Harry Godfrey: What’s Next for Virginia’s Proposed Offshore Wind Farm?
IN THE NEWS:
In the wake of Supreme Court decisions revoking civil rights, Governor Glenn Youngkin claimed that Virginia law protects same-sex marriage—in truth, the state constitution has an anti-gay amendment passed in 2006.
Also in the news: Census data shows that Fairfax County is the largest-growing county in the state over the last 50 years, while Norfolk has experienced the most population decline. Still, the prognosis for Northern Virginia’s growth is grim, thanks to the cost of housing and the recent rise of telework.
Also in the news: States across the country have begun exploring laws to restrict women from seeking out-of-state abortions. Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger has introduced federal legislation to prevent such laws, but faces Republican opposition.
GUEST:
Harry Godfrey of Virginia Advanced Energy Economy explains what’s next for the offshore wind farm being built off the coast of Virginia Beach. Right now, the State Corporation Commission is deciding on a proposal from Dominion Energy—and the cost of controls they’ll impose on the project.
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Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Thomas Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, powered by hot air, and cranking out 200 megawatts of energy, every year, by the year 2045.
Thomas Bowman
Later, we're joined by Harry Godfrey at Virginia Advanced Energy Economy. He explains what's going on right now behind closed doors as regulators consider a proposal to create the largest offshore wind farm in America off the coast of Virginia Beach.
Michael Pope
You're definitely gonna want to stick around for that because we totally geek out on wind power with Harry Godfrey. So hey, before we get to the news, though, Thomas, do we have any new patreons to thank?
Thomas Bowman
We do! Welcome to our newest patreon, Denise. Thanks, Denise, for supporting Pod Virginia.
Michael Pope
Yes, thank you, Denise. We could not do what we do without the support from listeners like you. You are the reason we do this podcast. And hey, if you like Pod Virginia, and you get value from independent media like ours, throw us a few bucks on the old Patreon and buy us some coffee.
Thomas Bowman
You know, Michael, we should also mention there's also underwriting and advertising opportunities available for larger organizations or businesses. And all of that's available to the link in the description.
Michael Pope
Okay, great. Let's get to the news. Now that the Supreme Court has vaporized the right to an abortion, what's next? According to Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court should also be reconsidering the right to gay marriage. Now, here in Virginia, this is particularly important, because we have a constitutional amendment that specifically prohibits same sex marriage.
Thomas Bowman
And that brings us to Governor Glenn Youngkin. Earlier this month, he appeared on Face The Nation, Robert Costa asked the Governor if he would support codifying same sex marriage in Virginia. Youngkin responds with the classic non answer, responding in a way that totally dodges the question. Listen to how Costa repeats the question and asks for a yes or no response.
Robert Costa
The Court is moving right now on several different fronts. It could move on same sex marriage in the coming years. Will you take any steps to codify same sex marriage in Virginia?
Glenn Youngkin
I believe that what the Supreme Court has done, most recently, is so consistent with what we know the Constitution stands for, which is returning the rights to states to make these decisions, like Roe v. Wade. Protecting, in fact, the right of lawmakers to make laws, not an executive branch to pass rules and regulations that overstep boundaries. This is what the Supreme Court has has been so focused on. In Virginia, we actually do protect same sex marriage in Virginia. That's the law in Virginia, and, therefore, as governor of Virginia, we protect same sex marriage.
Michael Pope
So that's 25 seconds of a total non answer followed by Costa repeating the question, and Youngkin finally relenting and saying the key line. I want to repeat the key line here. This is what Youngkin said.
Glenn Youngkin
We actually do protect same sex marriage in Virginia. That's the law in Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
Fact check for those of you listening at home, it is not.
Adam Ebbin
I was surprised to hear the Governor lie on national television so blatantly.
Thomas Bowman
That's Senator Adam Ebbin, a Democrat from Alexandria. Back in 2020, he had a bill repealing statutory prohibitions on same sex marriages. A spokeswoman for the Governor pointed to that bill, now law, as the reason Youngkin says same sex marriage is protected. But Ebbin says that doesn't make sense.
Adam Ebbin
The law does not protect same sex marriage, just because it's not illegal doesn't make it protected.
