Last year Virginia’s General Assembly passed more than 30 separate clean energy bills, which together put Virginia on a path to zero-carbon electricity by 2050, enabled massive investments in renewable energy, storage and energy efficiency and eased restrictions on distributed solar.
But many of the bills that passed were not perfect, and most of the new mandates affect only the electric sector. Only about a quarter of Virginia’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from power plants, so getting serious about a zero carbon economy means finding ways to reduce emissions from transportation, buildings, industry and agriculture.
Unfortunately, building on last year’s progress will be hard this winter, not because there aren’t plenty of opportunities, but because the legislative session that starts Jan. 13 is likely to be exceptionally short and tightly-controlled. If, as expected, Republicans force a 30-day session limit(including weekends and holidays), that means each chamber mu
Pulaski Countyâs government year will begin with consideration of what would be the largest solar farm in Southwest Virginia â and one of the largest in the state.
Hecate Energy and its Virginia affiliate, AgriSunPower, have applied for a special use permit that would allow property owners in the county to lease their land to the Chicago-based company to build a solar farm capable of producing up to 300 megawatts of energy at its peak, enough to power approximately 57,000 homes, according to company spokesman Jay Poole. The project would encompass more than 2,000 acres near the New River Valley Airport and NRV Commerce Park.
Updated on Jan. 8, 2020 at 11:00 a.m.
Local aquatic health scientists are expressing their disappointment and concerns after a recent sewage spill in Newport News forced the Hampton Roads Sanitation District to divert 29 million gallons of raw wastewater into the James River and surrounding tributaries.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Kim Reece, who studies aquatic health at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “It’s tragic actually.”
Corrosion in a downtown Newport News sewage line caused it to break Monday, spilling raw wastewater into 16th Street between Garden Drive and Walnut Avenue. Sewage flowed into people’s yards and HRSD closed off parts of the area.