After four years of Republican Executive Branch rule, Democrats again control Virginia’s Executive Branch and its Senate and House of Delegates. What can Virginians expect?
Governor Abigail Spanberger campaigned as a moderate and said energy efficiency and affordability would be central to her first legislative session. Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett expected “a measured approach” from her, instead of “radical change.” Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said, “Voters put [Democrats] in charge to focus on affordability and bring some rationality and stability” to the fore.
Republicans feared Democrats would push high-tax, big-spending, heavy-regulation policies that would reduce energy affordability, stall economic growth, hurt small businesses and families, and impair school choice, voting and, safety. They worried that the energized, aggressive leftist base that helped Democrats win the 2025 elections would drive radical changes on multiple fronts.
Initial legislative and other proposals suggest that “moderation,” “rationality,” and “stability” are already the exception. Early actions certainly underscore this, as do Conservation Network recommendations on 58 House and Senate energy, climate, and environment bills.
While I follow other issues, I focus on whether energy, climate change, and environmental policies meet sound scientific and economic standards, and how they affect health, jobs, and living standards. At this stage in the process, multiple Democrat policies, actions, and bills are so radical and costly that voters and energy consumers, governor and state legislators, and agency heads need to revamp or trash them.
* The governor’s plan to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative will ensure that Team Spanberger hears only “progressive” perspectives on climate and weather dangers, renewable energy benefits, and whether a few US states can alter major global trends. Efficiency and affordability will suffer, with billions in new costs passed on to consumers.
Earth’s climate has changed frequently throughout history, and the Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age dwarf anything happening today. Average global temperatures and sea levels have increased only slightly in 100 years. Hurricane frequency and intensity show little change since 1865, no Category 3-5 hurricanes struck the USA from 10/2005 to 08/2017 (a record), and tornado frequency and intensity have declined since 1950.
China emits one-third of the world’s greenhouse gases, more than all historically developed nations combined. India and Indonesia account for another tenth. They’re building coal-fired power plants at a one-per-week clip. Even if all RGGI states eliminated their fossil fuel use and GHG emissions, there’d be no global reduction.
Renewable energy involves mining, pollution, and child labor at unprecedented levels; results in huge installations across croplands, scenic areas, and wildlife habitats; kills 1,000,000 birds and bats annually nationwide; and impairs electricity reliability and affordability. Poor families get slammed hardest.
* Governor Spanberger and many legislators support expanded wind and solar electricity generation, including photovoltaic panels on homes, solar canopies in parking lots, and industrial installations on hundreds or thousands of acres. These systems will certainly generate power, but only 25-30% of the year – 7-8 hours per average day – at unpredictable times, for unpredictable lengths of time.
When stacked or stored for long times outdoors or in warehouses or damaged by weather, panels often crack – letting in water and seeping out toxics that can pollute soils, streams, and groundwater. Leakage can also result in reduced electricity generation and even fires. Converters (to turn DC into AC current) can also pose fire hazards; so can home backup power batteries.
* House Bill 214 would support local flood resiliency grants. But it’s largely based on assumptions that “recurrent” flooding results from climate-driven rising sea levels and increasing rainfall. However, NOAA data showing a doubling in the rate of sea level rise in recent decades puts the new rise at one-eighth inch per year – and a total of just 9 inches since 1880!
Moreover, perceived sea level rise is often due to land subsidence in Norfolk, Virginia, and elsewhere.
* To account for intermittent power generation due to unpredictable wind and sunshine, HB 895 would revise the Virginia Clean Economy Act to increase utility grid-scale battery storage requirements.
Now Appalachian Power and Dominion Energy must construct or procure some 135 Gigawatt-hours (135,000 Megawatt-hours) of short, medium, and long-duration grid-scale storage capacity. (Virginia homes, businesses, hospitals, data centers, and other users currently consume over 270 GW-h per average day; much more during extreme heat or cold.)
