • Improving student performance has an economic value in near, mid, and long terms

And, there are even more.

For example, a straight-forward to calculate and powerful in decision-making element doesn’t even seem to be on the table: economic development.

An Economic Development Opportunity

With establishment of a market-creating over 10,000 ESB program, Virginia would be in a strong position to require a significant portion of the manufacturing (and development) be located in Virginia. Consider, back-of-the-envelope, that this leads to 2,000 ESBs per year by 2025 (half for Virginia, the other half for other states/markets). That would be in the range of $300 million per year just in bus procurement that would mean, using basic manufacturing economic multiplier figures, about $700 million in total economic activity. Considering how many 1,000s of well-paying, quality jobs that would mean for Virginians if the legislature would require ESB manufacturing (in whole or large part) be located in Virginia.

To be clear, Dominion’s proposed project is large enough that it will be market creating and potentially shaping. As a major ‘ground-breaking’ project, potentially, that will introduce the first serious ‘economies of scale’ potential, the project will drive down prices (just as, for example, Germany did with solar) for others. This will be a multi-billion dollar purchase program where Virginia and Virginians will be paying more today to drive down the costs for others tomorrow. With that in mind, lease explain to me why Virginia shouldn’t require significant work content w/in the Commonwealth (such as in SW VA for manufacturing and investments in Virginia universities for R&D)? A back-of-the-envelope suggests that this well could lead to over 4000 good-paying manufacturing/engineering jobs that a well-structured program could secure over the next 3-5 years.

Thus, don’t let leaves (or even trees) make you lose sight of the forest

With the above in mind, something that I have been striving to get politicians (school board members, delegates, …) and activists to understand — the battery usage and value streams from electricity arbitrage are only one (and relatively small) portion of the overall value stream.  It is critical to understand and seek to assess all the varying value streams as part of an overall ‘deal’ as to how the compensation structures can/should occur.  

For example, many are hung up on whether Dominion ‘will profit’ by moving electrons to and from ESB batteries. While it appears that Dominion will own/control (with some constraints) the batteries and usage for the grid and secure the value from time arbitrage from time-shifting electrons, it is not as if (it should not be that) they will double-charge for electricity. They fill the battery, charging for the fill, draw it down, and then refill. If they gain the value from the draw down and, then, recharge for the refill: in essence double-charging for the electrons, this would seem to be a real problem (and near fraudulent).  I can’t imagine that that is within the structure of the program in part because this is the ‘shiny object’ issue that too many are focused on.

Now, concerning is — of course — that Dominion will be allowed to include this in the ratepayer base with a guaranteed 9-10% ROI on their capital investment. That percentage guaranteed return simply is not justified, at this time, by market conditions. Consider, for example, Dominion’s cost of money. It appears to be less than 3%.  Having an over 9% guarantee ROI when the price of money is less than 1/3rd that is not justifiable. Perhaps Dominion’s ESB investment would best be considered ‘an investment’ without such a guaranteed return or, well, perhaps generously (to Dominion) allowing Dominion to do a direct payback of its investment and investment costs. Think about the value streams/structures that Dominion is creating for itself via an ESB program:

• Increased electricity sales
• Time arbitrage using the battery
• Peak/Demand shaving using batteries
• Grid stability
• Frequency stabilization
• Capital investment (CAPEX) and program costs that will be added to ratepayer base (guaranteed >9% return on investment)

Considering the other profit/value streams, ‘explain to me’ why that addition to ratepayer base makes sense … or, well, at the full ROI.  However, without calculating/having a window on all those value streams, it is hard to do a full/honest assessment.

