This story was reported and written by Radio IQ.
Dominion Energy says in order to keep the electric grid reliable they may need to build up to eight new natural gas plants in the next 10 to 15 years. The plants, sometimes called peaker plants, would be designed to come on only when needed.
"On the hottest and coldest days of the year, when people are running their air conditioning, they’re running their heater, and that demand goes up and up and up," Dominion spokesman Jeremy Slayton explains. "And if we can’t meet that demand that means there will be blackouts."
Ninety percent of Dominion’s new energy production in coming years is expected to be produced from renewables like solar and wind. But the utility says some new natural gas-powered plants may still be necessary.
And they’re hoping to put the first one beside the James River in Chesterfield County within the next couple years.
That news came as a shock to resident and environmental activist Aliya Farooq. "I was very disappointed. I was frustrated," Farooq remembers. Dominion had just closed a coal plant in the same majority-minority community.
"This particular community is still dealing with the toxic coal ash. And then on top of that now we want to put a gas plant there? You know, that’s not fair," she says.
Farooq was surprised in part because she knew about the Virginia Clean Economy Act— a law that mandates Virginia’s grid becomes carbon-neutral by the middle of the century.
"Dominion by 2045 has to power homes and businesses completely by clean energy," explains Tim Cywinski with the Virginia Sierra Club. “Wind, solar, hydro. You name it. Things that don’t come with the tradeoff of hurting our planet or hurting people’s health.”
The peaker plant in Chesterfield is the only new natural gas plant with a site-specific plan so far. Dominion’s spokesperson says if they build others it wouldn’t be until the 2030’s. And that’s why Cywinski sees this battle as an important line in the sand.
"If the Chesterfield one is allowed to be built there’s no disincentive for Dominion not to pursue them in other places," Cywinski says. "So this isn’t just a Chesterfield issue. This is a statewide issue. We don’t know where they’re going to put the other ones. But if they get this one built, then we’re in trouble."
Cywinski says Dominion is pursuing peaker plants, which Dominion is also calling reliability centers, because it may help the utility down the road in arguing for a possible exception to state law.
"Because there’s a carve out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act that says 'Well if it is a matter of reliability, we can keep fossil fuels online,'" according to Cywinski.
When challenged on how building new natural gas power plants would comply with the legal mandate to go carbon-free, Dominion’s Jeremy Slayton points out that exact exception.
"There is a caveat in that law that does allow us to keep certain generation facilities on for reliability purposes," Slayton notes.
And reliability may become an issue. Virginia is expected to double its energy consumption within the next couple of decades.
"That’s a shockingly fast growth rate for something like electricity," says Bill Shobe, a researcher at UVA.
And the culprit of all that growth is not homes or businesses. It’s data centers.
"It looks like either next year or the year after data center electricity demand will be as large as all the rest of the commercial sector put together," Shobe predicts.
And that’s put Dominion in a bit of a bind, having to produce vastly more power while meeting the state’s goal of zero emissions. A situation that could require tradeoffs.
Aliya Farooq just doesn’t think one of those tradeoffs should be the health of her community and the planet.
"My faith, it implores me to care about my neighbors," Farooq says. "And I’m concerned about their health and the local impacts this gas plant is going to have on all of us."
She and other residents are asking Chesterfield County’s Board of Supervisors to take a stand and tell Dominion no.
