Clean energy efforts show promise at crossover 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — This week marked the crossover period for the current legislative session in Virginia.  

At the halfway point, we are excited to see legislatures listening to Virginians and supporting cleaner energy. 

Bills expanding distributed generation, increasing energy efficiency, putting the commonwealth back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and introducing guardrails for data centers, have passed out of the House and Senate.  

Several bills focused on increasing access to battery storage and moving the state further in its clean energy efforts have crossed over to the opposite chamber. These include: 

• SB175 and HB628, Distributed Generation Expansion, increases the distributed generation carveout first set out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act to 4.5% from 1% until 2030 and then 5% afterward. It also increases the carveout for projects on previously developed sites and allows power purchase agreements (PPAs) for all. 

• SB448 and HB895, Storage Expansion, increase short-duration storage targets for Dominion and APCo and create long-duration energy storage targets for both utilities as well. 

• SB327 and HB1062, the Virginia Energy Savers Act, creates an eight-year program for utilities to fund energy efficiency, residential solar, and residential storage for income and age qualified customers. With the potential for up to $300 million in these investments over the program’s life, this program more than compensates for the Solar for All funding that was illegally terminated in Virginia. 

• SB802 and HB397, and related budget language, Reentering RGGI, clarifies the law and ensures Virginia will get back into RGGI smoothly and transparently after former Gov. Glenn Youngkin was found to have illegally removed us from the program. 

Data centers have been a big part of the conversation for this year’s General Assembly session. A bill requiring the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to establish demand flexibility programs for large load customers, such as data centers, has passed through the House and Senate (HB284 and SB371). Demand flexibility programs ask data centers and other high energy users to change their operations a handful of times throughout the year when the grid is most strained, which is a far cheaper solution than building expensive new power plants that sit idle most of the year. These bills would make Virginia a leader in this innovative solution, which holds tremendous savings potential for customers.  

Two others, HB892 and HB897 have made it out of the House. HB892 would help lower costs by ensuring utilities only acquire the necessary amount of renewable energy certificates and directing the SCC to conduct a proceeding with utilities to deduplicate loads that show up across multiple forecasts. HB897 would add substantial new requirements to the current data center tax break program.Last year alone, this tax break amounted to $1.9 billion with minimal conditions that data centers easily fulfill. The new conditions are designed to encourage data centers to develop clean energy on their own dime, which will help reduce utility costs, and also reduce other impacts of their operations, like the vast fleets of diesel backup generators used by most data centers.. 

“We’re not at the finish line yet, but we’re making great progress. Taken together, the steps around storage, increasing access to clean energy, and putting guard rails around data centers will work together to move the state forward, reduce the cost burden communities face, and ultimately clean up our air and environment,” said SELC Senior Attorney Nate Benforado.