That pluck has landed his Charlottesville company the opportunity to be the first to generate large-scale renewable power on the coalfields of Central Appalachia. If the bold venture announced this week comes to fruition, roughly 550 acres of deforested minelands sprinkled across an expansive Nature Conservancy preserve will generate up to 75 megawatts of solar energy within two to three years.
“If it were easy, everybody would be doing it,” Van Clief said about plunging into untested territory. “I’m thrilled … to play a small part in the energy transition in Southwest Virginia. This is a breakout moment for the region. There’s been a lot of talk about this but not as much action.”
Environmental News For The Week Ending 09 May 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
GEI (but can be posted at other times).
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
Major coronavirus metrics continue to head lower in the US, and now also globally. New cases in the US during the week ending May 8th were down 18.6% from new cases during the week ending May 1st, and are now down 83.3% from the January peak; this week also saw fewer new cases than any week since September. This week s US deaths attributed to Covid were 6.8% lower than the prior week s, and down 80.5% from the January high; US Covid deaths are now at the lowest rate since since the second week of July.
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Dominion Energy held its annual shareholder meeting virtually on May 5. Prior to the meeting, some shareholders submitted questions to the company in hopes of getting better transparency about its thinking regarding a range of pressing questions facing both the company and society at large. In an article that ran in the
Virginia Mercury the week before the meeting, I offered a list of questions I’d really like answers to as well.
I wasn’t able to attend the shareholder meeting, but I understand the questions mostly did not get answers at that time, with the exception of a non-sequitur CEO Bob Blue offered up in response to a question about third-party sales of renewable energy (read on!). The company has promised to email responses to the people who submitted questions.
Augusta County requests community input in utility-scale solar survey (FILE) Solar panels (Source: wvir) By Cayley Urenko | May 6, 2021 at 10:29 PM EDT - Updated May 6 at 10:29 PM
AUGUSTA COUNTY, Va. (WHSV) - Augusta County wants to hear residentsâ thoughts about solar development, like utility-scale solar and other renewable energy land uses, in the community.
Leslie Tate, the countyâs senior planner, said they are seeing utility-scale solar projects, both locally and nationally, be sold to utility grids. More projects come after the Virginia Clean Economy Act was passed in March.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act sets a 2050 deadline for achieving a zero-carbon grid. Based on this state-mandated process, Augusta County will be regulating the operation of the act at the local level.