Virginia Clean Economy Act

So when did it become obvious to you in Virginia that this was something that the Sierra Club, that people who care about protecting the environment and natural resources needed to be paying attention to and kind of get on top of?

Four years ago, so way before everybody else, you know, in 2020, Virginia passed something they called the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which is the only state in the South to have a real plan, a mandatory transition off of fossil fuels.

Problem is, when we looked under the hood of like, what are the energy sources that are preventing fossil fuel development from, you know, just being a thing of the past? It's data centers, you know.

The new data centers, one single campus of a hyperscale data center can use the same amount of power as, san francisco when you hear a gigawatt the equivalent of that is san francisco or miami or orlando like so if they're all using a small city's worth then how can we actually shut down coal plants how can we stop and get off natural gas since that's what the industry is addicted to um and transition onto things that you know don't come with the trade-off of higher electric bills and making people sick like solar like battery storage like wind And so that's when we first started taking it.

So the electric costs are not because of the data centers.

They're because of left-wing climate policies, like the Virginia Clean Economy Act or California's Clean Economy Act, where they shut down electric power-generating plants.

They make noise, too, [laughs] when you're next to them.

Um, and, and also your local zoning.

But the data centers existed.

So Ralph Northam was signing us into this economic suicide pact, the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2021.

We had data centers here.

He knew what the load was coming from these data centers.

Importantly, Alabama does not have an exposure to wholesale price volatility, as they are not part of any ISO while Virginia is part of the PJM.

Alabama also does not have any mandated policies or mechanisms in place for the growth of renewable energy, such as the Renewable Portfolio Standards and the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

These critical differences, along with a few others, positions Alabama well as a comparator state.

Let us now look at the Virginia model.