With this ruling, the Virginia Supreme Court allows construction on the Dominion Power's Wise County coal-fired power plant to continue.In a unanimous ruling yesterday, the justices held that requiring the 585-megawatt plant to be built in the Southwest Virginia coal fields and to be able to burn Virginia coal did not violate the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause.
The Southern Environmental Law Center argued the two requirements violated the clause because it favors Virginia coal over coal that might come from another state.
But the justices held that the State Corporation Commission only made it possible for the plant to burn Virginia coal and did not order the plant to do so.
In a statement yesterday, Dominion Virginia Power said it was pleased with the ruling. Construction of the plant is more than 20 percent complete, and it is expected to go into service in 2012, the statement said.
With the EPA announcing just yesterday that carbon dioxide is a threat to human health and must be regulated, moving forward on a new coal-fired power plant is clearly unwise. The reality is that caps on carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions are coming soon, which will mean higher prices for power generated by coal, by far the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Instead of building more coal plants, Virginia should be racing ahead on energy efficiency measures, combined with a major push towards alternative sources - wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal, possibly biomass in certain circumstances (although I'm highly skeptical that biomass will ever amount to much).
In other words, Virginia should be moving as rapidly as possible into the 21st century, not clinging desperately to the 19th and early 20th centuries in terms of our energy sources. In that context, coal makes very little if any sense, at least not unless/until that ever-elusive "carbon capture and sequestration" technology comes online in a few decades (or never). As always, the question is "where is the leadership?" So far, I haven't been impressed with almost ANY of our elected officials in terms of positioning Virginia for a new energy economy. Instead, it looks like we could miss out on one of the greatest economic opportunities ever - the transition to a new, clean energy economy - because powerful corporate interests and the politicians in their pocket refused to heed the bright warning signals flashing in their faces.
And the rest of us? Prepare for higher bills, higher sea levels, and higher levels of brain-dead political rhetoric (e.g., the utterly moronic "drill baby drill") from pandering politicians like Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling (and, yes, even some Democrats). Yeah, this stuff makes me mad.