The mandated totals depend on how many batteries are 4-hour or 10-hour or still nonexistent 24-hour, and whether they export their full nameplate storage value – or only a more realistic 80 percent.
What storage would be required for the predicted January 24-26 weekend snow and ice storms and near-zero cold, with no solar and zero to minimal wind? Blackouts could be widespread and long-term. Families could literally freeze to death in the dark – if Virginia lacks adequate coal, gas and nuclear.
* The governor also supports giving the State Corporation Commission more authority to review grid efficiency and limit unnecessary transmission line construction. But how can it limit transmission line construction while installing all the proposed and mandated wind, solar and battery equipment? Far better to build gas and nuclear power plants close to power-hungry data centers and cities.
The 13-state (including Virginia) PJM Interconnection already faces serious energy security threats: significant shortfalls in critically needed dispatchable electricity, soaring prices, and Pennsylvania losing new generation to neighboring states with clearer, faster approval rules. Virginia government take note.
* Renewable energy promoters claim wind and solar power costs (and thus consumer prices) are now on par with or lower than coal, gas or nuclear electricity.
These claims focus on initial costs of installing turbines and panels. They leave out the enormous costs of constructing, maintaining and operating duplicative coal- and gas-fired backup power plants that must operate 24/7 on idle and be ready to go full-throttle every time wind and sunshine are insufficient.
Backup batteries are even more costly. HB 895 directs Dominion to have 64,000 MW-h of 4-hour batteries, which would cost around $33 billion. Sufficient additional batteries would multiply that 5-10x.
Grid-scale backup batteries also carry significant fire and toxic emission risks, as with the 300-megawatt battery inferno at Moss Landing, California.
Lobbyists and legislators likewise gloss over subsidies via taxes and hidden charges on electric bills – and payments to utilities for not producing electricity when they must shut down because of high winds or because overall generation exceeds supply or grid capacity.
They don’t mention the exorbitant cost of replacing Atlantic Ocean wind turbines every 10-20 years, due to salt spray and storms; replacing huge solar panel installations destroyed by hailstorms; or building hundred-mile-long transmission lines at $1-8 million per mile.
Virginia’s governor, legislators, and regulators need to pause their stampede of laws, rules, regulations, and spending – including nearly 2,400 legislative bills so far. But like too many other Democrats, they seem incapable of – or opposed to – thoughtful analysis and debate, common sense, moderation, attention to energy, ecological, and economic reality … and genuine concern for the poor.
Photo Adnan Masri, Creative Commons
Strange how China are building so many coal fired power stations. As wind and solar provide free energy* one would have expected them to be building only these instead.
They are definitely making enough, but I guess they are being all altruistic and letting us have them instead?
(*Just ask Nick)
No. Altruism has nothing to do with it. China is building nuclear plants in locations where coal delivery cannot be done because of transportation bottlenecks.
“In 2024–2025, China remains the world’s largest electricity producer, with coal dominating at roughly 55–60% of generation, … renewables (wind, solar, hydro) account for over 30–35%.”
Google source leaves less than 10% of China’s electricity generation to nuclear. I’m not saying nuclear is better or worse, just that I’ve been hearing for decades that nations have been building it and it hasn’t appeared in their statistics yet.
I couldn’t find the sarcasm font in my editor, unfortunately…
‘Will Governor Spanberger ever demonstrate moderation or rational thinking on energy?’
No. And it’s pretty clear from the 2025 VA and NJ elections that the Left’s current strategy is to run radicals disguised as moderates to achieve power in upcoming elections. Be forewarned.
It looks like Spanberger is Virginia’s version of Mad Ed Milliband of the UK.
Human-caused Climate Change is the perfect issue for Authoritarian Democrats as it allows them to meddle in all sorts of things. And meddle they do, to the detriment of the rest of us.
It is not surprising that Democrats won Virginia. Virginia is a Bedroom Community for Washington DC and voters in Washington DC voted 95 percent for Democrats in the last election.
