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Virginia’s ‘Clean’ power plan just shifts pollution

http://co2coalition.org/2020/05/14/battig-clean-power-plan-just-shifts-pollution/

Battig: ‘Clean’ power plan just shifts pollution

May 13, 2020: Joining the clean electric car smoke-and-mirrors, emission-elsewhere scheme is the newly adopted Virginia Clean Economy Act, which Dominion Virginia Power now says would require importing energy from out-of-state, pollution-intensive sources. The price tag for this legislated decree — imposed via politically virtuous green posturing, environmental sloganeering, and pandering to climate activists — now comes to light.

Get ready for acres of environmentally destructive solar panel installations, which probably will fail to meet energy demands in the midst of winter, while decimating native habitat on site and creating the possibility of toxic chemicals leaching into the soil.

Hope that the air conditioner comes on during a summer lull in ocean breezes when those European-built off-shore wind turbines produce little electricity. Hope that the Atlantic hurricane season does not cause them to shut down in a self-preservation safety mode just when you need electric power.

Hope that servicing those giga-monsters in a hostile, saltwater-corrosive environment does not take them off-line too often.

Hope for those envisioned giga-battery storage complexes for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

But don’t cry for Dominion, they can pass on these costs to their captive consumers.

Virginia is vying with California for the title of creator of the most destructive and unreliable energy policy at the highest cost to its citizens and industry by embracing radical environmentalism, and rejecting objective science. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind pollution is now the law of the land, and — just like that — we Virginians are all carbon free, at the expense of pollution elsewhere.

Never mind that there will be a virtually undetectable effect on the climate. Never mind that carbon dioxide is an essential trace gas upon which plants depend for life. Never mind that each one of us exhales carbon dioxide with each breath, since we are carbon-based life forms. Do not embarrass legislators by asking how much the climate will be saved by this Clean Economy Act.

By the target date of 2045, our governor and legislators who foisted this on the public will be out of office and forgotten, and have no fear of facing recriminations, unfortunately.

Charles G. Battig
Albemarle County

(The author is a member of the CO2 Coalition)

References:

https://www.nbc12.com/2020/04/12/governor-northam-signs-virginia-clean-economy-act/

https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/state/dominion-says-going-to-100-clean-energy-in-virginia-could-mean-importing-carbon-emitting-energy/article_5946df54-c04e-5001-a5c8-636cf057434f.html

https://www.jnrd.info/2019/05/10-5027-jnrd-v9i0-02/

https://www.virginiabusiness.com/article/dominion-chooses-turbine-supplier-for-7-8b-offshore-wind-farm/

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/state_by_state.pdf{&lettersname}

This article appeared on the Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA) website at https://www.dailyprogress.com/opinion/opinion-letter-clean-power-plan-just-shifts-pollution/article_9b506be3-c15a-598d-a5b0-33fe9e3ba64c.html

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