Virginia Energy News
Virginia solar installers are bracing for the rollback of the federal rooftop solar tax credit and a potential decision from state regulators to allow Appalachian Power and Dominion Energy to reduce net metering rates.
Albemarle County now allows solar installations without permission as long as they are smaller than 500 square feet. In the rural area, solar installations could be on as much as 21 acres without approval, unless more than 10 acres of forest or prime farmland would be disturbed.
Dominion Energy’s latest long-range resource plan stops at 2039 without addressing how it will meet the state’s 2045 deadline for achieving 100% carbon-free electricity. The utility commission called the 15-year forecast flawed but “legally sufficient,” ordering major changes for the next one due in 2026.
A Virginia regional planning commission’s “Fight the Flood” program connects local property owners with practical solutions to flooding and other problems that stem from climate change and sinking land.
Our Climate Crisis
Intense downpours like those in Texas are more frequent, but where they occur and whether they cause catastrophic flooding is largely a matter of chance. Even so, a warming atmosphere and oceans due to the burning of fossil fuels make catastrophic storms more likely.
In less than a week in July, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the U.S.—intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year. First the river rose in Texas, then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois. This is clear evidence that climate change is accelerating.
The extreme rainfall that occurred in the U.S. Northeast in July will likely occur more often in the future as a result of climate change, research shows. This region has experienced the largest regional increase of extreme precipitation with a 60% increase in recent decades.
The January wildfires in Los Angeles County caused $65 billion in damages, making them the costliest fires in U.S. history and reshaping expectations for wildfire season. Weather whiplash is shifting fire season patterns, as climate extremes accelerate vegetation growth and then fuel catastrophic fires.
Turkey has been hit by a record high temperature of 122.9 degrees Fahrenheit as southeastern Europe reels under a heat wave. This heat exacerbated by strong winds and dry conditions, has led to dozens of wildfires across the country.
Politics and Policy
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a proposal to rescind the 2009 landmark legal opinion that underpins virtually all of its regulations to curb climate change. Administrator Lee Zeldin argues that Congress, in the Clean Air Act, does not give the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
In a self-inflicted tragedy, Congress passed Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that deeply cuts America’s social safety net and decimates our country’s only federal climate strategy.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” tethers the US to the past by taking a sledgehammer to key pieces of American industrial policy, threatening the development of clean energy, which has become a vital 21st century technology. Jobs will be lost, energy will get more expensive, and billions more tons of carbon dioxide will escape into the atmosphere.
China and the European Union, pledged to work together to slow down planetary heating as they together called the Paris Agreement “the cornerstone of international climate cooperation.”
The Trump administration has halted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s effort to model future rainfall extremes linked to climate change, leaving cities and engineers without critical data as storms intensify nationwide.
Climate change data is being erased from U.S. government websites. The Trump administration has dismantled key climate science programs, removed publicly accessible reports, and cut research funding, as it moves to calculated data suppression.
Brazil’s increasingly powerful Congress passed a bill that weakens the country’s environmental licensing framework amid a political crisis with President Lula da Silva. Environmentalists have dubbed it the ‘devastation bill’ and see it as a major environmental setback.
Energy
The UN reports that renewable energy has passed a “positive tipping point” where solar and wind power will become even cheaper and more widespread. The three cheapest electricity sources globally last year were onshore wind, solar panels and new hydropower. Solar power now is 41% cheaper and wind power is 53% cheaper globally than the lowest-cost fossil fuel.
Electric vehicles will decimate big oil even without U.S. tax credits. They are already displacing millions of barrels of oil per day globally and oil demand is expected to fall spectacularly over the next decade. Countries without their own oil reserves are especially eager to get out from under the thumb of big oil.
Over the past year, EVs accounted for 76% of all passenger vehicles and half of the light commercial vehicles sold in Nepal. Five years ago, that number was essentially zero. The swift turnover is the result of policies aimed at leveraging Nepal’s wealth of hydropower, easing dependence on imported fossil fuels, and clearing urban smog.
Google’s carbon emissions went up by 65% between 2019 and 2024. In 2021, the company set a lofty goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. In the years since then, it has moved in the opposite direction as it invests in energy-intensive artificial intelligence.