Trying to Black Box Dominion Planning

What Dominion could well be doing is driving an ESB program that will lead to additional excess (or, well, extremely high) profitability:

• Being inefficient in the procurement process to increase CAPEX
  • and thus having a higher CAPEX for a guaranteed return
• Inserting itself as part owner/otherwise within the procurement structure to boost profitability

What I fear (and certainly expect) Dominion is / will be doing

• Using the ‘pilot’ project as a wedge (with having lobbyist written legislation ) to create a reality that will be difficult/to impossible to change
  • Consider: The Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) has a huge bus fleet. If FCPS Facilities were signing a contract to replace all of their 1500 diesel school buses, there would (or, well, should) be significant attention to contract details with much ‘what if’ type thinking.  FCPS is getting eight ESBs from the Dominion ESB pilot program. With getting eight buses in a ‘pilot’ program, will FCPS lawyers, staff, and leadership pay as much attention to contract negotiation ‘what if’ issues as they would with a 1500 bus program? And, if/when there is a large program, will the pilot program have created a ‘reality’ that shapes/structures the contract terms for that larger program?
• Creating essentially unsurmountable barriers to competition (Dominion Power could ‘certify’, for example, a specific V2G (vehicle-to-grid) system and then make it extremely difficult for any entity to come in with an alternative / competing system that might, otherwise, be more economically attractive?).

Some questions/responses

Now, with all that in mind, below are four questions/concerns that were sent to me and first-order thoughts on them:

1. The schools wouldn’t own the buses. That’s a big problem, because Dominion could then change the parameters of the program or otherwise prevent schools from controlling the buses as they see fit.

  
While there are plenty of private firms that provide busing, on contract, for public school systems, that is not the case with the Virginia school systems.  Why should Dominion own the buses unless they are doing the entire contract structure to take-over all of the transportation (or, well, all the maintenance/etc …). 

But, a more simple approach: you want to own the buses, Dominion, you pay 100% (not just the electric cost increase) of bus acquisition costs.
Re ‘change the parameters’/etc, that is the importance of writing good contracts and the problem of having the ‘pilot’ creating a reality that will be that much harder to modify contract conditions down the pike.  

2. The buses will act like batteries during off-use, and Dominion can draw down that power as needed, but the schools aren’t compensated for that energy. Seems pretty unfair to me when it could be used to save schools money. 

Again, this is just one of many value streams — and, well, far lower in value than improved student health/etc. The ESBs will be much lower operating costs (electricity and not diesel; more straightforward maintenance; etc ..).  I strongly recommend that you/we do not focus on this in isolation of understanding/considering all value streams.

Honestly, if I were at Dominion, I would welcome having this as a ‘battle space’ and then, perhaps, come to some deal that ‘splits’ the value stream from time arbitrage of electrons since it draws attention from so many other issue spaces.

3. Schools would be charged for the difference between the cost of a regular bus and an electric bus. You may want to push for ratepayers to pick up the whole tab, or else the costs will be passed onto school districts. 

First, see #1: if Dominion is going to own the buses, then Dominion should pay for them.

Second, the O&M savings (operations & maintenance) and other benefit streams are quite real. Dominion Power (or some financier or some Virginia government program) picking up this upfront cost difference makes it far easier for schools systems to go electric with new buses. Now, if we want to start retiring diesel buses early, having Dominion pay 100% of acquisition costs becomes very interesting.

4. Dominion would earn a profit on these buses. That’s up for debate whether that’s fair or not, but you could put those costs into the fuel factor cost so that Dominion isn’t making a profit on it. I recommend that to protect the other ratepayers who are picking up the tab for this program, but good people can disagree on that. 

As I’ve written, Dominion is a business. I have no problem with a business making money if they are delivering value to their clients. (As put elsewhere, having Dominion making profits from doing the right thing is, well, something to applaud — even with a standing ovation.) Dominion Power, however, is a regulated utility and, if this is being down within the utility and leveraging rate base, it should not have a path to earn excess/unreasonable profits from the program. Sadly, as has been well documented, the Virginia legislature and State Corporation Commission (SCC) have shown themselves relatively inept over the past 15 years at preventing Dominion unreasonable profiteering.  Legislators can — should — do better when it comes to ESBs.

