Energy bill generates heat

Gas- and oil-drilling rigs and electricity-generating windmills off the coast. A liquid natural gas port and oil refineries onshore. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants and more windmills inland. Solar panels. Tax breaks for energy-efficient appliances and clean-running, gas-sipping cars.

All this and more is part of the vision of Virginia's future that Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, lays out in his Virginia Energy Plan.

It's a vision that disturbs environmentalists.

"The Virginia Energy Plan was basically written by big energy companies like AEP and Dominion to basically subsidize their existence," Sierra Club activist Joshua Low said last week.

Wagner prefers to describe his bill as dealing with immediate energy needs through traditional sources while trying to develop alternatives for the future.

"We don't have an energy shortage in this country," Wagner said. "We have an energy policy problem that creates an energy shortage."

Everyone knew the United States' energy system was flawed, he said. Hurricane Katrina and the surge in fuel prices that followed made those flaws impossible to ignore.

While the nation's energy policy has problems, Virginia doesn't have an energy policy. Wagner's legislation would change that by developing a 10-year road map. It addresses virtually every aspect of energy use and production and even offers some advice to the federal government.

"It's a pretty broad-based approach and it addresses a lot of things," said Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, who is co-sponsoring Wagner's bill. Bell called an energy policy critical to the state's economy.

Michael Town, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, agrees the state needs an energy plan. He's just not sure this is the right plan.

The Sierra Club is concerned about the bill's support for offshore drilling and the way it overrides local government in the siting of liquid natural gas terminals, nuclear power plants and windmills. The plan doesn't say enough about conservation, either, in Town's opinion.

"I'm sure there are some people who have heartburn with some parts of it," Bell said. "But that's true of a lot of bills we vote on."

How much heartburn a person has, Bell suggested, depends on their perspective.

From Cale Jaffe's perspective, the legislation has "a host of problems."

The biggest, said Jaffe, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, is the bill's promotion of offshore drilling.

"It's a bit of a smoke-and-mirrors campaign," he said.

Even if the most optimistic estimates prove to be accurate, Jaffe said, Virginia's coast won't produce enough oil or gas to affect energy prices in the commonwealth.

"Unless Virginia is going to start out-producing Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela, we're not going to move the ball much," he said.

If the legislation passes, the money Virginia would receive for drilling and other energy-related activity would be divided among transportation (40 percent), water quality (40 percent), coal research (5 percent) and alternative energy research (15 percent split among three programs).

Michael Karmis, director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, is more positive about the legislation. The Virginia Tech-based center would be intimately involved in developing the state's energy plan if Wagner's legislation passes. The center would also get more research money, particularly for clean coal.

"Clean coal is a much broader term than most people appreciate," Karmis said. The term includes advanced technology such as the gasification of hydrogen from coal for use in fuel cells, he said.

Created by the General Assembly in 1977, the center's board includes the biggest energy companies and some of the biggest energy users in Virginia. The Virginia Mining Association is represented on that board. Dink Shackleford, the association's executive director, called Wagner's bill "a move in the right direction."

"Anything any of us can do to save and develop clean energy sources is almost a duty now," Shackleford said. "But we need a lot of energy and just saving some on heating cost or some lower-using electrical appliances are just not going to get us out of this.

"When the rubber hits the road, it's coal that comes out as the best way to meet Virginia's energy needs. We can encourage these other technologies and their development, but they are many years out and can't really meet the huge demand that the entire country is facing."

The Sierra Club's Town sees the legislation's concentration on conventional energy sources as one of its weaknesses.

"This is a way to promote more fossil fuel use," Town said.

And burning so much fossil fuel, he said, created many of the country's energy and environmental problems.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fossil fuels generated 62.5 percent of Virginia's electricity in 2003. Nuclear power accounted for 33.6 percent. Hydroelectric plants provided 2.4 percent. Renewable sources such as wind accounted for 1.5 percent.

Nationally, nuclear power accounted for less than 20 percent of electricity generation. Renewables and hydroelectric plants produced nearly 10 percent.

Wagner's legislation would do more than promote fossil fuel. It would create a consortium to study alternative energy sources; set up a system to provide grants for alternative energy research; and provide tax breaks for people who buy energy-efficient cars.

"I think it's really an attempt at green-washing," said Jaffe, "making it look like a more environmental bill than it is."

The new alternative-energy consortium would be funded by offshore drilling proceeds. It would share that funding with the Water Quality Improvement Fund, the Transportation Fund, clean coal research and the alternative energy research grant program.

To qualify for the tax break, cars would have to get more than 40 miles per gallon according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's combined mileage estimates. They would also have to be "super-ultra-low-emissions vehicles."

According to the EPA's Web site, only four 2006 cars meet the 40 mpg requirement. Only three of them meet the SULEV standard. None of them is sold in Virginia.

Karmis said the legislation would stimulate research and planning.

"Essentially," he said, "it allows Virginia to do some short-term and long-term energy thinking."

Town thinks the General Assembly needs to do more long-term thinking about this bill.

He would like to use it as the starting point in a discussion about Virginia's energy policy, but he'd like to see the bill carried over to the legislature's 2007 session so legislators would have time to study it.

"I don't think legislators want to go home and find out there were things in this legislation they didn't know were there."

This bill could shape Virginia's energy policy for the next 20 years, Town said.

"I don't think they need to do that in the next 20 days."