NoVA, with the exception of the always lunatic Arlington County, was still competitive for statewide Republicans up to the 2001 elections, after which the rapid post-9/11 expansion of the Federal government and growth of ‘tech’ companies reliant on immigrants from South Asia, turned it into a ‘company town’.
Unfortunately, the business of this company town is government, meaning that the interests of most of its employees are highly aligned with those of the Democrat Party.
And many of the voters on Northern Virginia work for the U.S. Government. They may make up the Deep State.
re: “Left’s current strategy is to run radicals disguised as moderates to achieve power in upcoming elections.”
Noted (and where I first came across that concept), it should be written here, by the late Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, broadcaster, author, and lecturer.
As a woman, I am increasingly puzzled by females in high office who appear to have no clue how things actually work. So it means that they appear unable to distinguish between facts and the fictions provided by activists of all sorts. then they wonder where they have gone wrong and why energy bills go through the roof, why they have problems with illegal immigrants not obeying the law etc etc etc. DEI has gone too far, if the woman got to the top by playing the diversity card and if that is the best she has, she is not fit to run anything of more significance than a chook raffle. They undermine competent women – and there are many – and will eventually lead to devaluing all women as leaders. As an Australian, I am watching one of our political parties in total chaos after the leader – whose campaign for the role was largely based on “Pick me, I’m a girl and its my turn” – was comprehensively outsmarted strategically by the most incompetent and lazy Prime Minister we have ever had.
Ordinary citizens deserve better than these wannabes that are operating beyond their competence.
The triumph of feelings over facts.
re: “triumph of feelings over facts.”
Brings to mind a film named “Triumph of the Will“, circa 1935. Directed, produced, edited, and co-written by one Leni Riefenstahl.
It is said certain Germans of that era modeled themselves after certain Democrat Party exploits they observed in another country, across the Atlantic …
“How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow”To craft legal discrimination, the Third Reich studied the United States.
https://www.history.com/articles/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow
Those females in high positions are usuallythere, because they have been placed there by the deep state(s).
That’s why they all have the very same opinions about everything globalist agenda(just like most of their male counterparts).
The reason why there is such a sudden increase in female politicians in top positions is not skill
(Kamala can not carry her own weight without 3 Xanax and a bottle of Martini in the morning, let alone that of a country,Hilaries skill was being Bills wife, same with Mitchelle),
but the fact that the elites know than the population is willing to accept far more shit and betrayal from a woman than from a man.
That’s why Merkel got away with wrecking Germany for year with things male politicians(of no color) would get killed.
That’s why top positions are now dominated by women,
be it the fully unqualified Von der Leyen, who has been pushed from top position to top position until she ran Europe full Nazy style now.
The equally unqualified and former Clinton katamite (It’s a small exclusive club) Lagarde,
or all the conservative imposters pretending to be presidents of Baltic states etc,
with the most obvious example Kaya Kallas, who quit her presidential job just after a few month; because she was offered a top EU job – no real president would commit such a level of high treason,and only a woman would get away with it.
And just imagine how much damage Kamala would have done by now,especially since she became black somewhere in April last year, if she’d be pretending to be president now.
Now this chick above is probably even the most competent of all those proxies as she is a CiA assett and needed some real skills there back then..
But her real name is not Spanberger.
It’s just Debbie Wassermann-Schultz who finally found the instruction manual for her comb – and used it.
There are a lot of politicians, of both sexes, operating beyond their competence in all the Western Democracies around the world.
I blame the Leftwing Propaganda Media for foisting all these Leftwing Lunatic Politicians on the Western world. If the Media told the truth about the Left Wing, they wouldn’t stand a chance of being elected. Unfortunately, the Leftwing Media does not tell the truth. Instead, they lie constantly to promote the Radical Leftwing Ideology.
