Virginia Environmental News
Fresh off a decisive election win, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger is promising a sharp turn in Virginia’s energy policy, vowing energy affordability for regular ratepayers, boosting in-state power generation, and forcing data centers to “pay their fair share.”
House Democrats, with their new majority, are making energy efficiency a key priority for the 2026 legislative session. They have filed bills to create an energy efficiency task force and to mandate that utilities give qualified customers efficiency upgrades. This fits nicely with local nonprofit Renew Rocktown’s launch of an Energy Check program for low-income households.
Abigail Spanberger has appointed her energy policy transition team to head up her start of an energy policy shift. The team members have lots of experience in sustainable energy.
Now that Virginia Democrats have won control of state government, they’re faced with the challenge of figuring out how to meet surging power demand from booming data centers and rural opposition to solar farms without abandoning the state’s clean energy mandate.
As Virginia’s data center boom strains the grid, a new proposal from Rewiring America shows that tech giants could free up power by footing the bill for residential energy upgrades and still come out ahead.
Dominion Energy is seeking regulatory approval of its largest slate of solar and battery storage projects yet, at nearly a dozen facilities totaling $2.9 billion.
The Washington Post, owned by the world’s largest data center operator, Jeff Bezos, recently claimed that data centers actually lower power costs. This is disingenuous! While discounted rates for big commercial power users (including data centers) have remained stable or decreased slightly in Virginia, they have risen significantly for everyone else.
The Virginia State Corporation Commission approved Dominion Energy’s controversial 944 megawatt gas peaker plant in Chesterfield along with higher electricity rates to pay for it.
Our Climate Crisis
Rising global temperatures have made Earth’s atmosphere more waterlogged, providing fuel for wetter and more dangerous storms. Some regions are more susceptible than others. In the past 85 years, the amount of water vapor moving through the atmosphere has increased 12%.
Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier retreated five miles in two months, 10 times as fast as the previous record. This has implications for the stability of other glaciers and the pace of sea-level rise on a warming planet.
Showing some progress, the UN Paris Agreement has reduced the projected maximum global warming to less than 3°C degrees by the end of the century, which is down from prior projections of about 5°C. Even 2°C of global warming would, however, make many low-lying islands uninhabitable and swamp millions of square miles of coastal regions around the world.
Despite surging renewable energy, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels are projected to rise to an all-time high this year. Increases are expected to accelerate in the US and the EU but slow in China and India. At this rate the world will blow past the UN climate goal of 1.5°C of global warming in four years.
Politics and Policy
Under intense resistance from fossil fuel interests, the COP30 climate summit in Brazil fell short on drawing up a roadmap for a global transition away from oil, gas and coal. It did agree to launch limited initiatives to strengthen emissions-cutting plans, as well as tripling finance to help poor countries cope with worsening climate change impacts.
The Trump administration is arguing that abandoning fossil fuels is just too expensive and betting that the world will buy American oil and gas for decades to come. Meanwhile, China’s worldwide exports of clean energy technology have more than tripled in the last five years.
The founders of the fledgling Texas nuclear energy startup Fermi America have become billionaires because of its connections to Trump even though it has yet to produce an electron, split an atom, and has little more to show than a glossy, aspirational marketing brochure.
Nations were poised to approve the first fee on pollution from ships. The Trump administration then began threats, including tariffs, sanctions and the revocation of diplomats’ U.S. visas, which effectively killed the agreement.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright condemned the UN COP30 climate summit as harmful and misguided, saying, “It’s essentially a hoax. It’s not an honest organization looking to better human lives.”
This November was a very good election for the planet, with climate-friendly initiatives and candidates winning nationwide. Voters backed funding renewables, reining in energy costs, and building out mass transit—and the people promising to deliver those policies.
At this year’s UN COP30 Climate Summit, the U.S. is out and Europe is struggling. Emerging countries are, however, embracing renewable energy thanks to a glut of cheap equipment from China.
More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists were present at the COP30 climate negotiations in Brazil. This is 60% more than the delegates from the 10 most climate vulnerable countries.
The environmental group 350.org will temporarily suspend programming due to funding woes. President Trump’s threats to investigate left-leaning organizations and his rapid-fire dismantling of environmental rules have hamstrung green groups.