Some thoughts as to what the legislators can/should do …

With all of the above in mind,

• Legislate with full value streams in mind
  • Avoid getting too caught up in narrow issues
  • Do not allow any specific benefit / stakeholder drive program structure and priorities
  • Create structure so that cost burden is (too) unevenly distributed compared to benefit streams
    • Ratepayers should not, imo, bear the full costs of an ESB program unless they are compensated from benefit streams
  • Create a path to foster better understanding and calculation of ESB program benefit streams
    • Best: legislate an analytical team/process that will enabled better informed decision-making into the future
• Prioritize flexible/robust legislation
  • Recognize that this is an evolving/tough space
  • Enact legislation that gives space/recognizes that it will require change/modification in years ahead
• Require “Made-in-Virginia” content

• Electrify Everything
• Clean up the grid

These two bullets are a core mantra for those concerned with addressing climate change. Some simple truth:

• The power (electricity) sector is, writ large, getting cleaner every day (with significant and potentially accelerating renewable energy growth) while liquid fossil fuels are, writ large, getting dirtier (as easy to get to deposits are an ever-lower share of production with every passing year).
• Writ large, in the global energy system, there has been a stark separation between fixed infrastructure and transportation energy. The first has been open to multiple options and change, the second relative fixed to the burning of fossil fuels (from the introduction of coal into shipping through jet fuel today). This, however, is rapidly changing with electric vehicles of all sorts — cars, trucks, ships, aircraft — entering into the market.
• Thus, the power (electricity) sector provides a clearer and easier path to lower pollution impacts than other, ‘tougher’ energy domains. And, if we can electrify sectors/areas of the economy that are dominated (today) by liquid fuels, we ease the path toward reducing the climate (and other pollution) impacts of those sectors.

Virginia — for political, economic, social reasons — is on the cusp of seeing this combination play out in a serious way.

The new Democratic-controlled legislature is considering a range of legislation to move Virginia toward a more resilient, cost-effective, and clean electricity system. While whatever measures pass will be unlikely to be ‘enough’ to address the climate challenge and less than what seems reasonably viable, there will be many steps forward and improvements that will likely include measures for increased distributed solar, greater energy efficiency, and the Commonwealth’s first-ever mandated renewable portfolio standard (RPS). From utility planning to businesses demanding clean electrons to legislating an RPS, Virginia is moving forward to “clean up the grid”.

As to the first, “electrify everything”, Dominion Energy’s announcement earlier today of the localities selected for the deployment of its first 50 electric school buses (ESBs) is a tangible step forward to moving Virginia transportation off fossil fuels (in this case high-polluting diesel) toward these ever-cleaner electrons.

As discussed elsewhere, Dominion’s ESB project could well be truly game-changing. ESBs have huge benefits (such as reduced cancer and asthma, V2G (vehicle to grid) enabling using the batteries to improve grid performance and ease leveraging of clean electrons, reduced operating costs, …) but the upfront investment cost have made it difficult for school systems to move forward with ESBs (a classic chase of CtB to CtO (cost to buy vs cost to own)). Dominion’s approach attacks — and solves — this problem head on by eliminating that upfront cost obstacle while providing (at least some) shared financial savings/benefits for school systems into the future.

Fairfax County School Board Member Karl Frisch, a strong electric bus proponent, captured this in his enthusiastic share of Dominion’s announcement this morning.

Virginia’s public K-12 schools have over 16,000 yellow diesel-fuming school buses, with over 13,000 in Dominion’s territory. Dominion is using its own funds (from excess profits/overcharges) to initiate a decade-long project to move all these 13,000 from diesel to electrons. Today’s announcement marks a tangible step forward as

Phase one will bring 50 electric school buses to 16 localities within Dominion Energy’s Virginia service area by the end of 2020.

By this time next year, some students in 16 localities will have more comfortable bus rides to school and lower exposure to dangerous diesel fumes due to Dominion Energy’s decision to move forward with what could be a truly game-changing Electric School Bus program that will, hopefully, move forward (in some manner) such that all Virginia school transportation is electric within the decade.

Caveating the situation

While truly exhilarated that there are tangible moves forward electrifying school transportation in a program that could open the door nationwide, due to speed and scale driving down acquisition costs, very serious concerns and questions remain about whether the Dominion Energy-controlled project is ‘the’ right path forward.

To be clear, as stated before, having Dominion making profits from doing the right thing is, well, something to applaud — even with a standing ovation. 

At the same time, there are (quite serious) reasons for alarms bells and concerns.