The Leftwing Propaganda Media is the most dangerous organization in the world to people who value their personal freedoms. The Leftwing Propaganda Media is, right this minute, trying to take your personal freedoms away from you by feeding you lies that will cause you to act against your own best interests, such as voting for a Radical Democrat.
Don’t let them do it!
The Dems are funded by the CCP as well as domestic fraud and graft. You can blame the MSM, but the $$$ comes from communists and other anti- America, anti-Christian sources. Follow the money.
I agree, follow the money.
There is lots of money floating around if you are a Leftwing hack reporter especially on the subject of climate change.
But it is their Truth
“if the woman got to the top by playing the diversity card and if that is the best she has, she is not fit to run anything of more significance than a chook raffle.”
You can take MA as an example.
Oh, and “chook” is my new word des jour on WUWT. I get a new one every day here. 🙂
Sadly, in the US it’s not just women who have no clue how things work. Men too. One would hope that the new emphasis on STEM education might reverse this trend, for both males and females, but with many educators unable to tell the difference, maybe not. And DEI of course hasn’t helped matters.
But math is racist and we need feminine geology.
Unfortunately a majority of ordinary citizens voted for the charlatans and incompetents.
Democracy needs an informed, educated electorate. So the Long March targeted education and the press. Smart folks.
Most tech people from the 90’s or earlier have experienced the demographic issue. It seems to be changing as newer faces come out of school BUT changing demographics in tech fields wouldn’t solve the problem you started with – for example Ed Milliband appears to be a male person and exhibits the same symptoms (success+cluelessness). I think certain tech/math illiterates achieve their high status because of their non-tech talents. What I mean is that the smartest tech people I know tend not to write well or express thoughts fluidly, whereas I sometimes meet people who mispronounce the word nuclear yet connect magically with other people in conversation.
This sounds like the Peter Principle which states that people rise to their level of incompetence. Google it.
I still have the paperback ‘trade’ volume from 70s/80s time frame … since augmented / demonstrated in thought / principle by Dunning-Kruger’s research / writings circa 1999 thereabouts.
Story tip
London’s vegan crisis: how plant-based eating fell out of favour
A struggling economy, the rise of right-wing populism and suspicious eaters are all combining to wipe London’s vegan scene from the map. What went wrong?
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-vegan-crisis-restaurants-b1267885.html
My local supermarkets all have a discount bin for foodstuffs close to exp date. There is always “fake meat” vegan stuff there, and I notice they are not sold even at a significant discount. Virtue signaling has a price. Looks like meat is back on the menu boys.
Not buying shit that tastes like – shit, is now right wing populism?
So is common sense I guess.
Anyway,just as with the all other green energy, the green energy for the human body doesn’t work.
You have to take the supplements to provide what is lacking from the vegan diet.
Can we still call it a supplement when the supplement is providing more of the relevant stuff than the Diet?
Just asking for a vegan friend.
A couple of things come to mind, having observed politics in the US for several decades. First, politicians say whatever they need to say to get elected. But, the Democrats in the past 20 or 30 years have ramped this up to eleventy-one. Observe how the “moderate” Democrats in Congress vote in lockstep with the avowed left-wing members on far left issues.
Second, I remember reading excerpts of an interview with the first chief of staff of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If I’m remembering correctly, he wrote the original Green New Deal legislation and in the interview stated that the real purpose was control of the economy, not anything to do with environment.
The Democrats in my adult lifetime have been more aligned with the ideas of big-government, more regulation, more taxes, government control of the economy and life. Over the past 20 years the party itself seem to be more and more addicted, if that is the right word, to the power and control.
‘The Democrats in my adult lifetime have been more aligned with the ideas of big-government, more regulation, more taxes, government control of the economy and life.’
The ‘Manifest Destiny’ of the Democrat Party’s core belief system:
States Rights => Progressivism => Fascism => Communism
“Observe how the “moderate” Democrats in Congress vote in lockstep with the avowed left-wing members on far left issues”
That is the reason why one should not vote for any Democrat, because even the “moderate” ones vote with the Radical Democrats in their party.
