Guest “post that won’t mention ChiCom-19” by David Middleton

GOV. NORTHAM RAISES ENERGY COSTS AS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS ARE OUT OF WORK
APRIL 22, 2020
By Tim Benson, Aaron D. Stover
If there ever was a time not to enact policies that would cost families, it would be in the midst of an economy-killing global pandemic.

With coronavirus rampaging throughout Virginia, effectively closing the commonwealth’s economy and pushing 306,000 people out of work in three weeks, Gov. Ralph Northam has picked a terrible time to sign into law a group of regressive “clean energy” policies that will harm the roughly 870,000 Virginians who live in poverty by increasing their energy costs.

The first of these policies, the Virginia Clean Economy Act, establishes a renewable energy mandate forcing state utilities to produce 14 percent of their electricity generated from “renewable” sources in 2021, gradually increasing the mandate to 100 percent by 2050.

[…]

Representatives of the State Corporation Commission (SCC) testified in the House of Delegates that RGGI could cost Dominion Energy Virginia ratepayers $3.3 to $5.9 billion over the first decade, increasing average electricity bills $84 to $144 per year. The Department of Environmental Quality estimates participation in RGGI would cost Virginians $65 million in 2020.

Enacting this renewable energy mandate and joining RGGI is going to make everything more expensive for working families in Virginia while substantially raising costs for businesses. The average Virginia resident at or below the poverty line already spends around a quarter of their take-home pay on energy costs. Moreover, many small businesses are already in desperate financial positions because they have been ordered to close due to COVID-19.

If there ever was a time not to enact policies that would add to these costs, it would be in the midst of an economy-killing global pandemic. Nobody knows how long the economic recovery will take, but it will surely take longer now that Northam has signed these impractical policies into law.

[…]

The Heartland Institute

Natural gas and nuclear power currently account for 91% of Virginia’s electricity generation. It doesn’t get more “climate friendly” than this in the real world.

Currently Virginia’s average residential electricity rate ($0.1169/kWh) is slightly below the national average ($0.1279/kWh). Beyond imposing higher energy costs on Virginians, this is incredibly stupid, because Virginia’s current power mix is just about the most cost effective way to reduce carbon emissions…

The dumbest thing Virginia could do would be to deploy solar panels like their neighbor to the south.

Despite ranking second in the nation in installed solar power capacity, only trailing the Peoples Republic of California, the Tarheel State generates very few MWh from all those solar arrays.

Virginia’s solar resource isn’t even as good as North Carolina…

Virginia’s onshore wind resource is also pretty feeble…

This pretty well means that Virginia plans to go whole hog on offshore wind…

Smart move, Governor Northam, almost a smart as your college Halloween costume.

At this time, I don’t know of any specific Virginia offshore wind prospects. There has been a lot of talk about Vinyard Wind, offshore Massachusetts. Despite public announcements of $65-75/MWh power purchase agreements (PPA), Vinyard Wind, Massachusetts’ first approved offshore wind project, has an estimated levelized revenue of energy (LROE) of $98/MWh, more than twice the LCOE of natural gas.

An extensive accounting of the PPA price schedule and expected revenue sources inclusive of those that are exogenous to the reported PPA is conducted in this study to estimate the project’s levelized revenue of energy (LROE). This allows for a more equivalent comparison of the reported PPA pricing with bottom-up modeled (unsubsidized) levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates. The reader should note that this analysis solely reflects the opinions of the authors and was conducted independently of the ongoing evaluation by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources of the PPA between Vineyard Wind LLC and Massachusetts electric distribution companies as filed on July 31, 2018. The analysis and conclusions described herein do not reflect actual cost data, which are confidential to Vineyard Wind and its partners.

The total calculated LROE from the Vineyard LLC/EDC PPA is estimated to be $98/MWh (2018$). This LROE estimate for the first commercial-scale offshore wind project in the United States appears to be within the range of LROE estimated for offshore wind projects recently tendered in Northern Europe with a start of commercial operation by the early 2020s. This suggests that the expected cost and risk premium for the initial set of U.S. offshore wind projects might be less pronounced than anticipated by many industry observers and analysts.

https://ift.tt/351A6mA

Doubling the cost of electricity for Virginians for no apparent reason… Ron White would say…

Maybe that’s why Northam is trying to nullify the Second Amendment.