Dean Solon, the self-made solar billionaire, is forging ahead with a new U.S. solar and battery manufacturing business, despite tariff uncertainty and the loss of tax credits.
Solar and wind made up 95.7% of new US power generating capacity in first third of 2025. Natural gas provided just 4.2%; the remaining 0.1% came from oil.
Record volumes of solar helped to keep Europe’s electricity grids stable through a heatwave in late June and early July.
It’s been a bad several months for the U.S. energy transition but the global transition moves on. Wind and solar capacity overtook coal and gas in China in the first quarter of 2025. Solar was the largest source of electricity in the European Union in June. And, across the entire world, $2 is now invested in clean energy, efficiency, and the grid for every $1 invested in fossil fuels.
India has hit its target for 50% of its installed electricity generating capacity to come from non-fossil fuel sources five years early.
Over 37,000 residential batteries are being put to work in Puerto Rico as the island’s electric grid faces a summer of high temperatures and energy shortfalls. The home batteries are being used to prevent rolling blackouts when demand spikes and power plants can’t keep up.
Food and Agriculture
Residents in California’s Central Valley are pushing back against a state-backed program that incentivizes methane digesters at industrial dairies, arguing it locks in pollution and worsens environmental health in poor communities, while benefiting Big Oil.
Ugandan farmers are turning to agroforestry and Indigenous planting to protect their land and livelihoods and to fight deadly landslides and climate change.
Climate Justice
Brazil chose Belem, a high-poverty Amazon city, for the UN COP30 climate summit this fall to spotlight deforestation and inequality rather than hide them behind tourist destinations.
Mahi G, an Indian rapper, is spitting bars about climate justice, caste, and Indigenous rights. “The one whose sweat builds your house himself wanders homeless,” she raps in Hindi. “But who cares about the one who died working for you in the sun?”
Ancient Himalayan villages in Nepal need to relocate as climate shifts reshape daily life. Declining snowfall and retreating glaciers cause springs and canals to vanish and when it does rain, the water comes all at once, flooding fields and melting away the mud homes.
Catholic bishops from Asia, Africa and Latin America demanded climate justice for the parts of the world most affected by rising temperatures, in a first-ever joint ecological appeal.
Zohran Mamdani, who won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, has built a political platform that connects environmental justice to housing, utility costs, and school infrastructure, aiming to reshape how the city tackles climate and inequality. He says, “Climate and quality of life are not two separate concerns. They are, in fact, one and the same.”
Jeff Bezo’s $500 million superyacht comes with all kinds of luxuries: a pool, gym, a private helicopter, and even a private submarine. Its carbon emissions are comparable to that of a small coal-fired power plant.
In South Memphis, an area long plagued by air pollution, Elon Musk’s massive AI data center called the “Colossus” is powered by the illegal operation of 35 gas-fueled turbines.
Climate Action
Climate activist and Buddhism scholar Joanna Macy, who died last month, leaves behind a blueprint for overcoming climate despair and anxiety. She says that we will not be able to solve the climate issue, and its intertwined problems, with technology and policy alone. We need spiritual renewal.
Cities are quietly outpacing nations in climate progress by cutting emissions, greening streets, and adapting to climate threats. This matters because urban areas now house over half the world’s population. They are more nimble because they are less politically divided and officials are more in tune with the immediate needs of their residents.
The Vatican released a new Mass titled “Mass for the Care of Creation.” A Vatican official said it demonstrates the church’s commitment to environmental protection, especially climate action. Pope Leo XIV appears determined to carry forward his predecessor’s engagement on the issue.
Denmark is pushing the European Union to tie climate goals to the new focus on defense and economic strength in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s tariff threats. They argue that energy independence is critical to Europe’s security and competitiveness.
The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is eliminating tax credits that cut the costs of solar, EVs, heat pumps, and more — but if you act fast, you can still get discounts.
Vietnam will begin phasing out fossil-fuel motorcycles in central Hanoi starting July 2026, as the country attempts to improve air quality and reduce climate emissions.
In a meeting headed by President Xi Jinping, China marked a shift away from large-scale urban expansion to more sustainable development focused on building green and low-carbon cities.
Earl Zimmerman
CAAV Steering Committee