These range from Dominion’s long history of delivering its own managed projects at higher cost what the competitive market would imply (Dominion’s solar price, for example, is roughly double what the independent market is providing today) to whether ‘grid’ concerns should drive the prioritization of when/where school buses are electrified to whether a Dominion Energy-controlled project will encroach on legitimate government decision-making domains.

Thus, while applauding (celebrating) these tangible moves toward cleaner, healthier, safer, quieter, more reliable, and lower-cost transportation of public school students, the legislature has many issues to consider about how the Commonwealth should move forward with electric school buses.

The Legislature is about to open in Richmond. The Democratic majorities, in the House and Senate, clearly seem prepared to act on legislation to move Virginia on a path toward a clean power (e.g., low-to-no carbon electricity) system. Framing this discussion are two different approaches, the Virginia Green New Deal (GND-VA) and the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). (Also on the table is a bipartisan bill which would drive real restructuring of the electricity system but this does not have the same clean electrons focus.) Putting aside (quite) important issues of differences like equity, ownership, and worker protections, let us focus (again) for a moment on the bills’ differences when it comes to cleaning up Virginia’s electricity grid:

• The Virginia Green New Deal Virginia‘s key legislation introduced by Rep. Sam Rasoul (HB77) “mandates … retail electric suppliers in Virginia to generate 80% of electricity from renewable resources by 2028 and 100% by 2036″.
• The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) targets 60 percent renewable electrons by 2036 and 100% by 2050.
  • [UPDATE: that percentage is a complicated formula which makes these targets (far) less ambitious. See below.)

Very simply, Goldilocks’ search for the most comfortable furniture and food ready to eat seems appropriate for a situation. The GND-VA’s might be too ambitious for the political moment while the VCEA is not nearly ambitious enough considering business-case opportunities and climate reality.

While it seems technically possible to map out a path to the GND-VA’s 80 percent renewable electricity by 2028,

• The GND-VA does not have not robust modeling and road-mapping of how to move from today’s under 10 percent renewables to 80 percent in this eight-year period. This is a significant undertaking that requires real planning to enable effective investments, identify (solve) key roadblocks, prioritize critical early steps, etc …
• While it seems possible, as a real stretch goal, to achieve this sort of target, this sort of rapid shift will end up having inefficiencies, will create disruptions, will have unexpected impacts, will create demands … much as occurred across the United States during World War II as the “Homefront” played an essential part in enabling, eventual, victory over the Axis powers.
• Although a “World War II-like mobilization” is often invoked to support climate action (even as the necessity for this might be abundantly clear to advocates as we (or at least some of us) watch Australia’s koalas and towns burn, Indonesian floods, California fires, Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, rising seas, and too many climate impacts to even think of listing), it has to be recognized that the (vast) majority of Virginians simply are not on board (yet …) with mandating a WWII-like mobilization: there are not ‘climate victory gardens’, people are not collecting scrap metal, they are not …
• When it comes to Goldilocks, her comment on the GND-VA might just be that it is ‘too hard’ (at least for now) to crawl into bed with.

On the other hand, the VCEA’s objective of 60% renewables by 2036 and 100% by 2050,

• Does not appear to leverage very real (already announced + expanded plan) possibilities for significant offshore wind, incredible decreases in solar/wind/offshore wind/battery costs, and other real-world trends that could enable achieving far more, far earlier than the plan.
• Does not tackle, in many ways, significant barriers (The Virginia Way!) to achieving a clean economy future nor does it seem inventive enough in creating solutions to enable surmounting (perceived) challenges.
• Falls short of marrying ambition with climate realities, technical possibilities, and business(-model) opportunities.
• Goldilocks might just try the VCEA and say that it is too just too soft for comfort.

In considering these two, while I applaud the GND-VA’s philosophy and appreciate that the VCEA would represent a significant shift for the better from the existing structure, I am a Goldilocks finding reasons for uncertainty and discomfort with both leading me to seek an appropriate middle-ground of comfort and appropriateness.

Seeking to find the ‘just right’ moment for 100% clean electrons

Writ large, legislation should set an “objective” (what we would like to see) and “threshold” (what is the minimal acceptable). Within the context of achieving a 100% clean electron grid (see below, including nuclear and not just renewables), the GND-VA might just be too ambitious for the moment while the VCEA might not reasonably seize the day (political, economic, technological, business, climate, …). With that Carpe Diem thought, what might be that Goldilocks 100% clean electrons objective/threshold moment?

