Dominion Energy is Virginia’s largest utility provider. Towards the end of 2023, the company brought back a plan to build the facility in the city of Chesterfield, close to another plant recently converted from coal to oil and gas.
According to reports, the company originally proposed the new plant in 2019 but shelved those plans later the same year. As 2024 crept closer in December 2023, Dominion started seeking permission to build the plant again,
The company claims the gas-powered plant would only run during periods of high demand. And that the plant is crucial because of the numerous data centers in the area. These are not enough reasons as far as the residents of Chesterfield are concerned.
The Virginia director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Victoria Higgins, thinks the project is a “slap in the face” to the residents of Chesterfield. And the other residents echo the same sentiment.
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Last year, there was a public meeting where residents could voice their concerns to Dominion representatives. It allowed Rachel James, a Chesterfield resident and associate attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, to get some things off her chest.
“We are deeply concerned with Dominion’s refusal to truly change course and move toward a clean and equitable energy system.” She said, adding that the “SELC opposes this project.”
Lindsey Dougherty is another resident who lives near the proposed site of the new plant. During the meeting, she also revealed the reason for her opposition to the project, citing concerns about her child’s health.
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“My child has asthma,” Dougherty stated. “As a parent of a child who is already negatively impacted, this is just going to add to it. We are going to bear 100% of the negative health impacts and the costs as ratepayers.”
Residents are kicking against the power plant’s building for various reasons. Along with the air pollution caused by the nearby oil and gas-powered plant, the building of the new plant will only add to the pollutants entering the atmosphere. All of which pose health risks to nearby residents.
The new plant would produce an estimated 81.6 tons of particulate matter and the equivalent of 2.2 million tons of carbon pollution to the atmosphere every year.
Virginia passed the Clean Economy Act in 2020. The act requires Dominion to deliver 100% of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2045. So, there are questions about why the company would even want to build a new gas-powered plant.
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Bill Shobe, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, said, “We should be developing a plan that gets us to 2050 and provides us with reliable electricity and allows us to continue to have data center growth without increasing our damaging CO2 emissions.”
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