As a Southern farm boy of a certain generation, I grew up with the movie “Smokey and The Bandit” as a defining work of art. Teachers may have tried to direct our attention to the classics, such as Homer’s great epic poem about Odysseus, but “Smokey and the Bandit” seemed to describe a much more entertaining tale. It had everything, or so it seemed at the time: auto racing, beer, car (and truck) chases galore.
The movie also came with the profound wisdom of the great philosopher Jerry Reed, who sang in the soundtrack song “East Bound and Down”: “We gonna do what they say can’t be done; we’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”
Those words come back to me from time to time, most recently as the debate over Virginia’s energy policy plays out in the General Assembly, specifically whether the Virginia Clean Economy Act is or is not working. Democrats want it to, Republicans say it’s not. At issue is the act’s requirement that the state’s two biggest utilities, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power, quit using fossil fuels by 2050. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. I have no idea whether Dominion will like what I’m about to write. I suspect people on all sides will find things here to disagree with.)
Anyway, the Clean Economy Act’s carbon-free requirement strikes me as a perfect example of that Jerry Reed song. He was trying to haul Coors beer (then unavailable in the East) from Texarkana, Texas, to Atlanta in 28 hours; we’re trying to go carbon-free under a deadline as well. Either way, Reed’s wisdom applies: “We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”
That goal — to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere, lest we wreak total havoc on the planet’s weather systems and set things in motion that we don’t understand — is not being helped by the explosive growth of power-hungry data centers. A recent state report warned that if data centers continue to grow unrestrained, the state’s demand for electricity will triple. It seems challenging enough to convert our electricity grid from fossil fuels to renewables just to meet the current demand, let alone three times that demand. We could just import more power from other states, of course, rather than produce our own, but we’re already importing more than any other state — and we’re paying for it, literally, because that power is generally more expensive than what we’re producing here at home.
For Republicans, that’s a reason to repeal or at least modify the Clean Economy Act. Reality check: That seems highly unlikely to happen as long as Democrats control at least one chamber in the General Assembly. Right now, they control two. The House of Delegates is up for reelection in November, but the state Senate is in place through the 2027 elections.
Energy is a political issue and some on each side have very ideologically driven views about how we should produce that energy. We’ve just witnessed President Donald Trump try to curtail the wind industry in favor of fossil fuels (even though much of the machinery for the wind industry is manufactured domestically and the states most dependent on wind are Republican-voting states in the Midwest). On the other side, there are those on the left who are so invested in wind and solar that they will not entertain suggestions about, say, nuclear energy, which is also carbon-free but controversial for other, obvious reasons. The Democrats in the General Assembly have killed bills that would have declared nuclear energy a “clean” energy. It’s not clean in the sense that it produces nuclear waste (which is stored on-site) but is clean in the sense that it doesn’t produce carbon.
What should our energy mix look like? I have no clue, and we won’t resolve that today. Instead, I’m drawn to the first part of Jerry Reed’s line: “We gonna do what they say can’t be done.” With that in mind, let’s look at the context of what Virginia is trying to do.
No other state has a carbon-free energy grid
This isn’t surprising. Utilities can’t pivot that quickly; hence the long timeline to Virginia’s 2050 deadline. But which state is the most carbon-free? That is Vermont, which gets 88.45% of its power from non-carbon sources, primarily hydroelectric, according to Choose Energy. Keep hydroelectric in mind; we’ll be coming back to it. Now maybe Vermont, the home of Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerry’s, seems a perfect example of a green energy state, but the state with the second-highest percentage of green energy is one of the reddest in the country.
The state with the second-biggest share of renewable energy is South Dakota, which gets 81.59% from renewables — primarily wind. South Dakota is more reliant on wind than any other state, with 60.08% of its energy coming from wind.
Virginia is pretty much right on the national average. Nationally, the U.S. gets just under 38% of its energy from non-carbon sources (with nuclear being the biggest one). Virginia also gets 38% of its energy from non-carbon sources, with nuclear being the bulk of that. The Clean Economy Act, though, excludes nuclear from its definition of renewable energy; it mostly means solar, wind and certain types of hydroelectric power. If we set aside nuclear, then 20.39% of the U.S. energy grid comes from renewables. In Virginia, 8.55%. Whether you count nuclear or not, this shows how far Virginia has to go to meet its Clean Economy Act goals. Realistically, Dominion is not going to be shutting down its nuclear plants at North Anna and Surry. On the contrary, we may see more nuclear power. Both Dominion and Appalachian Power now want small modular reactors, a new, smaller type of nuclear reactor. From a practical point of view, can Virginia move from being 38% reliant on non-carbon sources to 100%? That’s the “long way to go.”
Some countries do get 100% of their power from renewables but there’s often a catch
Reed sang “we’re gonna do what they say can’t be done.” If we apply that to energy, his song doesn’t apply because there are some countries that get most of their power from renewables. For our purposes here, I’m only going to focus on the G20 nations, because I doubt many people are going to be persuaded by Iceland getting 100% of its power from renewables (primarily geothermal; all those hot springs).
Norway gets 100% of its power from renewables, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The International Energy Administration says 95.6%. Whatever the actual percentage is, the number is so high because 89.1% of the country’s power comes from hydroelectric, with 9% from wind.