Writ large, with a bit of waving hands (an informed, but not detailed assessment-based, opinion), 2035/2040 could well be reasonable numbers:

• Objective 2035
  • (Nearly) 100% clean electricity (nuclear + renewables +, if it exists, carbon-capture operations) by 2035.
  • Likely achievable with strong economic benefits and without serious disruptions (external to specific impacted industries/plants, with need to address/mitigate such impacts, where appropriate).
  • Would have significant secondary/tertiary benefits: improved health, job creation, increased economic activity, keeping Virginian $s inside the Commonwealth rather than importing fuels and electrons, reputational value as a leader in climate action.
  • Would position Virginia ready to undertake a far more aggressive path that could, if trends develop, enable pulling the timeline to a ‘mean (e.g., resilient), green, and economically strengthening clean energy economy’ into the early 2030s. And, to be ready, if/when Virginians are ready for a WWII-like mobilization to treat climate change like what it has become … an emergency.
  • It might, however, become evident as seeking to execute a clean power path that real barriers exist to this timeline: from securing Federal permits for offshore wind areas, to weaknesses in supply chains, to technical challenges to achieving this level of renewable energy generation in the grid within this time frame and thus …
• Threshold 40
  • (Nearly) 100% clean electricity (nuclear + renewables +, if it exists, carbon-capture operations) by 2040.
  • The existing plans and opportunities in the clean power space clearly align with a twenty-year project to eliminate fossil fuels from Virginia’s electricity sector. This should be the ‘minimum’ (threshold) target for any legislative moves to clean up the grid.

Objective 2035/Threshold 2040 seems to be a reasonable Goldilocks target timeline for a 100% clean power sector in Virginia considering the political moment, economic opportunities, and technology realities.

Nuclear into the future

As an important aside, both the GND-VA and VCEA focus on “renewable power” (renewable electricity) rather than “clean power”. Renewable is wind, water, solar (plus, dependent, some minor additions like methane from (animal) waste and biomass). “Clean” includes nuclear power, which is currently a significant part of Virginia’s electricity grid. For those focused on climate impacts, the core issue is “clean” — low-to-no carbon emission electricity. Thus, for me, the key target should be “clean” with serious moves to go 100% renewable only (if still appropriate) after eliminating fossil-fuel/carbon-dioxide significant electricity from the grid. Retired safely operating nuclear power plants while keeping carbon-dioxide spewing fossil fuel (both coal and fossil* gas) plants operating is, inherently, not to take climate change seriously.

NOTE: The VCEA is, happily, stronger than what was expected based on the two-page press release and analysis of key supporting research. Most importantly, the use of “clean” in its discussions and nuclear electricity showing up its supporting research indicated that nuclear power would count in its targets. The bill, itself, does not have nuclear in its targets and thus it is a more aggressive renewable bill than (not only I) expected. It is still a complicated bill (which, to be honest, I (and many others) do not fully understand), with areas meriting cleaning up and strengthening, but it is stronger than (many of us) expected. When first heard, it appeared to merit perhaps a “C”, at best, considering the moment. It now might merit a B+. [UPDATE: Rereading portions and that grade is falling … see below.]

Additionally, the VCEA is the “Clean Economy Act” but focuses, primarily, on the power (electricity) sector and doesn’t deal with many other elements of the economy in a serious way.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: As per “I … do not fully understand” VCEA comment above, there was an important paragraph (see below) that I (and, sigh, others) saw but didn’t absorb fully in a first read through. The VCEA does, sort of, ‘count’ nuclear power within its process.  Nuclear-power plant generated electrons are to be subtracted from the total electricity and then the remaining amount (total production – nuclear generation) is to be called the “total electric energy sold in the previous calendar year” which would then be the basis for determining the percent which is renewable energy. 