Gov. Shapiro is pulling Pennsylvania out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, bowing to fossil fuel industry claims that it is leading to higher utility bills. Environmentalists see the decision as ‘shocking reversal’ on fighting global warming.
Parking lots in South Korea with more than 80 spaces will be required to install solar canopies. This new law doesn’t just apply to new construction—existing lots will have to comply as well.
Energy
Nuclear power is back due to the skyrocketing demand for electricity, driven by big tech’s hundreds of artificial intelligence data centers. The Trump administration aims to quadruple nuclear output over the next 25 years. This does not address the exorbitant upfront costs of building nuclear plants or the old issue of safely storing radioactive waste.
So much solar power is being generated in the middle of the day in Australia that the federal government will mandate power companies to offer free electricity during those three hours. This provides an incentive to install batteries and to switch electricity use to those hours.
Hyundai still plans to invest $6 billion in a low-carbon steel plant in Louisiana despite the Trump administration’s cuts to tax credits for the green hydrogen needed to produce clean iron and a recent immigration raid on a factory the automaker is building in Georgia.
Germany is investing billions on nuclear fusion for its energy future. Critics say it’s a waste of money as the still unproven technology won’t solve near-term climate and energy problems.
Large manufacturers are increasingly participating in a demand response program in which their industrial facilities agree to power down and switch to local backup sources such as batteries during times of high demand on the grid. They, in turn, receive financial compensation from the grid operator.
People can do a lot to reduce energy use and carbon emissions in their own lives, even in the absence of government action. The recent Energy Smart Home Expo, organized by Electrify Central Ohio, demonstrated what people can do in their own households and communities.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that an oversupply of oil could create a glut of 4 million barrels a day next year. It also forecasts that renewable energy is expected to at least double globally over the next five years.
Global demand for power is growing fast, but hydro plants, the oldest source of clean energy, are struggling because of droughts, floods and other extreme weather linked to climate change.
Tapping energy from “superhot rock” could produce cheap, clean, constant geothermal energy almost anywhere—if drills and wells can survive infernal heat and pressure.
The world’s first highway that can wirelessly charge trucks and other electric vehicles as they drive has been switched on in France.
Land, Food, and Agriculture
In spite of bipartisan agreement on eliminating food waste, the U.S. still squanders roughly a third of its food supply. It’s a huge problem. Globally, if food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
While the world continues losing huge areas of forest in the tropics, they are making a comeback in some countries including India, China, the U.S., Canada, Russia, and much of Europe. Leading in this, China has added forest the whopping size of Texas since 1990.
Climate Justice
The world’s response to the climate crisis risks deepening inequality rather than addressing it. Less than 3% of international aid to cut carbon emissions is supporting a “just transition” away from polluting industries.
What does the just energy transition mean for Africa where around 600 million people lack even basic access to electricity? Investment in the continent’s abundant sources of solar, wind and geothermal power could meet most of the continent’s energy needs.
Student and Indigenous activists clashed with UN security when they tried to force their way into the COP30 climate conference venue to protest oil drilling in the Amazon.
Pacific island countries won a landmark case at the International Court of Justice, ruling that every nation on earth has a legal obligation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Now they want countries to act.
In a groundbreaking initiative, the Brazilian COP30 leadership included the Global Ethical Stocktake, which elevates the spiritual, ethical and cultural dimensions of the climate crisis. It organized regional dialogues of diverse voices to reflect on deeper values that should guide climate action.
Rising home insurance premiums are eating into home values in disaster-prone areas of the U.S. As insurance costs more than doubled in various areas, home values have fallen and many owners are stuck.
“Every dollar spent on the military produces over twice the greenhouse gas emissions of a dollar spent elsewhere,” writes Marijke van Duin, a member of the Dutch Mennonite Conference representing the World Council of Churches at the COP30 conference in Brazil.
Iowa City made its buses free and, as a result, traffic cleared and so did the air. “The transit system is one of the greatest tools communities have to combat climate change and reduce emissions,” according to the city’s transportation director.
Earl Zimmerman
Climate Action Alliance of the Valley
Climate Action Alliance of the Valley 