Brazil gets 88% of its power from renewables. Again, hydroelectric is the big driver.
Canada gets 70% from renewables. Yep, once again, hydroelectric. In some parts of Canada, people refer to electric power simply as “hydro,” as in, “Did ya see what the hydro bill was this month, eh?”
Virginia gets 1.29% of its power from hydroelectric, but nobody’s talking about expanding that. The days of flooding vast stretches of farmland to build another Smith Mountain Lake are over, so all these countries that are powered by renewable energy but get that energy from hydroelectric don’t really apply to us. The question is: Who has done the most with solar and wind?
The most wind-dependent states are in the Midwest
Surprise! It’s windy in the Midwest. That’s why Chicago is called “the Windy City.” That’s also why a lot of conservative states in the Midwest have embraced wind energy. South Dakota and Iowa now get a majority of their energy from wind — 60% in the former, 54.73% in the latter. Kansas gets 42.41%, Oklahoma 31.82%, Nebraska 30.27% and so on. Remember the musical “Oklahoma!” where the theme song goes: “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.” It’s really a song about wind energy.
The question is how much wind energy can be generated on the East Coast, where the wind doesn’t blow as strong. The East Coast state with the most dependence on wind is Maine, where 12.19% of the power comes from wind. Maine, though, has a different climate than ours. Virginia right now has almost no wind energy: 0.04%. We have no onshore wind farms, although one in Botetourt County is moving forward. Proposed wind projects in Highland County and Tazewell County were pulled after community opposition. The one in Botetourt County, which has generated relatively little opposition due to its remote location, has been going on for almost 11 years without a single turbine erected. Virginia has more potential for wind energy; James Madison University has a center devoted to the study of wind energy. There’s a difference, though, between what’s technically feasible and what’s politically feasible. Politically, it seems unlikely we’re going to see much onshore wind in the state given the depth of opposition so far. Dominion is developing offshore wind, and would like to develop more, but if we’re going to develop renewables in Virginia, it seems they will mostly need to be solar.
For what it’s worth, the most wind-dependent country is Denmark, which now gets 25.77% of its power from wind. Ireland gets 16.65%. Those are impressive figures but nowhere close to even a majority of those nations’ power.
The most solar-dependent states are California and Nevada
California derives 38.44% of its power from the sun; Nevada gets 34.24%. Keep in mind that these are overall figures. On any particular day, the figures might be different and often are. The journal Renewable Energy recently touted California because last year it set some solar energy records: “From late winter to early summer, renewables fulfilled 100 percent of the state’s electricity demand for up to 10 hours on 98 of 116 days. Not only were there no blackouts during that time, thanks in part to backup battery power, but at their peak the renewables provided up to 162 percent of the grid’s needs — adding extra electricity California could export to neighboring states or use to fill batteries.”
On the East Coast, the most solar-dependent state is Massachusetts, which gets about 24% of its power from the sun. All these states are ahead of the most solar-dependent countries: Chile tops the list at 9.37%, which means it matches up no better than our states of Idaho and New Jersey, and not much better than Virginia. In terms of our renewable goals, be it solar or wind or both, Jerry Reed’s wisdom applies: We’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done.
Can solar deliver most of Virginia’s energy needs? Some don’t trust solar or wind because they are “intermittent.” Solar champions point out that the technology of battery storage is getting better all the time. To me, the question is really an engineering one, not a political one, and I’m not an engineer. Politically, though, here’s what I see: Virginia currently gets 7.22% of its energy from solar. Even that pretty small percentage has engendered pushback: We’re now seeing rural localities reject nearly half of all proposed solar projects; generally because neighbors just don’t like the look of solar farms. They see their rural landscape being transformed into an industrial one. That’s prompted some legislators to conclude that we’re unlikely to meet our renewable energy goals with that kind of local opposition — so maybe we need a way for the state to override some of these local decisions. Local governments obviously don’t like that. In Monday’s state Senate debate on an energy-related bill, state Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, referred to solar projects as “solar factories” rather than “solar farms,” but that’s exactly the way some, though certainly not all, rural residents now see solar.
What I wonder is: If getting from 0% to 7.22% has sparked this much opposition, what’s going to happen when we try to take that share higher — as in, way higher? Politically, there may be support for the general notion of a grid juiced up with non-carbon forms of electricity, but is there the political support for all the individual land use decisions it will take to get us there? Put another way: Virginia may have a majority in favor of more renewable energy at the state level, but the localities where energy facilities are likely to be don’t always support that goal. That’s where the controversy comes in. However, this simply isn’t controversy over solar (and maybe wind).
Gov. Glenn Youngkin calls the Clean Economy Act a “quagmire” and wants to see an “all of the above” energy strategy. Let’s suppose we did that. That might lead to a more conventional energy mix, heavy on natural gas, but even natural gas plants are controversial, too. The governor wants “all of the above” but often the public says “none of the above” when it comes to an energy production facility of any kind in their neighborhood. I’m not sure how either option works politically.
All I know is, whether it’s converting the energy grid to non-carbon, or doubling or tripling our energy production, or doing all of that at once, Jerry Reed was right: “We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”
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