People from across the region, and beyond, spoke out Tuesday about Dominion Energy‘s plan to build a new natural-gas-fired power plant in Chesterfield County at a State Corporation Commission hearing, almost all in opposition.
Speakers said the plant would accelerate climate change; that cheaper, more environmentally friendly alternatives are available and that Dominion mainly wants to build the power plant to serve data centers and fatten its profits.
In addition, they said it would burden a community in southeastern Chesterfield already suffering the health effects from decades of pollution from Dominion’s now-shuttered coal-burning units in the county.
“This project is not only unnecessary, it is dangerous, harmful and deeply unjust to the people who live there,” said Nicole Martin, who lives nearby.
“First, Dominion Energy has already admitted that they can meet the energy demands of homeowners in Chesterfield County without this new plant. That is a fact,” Martin said.
“So why push forward with such a massive facility? The answer is clear, Dominion is preparing to serve data centers, not families, children or seniors of Chesterfield County. This project is being built to feed the energy appetite of corporations while we, the residents, are left to pay the price with our health, environment and income,” she said.
She said placing the proposed plant’s four natural gas-powered turbines on the grounds of Dominion’s Chesterfield Power Station, where it used to operate coal-burning units and still has two oil- and natural gas-fired generators, would expose thousands of people within a three- to five-mile radius to toxic air pollution and dust.
“We all know what this means, higher rates of asthma, more respiratory illnesses, worsened heart conditions and even premature death,” she said. “Our most vulnerable neighbors, the elderly, children and those with preexisting conditions, will be forced to bear the brunt of these health consequences.”
Del. Michael Jones, D-Richmond, who represents nearby residents, said he’s heard from hundreds of constituents opposing the proposed plant.
“We know the impacts that it has to health in particular areas. We know that projects like these end up in the same neighborhoods in the same parts of the commonwealth time and time again … there’s certain parts and places that they tend to go,” he said.
“We want the lights to come on. We know what it’s like in the city when the water runs dry and … it doesn’t flow, we understand that when we flip the switch, we want to see electricity flowing, but again, for it to come to the same place time and time again, for it to impact the same people over and over again, that is my concern,” he said.
Chesterfield resident Glen Besa, retired director of the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter, made a similar point.
“The gas plant is in a community of color with significantly lower income. When we raised these environmental justice concerns with Dominion Energy early in the process, pointing to the 70-plus years that the communities endured pollution from the coal plant, the response by a Dominion environmental justice staffer was that it was not all the same people impacted over those 70-plus years,” he said.
Besa dismissed Dominion’s argument that it needs the plant to run at times of peak demand when its growing number of solar farms and its under construction offshore wind farm might not be able to supply enough power for the hottest summer days, the coldest winter nights and the early evening as the sun goes down and people come home from work and school.
“Dominion has also stressed that this project is needed to ensure reliability and repeatedly raises the specter of brownouts and of residents dependent on home health equipment dying as a result of these outages. But more than 90% of the major outages in the Dominion service area are the result of severe weather, and the increasing frequency of severe weather events is attributable to climate change driven by excessive carbon emissions from fossil fuel projects such as this gas plant,” Besa said.
Several witnesses said the proposed plant would violate the intent of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which says utility power plants must stop emitting the carbon gases that cause climate change by 2050.
Thomas Beach, of Richmond, was one of several people to argue that a combination of more solar facilities and battery storage could meet the soaring demand for electricity that Dominion predicts.
The solar and battery combination would be less costly and would not generate the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, he said.
“This extremely expensive project unfairly sticks ratepayers like myself with unfair and unnecessary energy bills,” said Beth Kreydatus, of Henrico County.
“Dominion asks us here to pay for a dirty, expensive fuel for decades to come … rather than invest wisely in solar and more energy efficiency. So why should I, as a ratepayer, have to pay for such an expensive project when there are cheaper options? Especially, why should I have to pay for a project built to serve data centers?” she said.
But Brent Archer, of the Virginia Electric Reliability Alliance, a group backed by Dominion, various chambers of commerce and businesses, said the plant is needed to dispatch electricity at times of peak demand.
Dominion spokesman Jeremy Slayton said opponents’ calls for more solar, wind and batteries are initiatives the company is already undertaking.
“We have the third largest fleet of solar, and it’s growing, we’re building the largest offshore wind facility, we’ll installing battery storage,” he said. But, he said Dominion still needs the gas plant.
The plant, if approved, would come online in 2029, able to generate 1,000 megawatts, enough to power up to 250,000 homes. Because it can be turned on or off in as little as 10 minutes, Dominion says it is the most reliable way of coping with sudden surges in demand for power.