Virginia Democrats increasingly resemble Wile E. Coyote — locked in a never-ending chase for energy affordability, yet repeatedly slamming into the same self-imposed wall: the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). Despite mounting evidence, many continue to insist that solar panels and battery storage alone can power a growing commonwealth at the lowest cost. Yes, on paper, intermittent energy can look cheap, but governing isn’t done on paper. It’s done in the real world, where reliability and scale matter. It may be cheaper to cross the Atlantic in a sailboat, but it takes a fleet of them to match the capacity of a single tanker. The same principle applies here: when you build an energy system on sources that can’t stand on their own, you don’t get affordability. You get fragility, and ultimately, higher costs for the very people this policy claims to protect.
And like Wile E. Coyote, the response has been a series of elaborate, self-defeating schemes that promise results but deliver the opposite. The first ACME device in this pursuit of “affordability” was Virginia’s re-entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Marketed as a solution, its costs are borne directly by ratepayers — functioning in practice as a carbon tax embedded in monthly bills. As capacity prices rise (highlighted by the 2026 Q1 clearing price), Virginia families will see the effects, with bills increasing by nearly $7 per month. Another explosion, another miss; and once again, the affordability Road Runner speeds out of reach.
The next ACME contraption comes straight out of the Virginia Democrats’ latest playbook, as outlined in Bacon’s Rebellion: a patchwork of policies that sound like relief but operate as cost multipliers. Take the mandate for utilities to purchase renewable energy credits (RECs) when they fall short of aggressive clean energy targets, essentially forcing them to buy paper compliance from out-of-state producers instead of generating power here at home. That cost is simply passed through to Virginians, adding real dollars to monthly bills without producing a single additional megawatt of electricity in the commonwealth. It’s not energy, it’s accounting. And in the process, Virginia families have become Wile E. Coyote’s ACME slush fund. Financing each new experiment in “affordability” while the fundamental problem goes unaddressed. Because until we prioritize abundant, reliable generation over political mandates, every new policy won’t bring us closer to affordability; it will just be another puff of smoke, another crater in the canyon, and another reminder that you can’t chase the Road Runner with broken tools.
One of the simplest ways to restore affordability is to produce more of our own baseload power right here in the commonwealth. As even industry experts are now acknowledging, there’s no silver bullet. There is a clear principle: you don’t lower costs by shifting blame, you lower them by building supply. Certainly not by importing a third of our power. So what happens when a real, practical solution comes along, and it doesn’t fit the preferred narrative?
Take fuel cell technology. It’s cleaner, quieter and far more efficient than diesel backup generation, while remaining compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure. It uses minimal water, produces near-zero emissions for many pollutants and — most importantly — can be deployed exactly where demand is highest. Instead of chasing power across state lines, fuel cells allow us to place reliable, dispatchable baseload generation right next to the very facilities driving demand. It’s a true bridge technology; capable of delivering dependable energy over the next 20 years while longer-term goals are pursued. Even better, the cost of construction is typically borne by the end USER, not ratepayers, and it reduces the need for massive new transmission lines that so many Virginians are rightly pushing back against.
But in true Wile E. Coyote fashion, just when a working solution appears, someone from ACME pulls the lever and drops the anvil. Instead of embracing a tool that increases supply, improves reliability and protects neighborhoods, the proposal was shot down. The opposition led by the very energy leadership now tasked by the Governor with guiding Virginia’s future. And just like that, another chance at real affordability went up in smoke. Because when practical solutions are ignored in favor of ideology, you don’t catch the Road Runner. You just end up with another crater, and another bill sent straight to the people of Virginia.
Our very own neighbor, Maryland, just had a bit of a Looney Tunes moment — they looked up mid-chase and realized the problem isn’t the Road Runner, it’s how slow they’ve been moving. Faced with rising demand and higher bills, the state created a fast-track permitting process to quickly approve new dispatchable power projects, including sources that can actually run when needed, cutting approval timelines to under a year.
Even in deep-blue New York, the reality is starting to set in. As Kathy Hochul acknowledged in her recent proposal, the state’s aggressive climate mandates are colliding with an affordability crisis, forcing her to consider delaying deadlines and loosening requirements that were once treated as untouchable. What was sold as a clear path forward is now being reworked in real time because the costs are proving too steep and the timeline too unrealistic. In Looney Tunes terms, even Wile E. Coyote eventually looks down after running off the cliff and, for a moment, realizes gravity still exists. New York is in that moment now: pausing mid-air, reassessing the ACME blueprint and trying to redraw the plan before the fall hits. The question for Virginia is simple … do we learn from that moment, or do we keep sprinting blindly off the same cliff?
Webert is the Republican Caucus Whip in the Virginia House of Delegates. He is a delegate from Fauquier County.