And those so-called “Independents” in the U.S. Senate are not really independents they are Radical Democrats because they also vote in lockstep with the Radical Democrats.
Democrats of all stripes are Poison to the United States.
re: “Voters put [Democrats] in charge to focus on affordability and bring some rationality and stability” to the fore.
Voters in VA (well, voters in general I think) have memory depths (it is said) of that of a goldfish.
There are too many uninformed people with the ability to vote.
About 75 million voters voted for the totally incompetent Kamala Harris in the last presidential election. That ought to tell you the state of mind of Democrat voters. They are thoroughly confused and they got that way listening to, and believing, the lies told to them by the lying Leftwing Media.
The Leftwing Media has managed to get 75 million people to vote against their own self interests. That so many can be fooled ought to scare the hell out of anyone who cares about the United Stares.
“Will Governor Spanberger ever demonstrate moderation or rational thinking on energy?”
Of course not. She has a veto proof majority in the state house and senate. That makes moderation and rationality totally unnecessary. She doesn’t seem to be bright enough to understand the need for it, anyway.
“After four years of Republican Executive Branch rule, Democrats again control Virginia’s Executive Branch and its Senate and House of Delegates.”
Maybe due to the millions of burro-crats working in DC but living in VA? Of course all those burros have TDS.
Or, maybe, 4 years of Republican rule turned off the voters. Sort of what Trump is doing right now. The 2026 elections will be crucial.
Trump is not turning me off. I like what he is doing.
What turns off voters are the lies being told by the Leftwing Media.
if you believe their lies you will be turned off. That is the purpose for which they lie. They want you to hate the Right.
The problems in Minnesota are caused by a Radical Democrat insurrection, not by Trump arresting criminal illegal aliens. Radical Democrat like murderers, rapists and child molesters so much they are willing to take to the streets to defend them. Radical Democrats are some very sick individuals.
Trump will straighten them out.
some people, mostly leftists, just have to learn the hard way – so good luck
Probably not. True believers are very difficult to dissuade.
Yes, “next time we’ll do it better”.
Solar panels solve all of life’s problems. More solar panels!
Is anybody going to recognize the ‘elephant in the room’, the ‘common denominator’ to these state’s problems? No, because to do would earn one the label of s*xist and chauvinist. Here’s another state, in the NE, with similar/same problems. Issues stemming from passing the 19th Amendment maybe?
Seems most commenters are missing a possible positive aspect of Spanberger’s rapid emergence as a premier leftist after campaigning as a moderate. By jumping so far left so fast, the effects of her policies will be felt very quickly, possibly in time to influence 2026 elections.
Given the amount of facts about Spanberger and her violence-threatening campaign partners that were ignored by VA voters, this might be a pipe dream, but one can always hope…
$33B for 64,000MWh of grid scale battery energy storage systems that might last 15 years. $33B could buy nuclear reactors which would provide 1,000,000,000MWh of electricity over their 60 year lifespan.
I put a lot of blame on Republicans when Democrats win. Democrats are good at winning elections, they will do anything to win, legal or not. Republicans are a different breed. Nothing describes them better than the big tent theory. They are not one group of people marching lockstep with one another. Rather we are a conglomeration of individuals who mostly think alike. We see ourselves as individuals, that is good except when it is bad. The problem is so many of us are single issue voters. If our candidate doesn’t fall in line exactly with our single issue view we will not support them. Basically handing the win to the Democrats. It is a bad thing. I learned long ago to support the candidate who is most like me not just those who are exactly like me. Not very many people are exactly like me, that’s okay.
One Republican administration could not save VA from itself. VA is going down, again.
There are some things I will miss about Virginia, but the coming “blue” dystopia makes me glad that we’re moving to Tennessee.