• To aid understanding, imagine a total production is 100 and
  • Nuclear power plants produce 20 (20% of total)
  • Renewable sources produce 20 (20% of total)
• With that simplistic scenario
  • Renewables would produce 20% of electricity
  • VCEA would count this as achieving a 25% RPS

Sigh, a mea culpa for getting it wrong. But, if you are (were) confused at that paragraph, you aren’t the only one … count me in too. Anyone not believe that confusion isn’t part of the objective here (who wrote that paragraph?)?

This path significantly downshifts the VCEA’s ambitions and the meaning of its “60% by 2036”.  That downshifting easily merits pushing down that grade from a B+ to a B or B-. And, well, highlights the criticality of a close read to discover “areas meriting cleaning up and strengthening”.

UPDATE: The discussion of VCEA was based on draft legislation. Multiple VCEA related bills seem to be dropping (energy efficiency, renewable portfolio standard).  The second has the nuclear power exclusion paragraph from above.

In seeking to legislate paths to achieve a “clean economy”, one thing legislators do not lack are substantive and thoughtful roadmaps to look at and leverage. As per a post the other day,

For decades, people have been working on and considering how to get Virginia on the path toward a clean energy future. And, with plunging prices for clean energy paths (solar, wind, storage (batteries), efficiency (think LED lights), electric transportation, etc) with increasing climate impacts and understanding of climate risks along with increased business pressure for and actions to advance clean energy along with incoming full Democratic control of the Virginia government, the stage is more than set for moving from considerations and working on to making serious moves to achieve that prosperous, resilient, and secure clean energy future for the Commonwealth and all Virginians.

That post took a quick look at then candidate McAuliffe’s 2009 “Comprehensive Long-Term Plan for Virginia’s Energy Future”. In the spirit of highlighting material worth looking at while formulating “Virginia Clean Economy” legislation, following is a brief discussion of the Stanford Solutions Project and its vision for a 100% renewable powered Virginia by 2050.

Co-founded by Professor Mark Jacobson, the Solutions Project (and the associated 100.org) is analyzing climate mitigation through the energy sector: how to, essentially, eliminate carbon emissions due to human use of/need for energy services. This is about “energy” (total energy uses) and not just “power” (electricity generation). Jacobson and his team have done a wide range of analysis and their work supports a proposition that the humanity’s entire energy requirements can be met (not just cost effectively but with boosted economic performance even without direct consideration of climate impacts) with WWS systems.

WWS? Wind, Water, Solar.

Within their work, The Solutions Project sees no requirement for (actually, rejects) additional investment in fossil fuel infrastructure of any sort nor need for new nuclear power generation (both due to assessment of WWS energy system viability and basic cost analysis showing nuclear electricity generation unable to compete on a level-playing field with WWS anywhere in the world).

Across the board, albeit at different timelines and with significant variations in the WWS mix, The Solutions Project assessment is that humanity can move to carbon-free generation of all required energy services (for the built environment, transportation, agriculture, industry) by 2050 even while, again, fostering improved economics. A clean-energy future that won’t just pay for itself but which will provide indefinite returns on that investment.

The Solutions Project has provided basic roadmaps and analytical assessments of those returns for the globe, countries, regions, and, within the United States, states. For Virginia (see graphics below), the key points:

• 2050 Energy Mix
  • 60% wind (50% offshore, 10% onshore)
  • 38% solar (utility-scale PV 25.5%, Residential rooftop 4.2%, Large rooftop 3.5%, CSP 5%)
  • 2% miscellaneous (tidal turbines, wave, hydroelectric)
• Significant total reduction in energy demand due to energy efficiency
  • Over 40% reduction in energy requirements
  • Even with economic and population growth
• Benefit streams include
  • Over 145,000 jobs (permanent positions)
  • Over 1,350 fewer (premature) deaths due to pollution
  • Over $140 lower energy costs, per person, per year
  • Nearly $7,000/year in total benefits per person, per year

Something to consider, when thinking about the numbers above and the graphics below, is that this is ‘dated’. Done several years ago, the key data inputs related to clean energy costs are from 2013. Solar, wind, battery prices have continued to plunge since then and are, in many cases, already well below costs then predicted for perhaps a decade from now. In some cases, such as offshore wind, some project prices are now below what were optimistically as the best price that would ever be achieved. E.g., if done with current data, projected total completion and power productions costs would be lower and the energy costs savings would be even (likely significantly) higher.