Michael Pope
So same sex marriage is not protected in Virginia. In fact, it's explicitly prohibited by that anti gay constitutional amendment approved by voters back in 2006. Earlier this year, Democrats tried and failed to repeal that amendment. They were blocked by Republican members on a House subcommittee that stopped it from even coming to the floor. So, Thomas, this discussion of gay marriage has really captured a lot of headlines last week, because there is this constitutional amendment, that's kind of like a trigger law, basically, on banning gay marriage. And if the Supreme Court were to overturn this right to a gay marriage, here comes this constitutional amendment, you know, going back into, back into force, as a trigger law, that would ban gay marriage in Virginia. So, what do we make of this debate here that has now reopened the viability of same sex marriage in Virginia going to the future?
Thomas Bowman
Well, two things. One, there's a lot of speculation as to whether the Governor said this deliberately lying, or said this because he genuinely doesn't know. And, you know, I don't have any clue one way or the other, if he is lying, or just incorrect, and it's an innocent mistake. But-
Michael Pope
Well, he could have been- he could have been talking about this statutory language that Ebbin did craft this bill, that removes the statutory part of this. So it's possible that the Governor could have been talking about that.
Thomas Bowman
If he was, then it's bad staff work, because his staff hadn't prepared him adequately with the actual facts. But here's the deal, Michael, what this does is it shows Democrats, shines a light on, a possible campaign platform here, because not only abortion, or not only the right to reproductive health care, but also the right to marriage equality, need to be enshrined in Virginia's Constitution. And so that gives them a positive platform for constitutional reform on which to run.
Michael Pope
Another part of this, that I kind of find fascinating, as a media person, is that usually, the Governor appears on like Fox News, you know, where he has a very welcoming group of people asking him questions. Going on, Face the Nation, on CBS is a totally different environment. And you got Robert Costa there, asking the question repeatedly, and then you know, asking for a yes or no answer. They probably would not have done that on Fox, they would have asked the question, and then when the Governor gave a non answer, would have moved on, or you know, would they have even asked that question to begin with? I'm not really sure.
Thomas Bowman
And Michael, this actually reveals a pretty critical weakness in Governor Youngkin. He's- on the campaign trail, he avoided media altogether. And since becoming governor, he usually only gives interviews or meaningful comments to Fox News. Well, guess what, when you're running for president, that's not even an option.
Michael Pope
I'm not sure about that. So you could say the same thing about running for governor, and in 2021, I think a lot of people would have looked at Youngkin’s media strategy and said, "That's not an option. But he got elected governor with that media strategy."
Thomas Bowman
It's different. When you're running for president, you have an entire bus following you all the time, full of press, and cars, and of different media outlets. And you don't really get to dictate who's going to ask you, or be in a press gaggle in the first place. So Michael, what this reveals is actually, potentially, Glenn Youngkin is soft, he's not ready for primetime. And he fails, of course, on this issue on, "Face The Nation," but this will not be the hardest question he has to field. By the way, there will be tougher questions from Republican reporters in the future, because other campaigns will be in the mix, too.
Michael Pope
All right, next up is one of my favorite topics, census data. Now, I love rummaging around census data. And recently I unearthed a gem. I was looking at the last 50 years of census data, and some really interesting trends jumped out at me. Now in the last half century, the largest population increase was in Fairfax County, not Loudoun County. I was kind of expecting it to be Loudoun County, but it was Fairfax County. Now I asked Hamilton Lumbard at UVA's Weldon Cooper Center about this and this is how he explained it.
Hamilton Lumbard
I guess I'd say Loudoun has been a bit of more of a late comer. Fairfax had to fill up as much as it could and then growth spilled out to Loudoun, the last decade Loudoun did add more people than Fairfax, but when you look back over the last 50 years, Fairfax blows any other part of Virginia out of the water for sure.
Thomas Bowman
So that's the largest population increase, but what about the largest population decrease? And to be honest, we were expecting it to be in Southwest Virginia. But we were wrong. The largest population decrease was in Norfolk. Lumbard said that 50 years ago, Norfolk was actually the largest city in Virginia.
Hamilton Lumbard
Cities around the country, typically, lost population from a combination, typically, of deindustrialization, factories moving out, moving overseas, and losing jobs and then just suburbanization. You just have to go right next door where Virginia's largest city is now, which is Virginia Beach. That was a suburb that really benefited from a lot of people moving out of Norfolk.
Michael Pope
Hm. White flight out of Norfolk, to the suburbs of Virginia Beach. Fascinating. All right, so what about the next 50 years? Will Fairfax County continue to boom? What's the next version of white flight out of Norfolk? Mark Mather at the Population Reference Bureau says the next 50 years are going to have an entirely different set of trends.
