They’re just using our money to buy fake bullshit credits that don’t really offset their pollution. It’s real ironic shit too. Like an ultra rich fuck with thousands of acres of land gets paid for the “promise” of not cutting his trees down. Class war money funnel up. We gotta cut these lazy assholes off.

Lame. The point of the RGGI is to incentivize the switch to non-carbon power. That incentive doesn’t work if the decision makers can just pass the cost on to consumers

Real tired of these monopolies in my Commonwealth.

This is lame and we should prevent utilities from passing through costs like these. But the other intent of RGGI is to fund programs like flood resilience, weatherization, and energy efficiency. All kinds of data out there showing the return on investment is (generally) much higher than the cost. That said yes fuck Dominion.

Dominion energy stock price has tumbled in the past weeks. Analysts are slashing their price targets.

By way of contrast, Duke energy has risen and analysts are upping their price targets.

Virginia seems to be showing other states how to ruin a business.

While not great for the consumer, it isn't nearly as big of a surcharge as their other recent rate hikes.

>If the State Corporation Commission approves, the surcharge would boost a benchmark 1,000 kilowatt-hour a month bill, which now costs $137, by $4.64.

Having the SCC reduce their allowed profit margin or base rate would do far more for our bills than pulling out of the RGGI.

Historically I believe we have gotten more money for flood prevention, etc. than we put in due to being able to sell unneeded credits but that may not have held up for every year.

Real tired of these monopolies in my Commonwealth Country

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ftfy

Hmmm almost like RGGI is a back door tax on electricity that doesn’t do what it purports to do. Not saying the revenue isn’t going to a good purpose, but I think even the most stalwart defenders of the VCEA would admit that screwing over ratepayers is not what they had in mind.

Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to articulate this opinion without being condemned by one environmentalist group or the other.

Utilities shouldn't be in the hands of private corporations.

Go further: World

Then suggest an alternative that works.

Dominion and AEP are highly regulated in Virginia. We don’t have a bad system if the SCC works properly— which may be a big “if” sometimes.

Is there anywhere in the world that has competing electricity providers?

Dominion doesn’t get to decide what their generation mix will be - that gets decided by the State Corporation Commission.

Dominion always wants to build new low-carbon energy plants, because their profit is based primarily on the size of their capital base. The more new plants they get to build, the higher their allowable profit.

The SCC’s job is to provide approval/denial to the things that Dominion wants to build, by balancing concerns such as reliability, affordability, and GHG emissions.

At the end of the day, the costs of RGGI do indeed provide and incentive to transition to low-carbon energy, because it makes green generation “cheaper” in the SCC’s decision-making calculus.

Different states have different levels of competition. Virginia is one of the least-competitive states, while Texas is one of the most competitive (and we see how well that has worked out for them).

We’re gonna ignore the massive amounts of money Dominion pours into local campaigns eh?

Its legal extortion.

Texas.

They have a market that guarantees access to the lines, but privatizes it otherwise.

That's why they keep having power outages the basic theory was that if you could provide power during a very cold time then you would make more money... Turns out the model doesn't work.

The problem is that electricity is a natural monopoly which means it will basically always be a monopoly so the options are since the cost is too much for their to be naturally competing wires to your house:

1. have it be a state agency

2. have it be a monopoly but heavily regulate it

3. Have it be a Texas style market that guarantees access to the monopoly piece of the physical wires. Which has lead them to basically running out of energy how many times...

Because of their high fixed capital costs, utilities are considered natural monopolies by economists because it would be prohibitively expensive to have multiple companies serving the same area, similarly to roads. Monopolies are fine is well regulated by the state and if regulatory capture is successfully prevented. Otherwise, we need co-ops or nationalization

The SCC’s hands are completely tied because decades of legislation sponsored by Dominion have declared various projects “in the public interest.” In fact, we know exactly what we are building over the next 9 years - 5.6 GW of wind and 16.1 GW of solar (plus like 1.2 battery storage or something). While I personally supported the legislation that led to this, the SCC is forced to approve this amt of new development.

Now Dominion is also trying to force the SCC to approve small modular reactors, which are fantastically expensive and pretty much still in the R&D phase (which there is plenty of federal money to do). Not to mention wildly unnecessary considering how much generation potential we are in the throes of building. Tell your legislator to vote no on HB2333 and HB2197.

>The point of the RGGI is to incentivize the switch to non-carbon power. That incentive doesn’t work if the decision makers can just pass the cost on to consumers

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there is no incentive for people to reduce carbon emissions if carbon emissions remain underpriced. not pricing it into consumer choices results in people overemitting carbon

There is alot variation in electric retail markets, Texas has the most expansive retail competition. Comparing Texas and California retail markets is an interesting case study in market design -- with California creating some counter-productive incentives that led to the 2001 outages, Enron and all that.

Consumers of electricity don’t have a choice in how the electricity is generated. That’s why I specifically said “the decision makers” at dominion

Nationalize them. The power grid is part and parrtial with national security and shouldn’t be up to the whims of profit seeking enterprise.

Sadly that wouldn’t work. Politicians get in the way. Look at the Post Office.

Dominion operates in a lot more states than just VA

You're right. They also operate in NC.

Duke energy also operates in NC - and they are doing great. But ever since Youngkin got in office he has interfered with Dominion Energy. Youngkin is not good for Dominion Energy - and that's not good for customers, stockholders, and Dominion Energy management.

Its not about generation potential, it's about grid stability. Wind, solar and hydro do not provide grid stability.

I have a Master of Science in energy policy and I am acutely aware of this dynamic. Our gas plants don’t come offline until 2045 and we are nowhere close to needing additional baseload. Investing in deploying SMRs while in the R&D stage makes no sense. Maybe in 15-20 years.