For the Commonwealth and creating a path forward to a Virginia Clean Economy, there is much to The Solutions Project vision even as there are substantive reasons to question and challenge whether it proves “the” path forward.

• Virginia’s electricity generation currently has a large share provided by nuclear power. Certainly, as long as it can continue to operate safely this zero carbon emission generation should be maintained — certainly until, at minimum, all fossil fuel generation is removed from the grid and/or all fossil fuels are eliminated from Virginia’s economy. And, that seems likely to be at least until the mid-2040s if not later.
• The inclusion of CSP (which, btw, I have had experienced with) is unclear in specific value for Virginia. Perhaps to support industrial heat requirements? For its energy storage value streams?
• And …

Still, the Solutions Project concept should intrigue anyone concerned about creating a Virginia Clean Economy. The next step: securing the research and data behind this infographic to assess the analysis, review the data, and determine how much of this road map can and should be incorporated into Virginia’s Clean Economy path forward.

For decades, people have been working on and considering how to get Virginia on the path toward a clean energy future. And, with plunging prices for clean energy paths (solar, wind, storage (batteries), efficiency (think LED lights), electric transportation, etc) with increasing climate impacts and understanding of climate risks along with increased business pressure for and actions to advance clean energy along with incoming full Democratic control of the Virginia government, the stage is more than set for moving from considerations and working on to making serious moves to achieve that prosperous, resilient, and secure clean energy future for the Commonwealth and all Virginians.

Looking back a decade, considering that ‘considering’, Terry McAuliffe developed a significant amount of material in his “Business Plan for Virginia”. The initial release: “Chapter 1: A Comprehensive Long-Term Plan for Virginia’s Energy Future“. Looking at this for the first time in over a decade, while the issues identified then (such as exaggeration of Virginia’s tidal/wave resource potential) remain, I am struck by how much resonants today.

For example, 2009 candidate McAuliffe (sadly, not really Governor McAulifee 2014-2018) called for a serious renewable power standard (RPS) which, at that time, would have put the Commonwealth on the leading edge in the nation.

Requiring power companies to generate 25% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025.”

McAuliffe(‘s team) saw a real potential for offshore wind, calling for serious work on positioning Virginia to secure economic gains (industry in Hampton Roads area) by being seizing a leading position in this emerging renewable energy realm. Candidate McAuliffe clearly suggesting that a significant portion of Virginia’s energy needs could be met from offshore:

By some estimates, anywhere from 20 percent to all of Virginia’s electricity demand could be met by off-shore wind projects because of the prevalence of Class 5 or greater winds that are found in waters less than 30 meters deep”

Reading through this rich document is painful. Candidate McAuliffe laid down a challenge:

Sadly, when considering the past decade in the light of McAuliffe’s “challenges”, it has mainly been a lost decade as Virginia fell behind other states “leaping forward on developing renewable energy, investing in energy efficiency, combating climate change” since the Commonwealth did not “maximize opportunities [then] available to invest in a sustainable energy future”.

A decade later, McAuliffe’s challenge remains relevant. However, a decade later, the situation has changed significantly to both enable and to create imperative for Virginia to meet McAuliffe’s challenge:

• The climate crisis has worsened, with growing impacts near daily, with a mounting imperative for serious, aggressive, rapid action to reduce emissions while improving resiliency against future climate change impacts.
• Advances in technology options and plunged renewable energy prices have made it both technically easier and much more clearly economically beneficial to move to clean energy options.
• Clean energy announcements and projects (such as major businesses wanting clean electrons, Dominion announcing major offshore wind and solar projects, local governments putting up solar projects) have created a momentum to build on for serious, aggressive, and rapid moves to a 100% clean Virginia economy (within the next 10-15 years).
• Democratic Party control, with strong voter support for clean energy action, removes the climate-science denial Virginia GOP’s veto over serious climate action.

As we contemplate ‘how’ to move Virginia forward, it is worth taking a moment to look back at past roadmapping toward a Virginia clean economy and leveraging that work in creating our path forward.