Mark Mather
If you look at more recent data, just from 2020 to 2021, you do get a different picture, that the population has really slowed down across the board. And a lot of it is pandemic driven. So it's not places like Spotsylvania and Frederick.
Thomas Bowman
Spotsylvania and Frederick County, which is near Winchester. Now, we wouldn't have predicted that in a million years, Michael, but you heard it first from the Population Reference Bureau.
Hamilton Lumbard
The number one issue I see with Northern Virginia is the cost of housing is so expensive. And Northern Virginia is one of the two metro areas, San Francisco being the other, where the largest share of the jobs could be shifted to being remote. You put those two together, I would not be too bullish on Fairfax population matching anything like it did last 50 years.
Michael Pope
Thomas, I think I'm hearing a lot of heads exploding in Fairfax County. So wow, these two things put together, the cost of housing in Fairfax County is so outrageous, that people, basically, can't afford to live there. And then added on top of that, all the teleworking trends, where you don't have to be at your office anymore, you could kind of be doing your job from anywhere, is a recipe for, perhaps, population decline in Fairfax County.
Thomas Bowman
You know, that's certainly possible, Michael, and I would add to the list of Fairfax County challenges, intra county transportation. And it's really hard because of the way Fairfax County's public transit system got built up, it's really hard to get from one side of the county to the other. And it's not just a bunch of people going into D.C. anymore. You certainly still do have that. But you also have people looking to go to Tyson's, to Reston, to Herndon, and to many of these other places, to Merrifield, Fairfax City itself. So you're going to see a lot of challenges, and quality of life issues, in addition to affordability of the housing there, or lack of housing in the first place. So by the way, Michael, I'm one of those people who was born and raised in Fairfax County, it was a great place to grow up with really good schools. And then, in my 20s, I moved to Arlington, which I liked a lot more for reasons that we don't need to go into here. But you know, everything was accessible and walkable, and you're actually on Metro, which most of Fairfax County isn't accessible to Metro, in at least reasonably accessible to Metro. And so we moved to Richmond. And for like, fractions of the cost of living, and no time and traffic, it takes me about 10 minutes to get across town. I love it here in Richmond. And, you know, you might have a lot more options and opportunity in Fairfax, and Arlington, and Alexandria, and Loudoun and in those places, but if you're spending an hour in traffic just to go a few miles, it's really not worth it.
Michael Pope
Yeah, your experience as a Fairfax expat, actually fits- aligns perfectly with this, with the trends that we're seeing here. And, you know, the other part of this that's fascinating is the, that the guy from the Population Reference Bureau specifically mentions Spotsylvania and Frederick County as what he sees as the growth spots in the next 50 years. That's fascinating, you know, because like, if think about Frederick County, that's like, vacation, vacation destination, you know, like I, you know, people go out there to spend time at like, Front Royal in a cabin in the woods. And, you know, now you can go to the cabin in the woods and in Frederick County and do telework. So I mean, I can see people moving out there. It is kind of remote, though. I mean, it's this is a difference between living in kind of an urban environment and living in, frankly, a very rural remote environment.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, but that's also part of the pattern that's also unfolded over these last 50 years is that people graduate college and they want to live in a single family house, and there's a lot of reasons that single family zoning is bad, but these are the places accessible to the District of Columbia, that are building single family homes that people can actually afford to get into, with either young families or just starting out. Michael, let's go to one final story before we take a break. Returning to the ongoing discussion about abortion and reproductive freedom, since the United States Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to reproductive health care, anti abortion lawmakers around the country have started exploring the idea of laws restricting people from crossing state lines for abortion. Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger is a Democrat from Central Virginia, who's joining with several of her colleagues in the House to introduce legislation making it clear states cannot do that.
Abigail Spanberger
The idea that a state would say, "In our state it is illegal to have a medical abortion at seven weeks, and therefore none of our residents can travel to any other state where that may be legal," is an absolute overstep. Even thinking through the mechanics of how would they intend to enforce such a thing? How would they intend to determine whether you're traveling to another state for the purposes of meeting with a health care professional, for the purposes of potentially discussing with that healthcare professional, whether abortion might be a step for that individual to take, or whether or not you're traveling for a business trip. It is just beyond the pale that a state would try and restrict the travel of its residents, because that's an extension of how that state wishes to implement its laws.
