In 2021, researchers at the Center of the American Experiment analyzed the economic costs to consumers of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), passed into law in 2020 under then-Governor Ralph Northam. They studied two scenarios to analyze costs to consumers and reliability of the grid:
- The first examined costs and reliability if the VCEA is fully implemented as written, with all coal-fired and natural gas power plants being taken offline;
- The second scenario assumed that Virginia’s existing nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired power plants are used to optimize affordability and reliability.
Key findings are:
- Fully implementing the VCEA, as it is currently written, will raise residential electricity bills by an average of $1,160 annually ($96 per month), with the increase rising to $2,300 in 2045 ($191 per month).
- This increase will hit low-income households the hardest; many of these are in southside Virginia, where solar project development is at its most intense. (Note: VCEA pledges to subsidize energy costs for lower-income households although this risks shifting those costs onto other households or adding to Virginia’s budget expenses significantly as rates increase.)
- The VCEA increases the unreliability of Virginia’s energy grid by shifting electricity generation to weather-dependent sources and battery storage, making it less resilient and increasing the risks of brownouts and blackouts during periods of peak energy demand.
The executive summary of the report can be read on CAE’s website or via a downloadable PDF, below: