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Dominion Power's Dirty Plans for Virginia

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Fact: Virginia gets less than 1 percent of its electricity from "green" sources such as the wind or the sun. Fact: Virginia ranks 38th among U.S. states in energy efficiency. Fact: Climate change is real, and fossil fuel substitutes are needed, according to President Bush's State of the Union address last year. So how would Dominion Virginia Power respond to these facts?

¿ Savagely blow up entire mountains in southwest Virginia.

¿ Feed the resulting exposed coal to a proposed power plant that is unnecessary and would cost ratepayers at least $1.8 billion.

¿ Create lots more greenhouse gases in the process.

¿ Doom the good people of southwest Virginia to living with a brutal extraction industry that has no future.

Whew! Talk about getting everything wrong.

Astonishingly, Gov. Tim Kaine supports Dominion Virginia Power's controversial 585-megawatt coal plant proposed for Wise County. He supports this despite three more facts. First, a senior aide of the governor recently admitted that there's "less than 10 years' worth of commercially viable coal left in Virginia." Second, more than 200 Virginians packed a hearing room this month in Richmond to denounce the proposal being considered by the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Third, Kaine's energy plan includes passages explicitly discouraging the development of "conventional" power (i.e., fossil fuels) until the state has maximized efficiency and clean-energy development.

Maximized?


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