Michael Pope
Now, not everyone thinks that's an overstep. Not everyone thinks that's beyond the pale. Todd Gakki, at the Family Foundation says the Supreme Court is redirecting power to the states.
Todd Gakki
Gone are the days of saying that abortion is safe and legal and rare. And it seems like now that a certain liberal congressmen and women are trying to propose legislation to make it as broad as possible, so that more innocent unborn lives can be taken. We need to make sure that states have the ability to make the right policies that are right for the people that live in their states.
Michael Pope
God, this this idea that states are looking at ways to prohibit people from traveling to one state to the other, based on what's legal in one state, and what's not legal in the other state, I can't be the only person who's reminded of the Fugitive Slave Act back in 1850, that required that escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slave state. So I mean, slavery and abortion are totally different. And we don't want to really compare them. But the the mechanics of political, legal debates between states forcing people to not leave one state and Congresswoman Spanberger is right. I mean, like the mechanics of, how would you even go about doing something like that? Nevertheless, people are discussing this, state lawmakers across the country are drafting legislation right now. There's this conservative legal foundation called the Thomas Moore Society that's putting together draft legislation. And that's not the only one, we're definitely going to see this take place in state legislatures across the country, including here in Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, Michael, you're not the only person who thinks that sounds like the Fugitive Slave Act. That's actually been on my mind as well. And I'm sure a lot of the people listening to this, have thought that it sounds similar. And Michael, anti abortion and pro slavery, have more in common than you would think. For one, a constitutional amendment to ban abortion was pushed in 1980 by segregationist politicians trying to get elected again, and knew they couldn't get elected on racism anymore. And so that's where a lot of this original sin starts, for the anti abortion community in the United States. And look, this is a natural progression. And this is, potentially, a spark that could start, eventually, a much bigger civil conflict within the United States. And by the way, we won't have the luxury of having cleanly identified people in gray and blue uniforms. They're going to be mostly in civilian clothes, and they're going to be doing things like we've already seen, like bombings like the one that happened in Nashville about a year ago. The DHS actually put out in June after the Supreme Court opinion leaked, a bulletin, an all points bulletin, about the threat of violence, an increasingly dangerous politically motivated violence by extremist factions within our country.
Michael Pope
Well, going back to Spanbergers legislation here, I mean, it's the Democrats are in charge of the House, and so like, you can see a scenario where Spanberger, and she's not the lead sponsor of this bill, she was actually working with a Texas lawmaker, and it's important that Texas take the lead there for this kind of thing. But so this bill that Spanberger is working on, you can see a scenario where it gets out of the Democratically controlled House. You know, there's a similar that bill on the Senate side, that has been blocked for unanimous passage by one Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma. So the bill has not yet been brought up for a vote in the Senate. But that doesn't mean it's dead. It still could, potentially, come to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Thomas Bowman
All right, let's take a break. Because when we come back, you're going to get blown away by Virginia's offshore wind. You'll hear from Harry Godfrey of Virginia Advanced Energy Economy. He'll give us a preview of the upcoming decision from the State Corporation Commission on a giant wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach. We'll be right back.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Pod Virginia. It's time to stick our finger in the wind to determine the future of energy production in Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
The answer is blowing in the wind, Michael.
Michael Pope
And all we are is dust in the wind.
Thomas Bowman
All right, that's enough with the cheesy lyrics. We've got a major development in Virginia, the largest offshore wind farm in America is about to get constructed off the coast of Virginia Beach. Regulators are considering the proposal right now. And if they give it a green light, it'll be a major transformation to a renewable source of energy, wind power.
Michael Pope
Here to help us understand what's happening right now behind the scenes at the State Corporation Commission, returning to the podcast, the Executive Director of Virginia Advanced Energy Economy, Harry Godfrey. Thanks for coming back to the show.
Harry Godfrey
Thanks for having me, Michael. Thomas, always good to hear from you guys.
Michael Pope
Okay, let's start off where we left off last time you were on the show, Harry. The Clean Economy Act. That's the landmark bill Democrats passed in 2020, that set a goal for Virginia to have 5200 megawatts of energy be wind power by 2034. Harry, explain how the Clean Economy Act sets the stage for the conversation we're having today about the future of wind power in Virginia.
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, Michael, great question. Thanks for having me on. Obviously, last time we were on, we were talking about the Clean Economy Act and the trajectory it was going to put our Commonwealth on, in terms of transitioning towards us towards clean, reliable, and affordable energy in Virginia. So lots of different parts of the Clean Economy Act, a big part of it is actually helping the utilities year over year ramp up the amount of clean energy that they are getting. Embedded in that, as well, sort of think of this as a belt and suspenders approach, with some specific language around the sort of prudence and reasonableness of building out offshore wind, and some really specific language that gave the utilities and offshore wind developers some additional confidence, in terms of their ability to propose these project, design them, give the time, you know, given the timeline, and the and the costs involved, and build those out and know that they would be incorporated into that. So the VCA creates, with some cost controls, that we'll talk about a little later, the runway for projects, like the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project that we're here talking about today. So no VCA, no Offshore Wind Development, no, you know, 1100 jobs in Hampton Roads as a direct result, no 5000 plus jobs in Virginia coming out of offshore wind, and we'll, we'll get to talking about that more later.
Michael Pope
And no cheesy jokes about lyrics on Pod Virginia.
Harry Godfrey
No cheesy jokes about lyrics. And, you know, I'm really glad that you mentioned largest offshore wind project in in on the Eastern Seaboard in North America right now. That's really exciting. I mean, that really puts us in the lead in this regard. Folks will hear the number you know, 2.6 gigawatts, over 600,000 homes that will be powered by this, and I think a lot of folks, it's just hard to wrap your minds around that number. So an easy way to think about that is that's every home in Virginia Beach City, Norfolk, Newport News, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Suffolk, Williamsburg, and Chesterfield County, powered by zero emission energy.
Thomas Bowman
That's so much.
Harry Godfrey
Colossal. It's larger than North Ana, in terms of its generation.
Thomas Bowman
All right. Well, the State Corporation Commission is considering a proposal from Dominion Energy right now, behind closed doors, and that decision is expected sometime next month. So Harry, what's exactly before the regulators and what are they considering?
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, so you know, they're the big question is, do we approve or we disapprove of the CVOA project that Dominion has proposed, this 2.6 gigawatt offshore wind project. All of the intervenors, the parties that are engaged in that, both utility and then other interested parties, agree upon the sort of reasonableness and prudence of the, of the project. And so that's really not an issue, I think we can reasonably expect that the SCC, in part because of the sort of runway that the VCA provided, will approve the CVOA project. The real question here is how much, and what form of cost controls, does the commission put upon the upon the project as it moves forward?
Michael Pope
All right. So critics of this proposal say that customers, in other words, the ratepayers, people who get energy, that they're at risk by this proposal, and they point to the potential for cost overruns, or poor energy output from this wind farm, or even the potential for like a massive storm that could come through and wipe everything out. Harry, what are the risks here to energy consumers? What kind of risk are they taking on?
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, so a couple of things worth noting. And all of this obviously, sort of revolves around cost. I think we do have to take a step back for a second, and sort of talk about cost in the context of, you know, what do we pay on our electricity bills at the end of the day? That has a lot to do with where we get our energy from, and then what are all the costs associated with those various forms of energy? Look, the electrons that power your computer, your lights, heat and cool your home, they all look the same, but they can come from a lot of different places, coal and nuclear plants, natural gas, wind farms, solar, you name it, lots of different places. And so each of those comes with a different set of costs and a different set of variables. Part of what I think we really want to drive towards is driving towards energy diversity. And we're seeing the danger of not doing that right now. You know, in May, Dominion went in to the State Corporation Commission, and they asked to, essentially, add about $9 to every Virginia customers bill. Why did they do that? That didn't have anything to do with clean energy, offshore wind, it had to do with the rising cost of natural gas as a result of the war in Ukraine, COVID, and general inflationary impacts.
Michael Pope
Okay, you just put your finger on something that the critics of this are worried about, which is rising energy bills. So they say, "Well, what if this thing is a failure? We're gonna get stuck with the bill."
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, yeah. And this also has to go to how the utility and project developers have have thought about this and mitigated for those risks. The first thing to note is that, wow, this would be the largest form of offshore wind generation, or largest offshore wind farm in the United States. This is a well established technology around the world, we know what the performance looks like, we know what the cost looks like bait, once we look beyond America's borders. So in that regard, I think the risk is relatively limited. But the other thing that the utility working with private developers has done is actually built a pilot project off the coast of Virginia, to actually see what that performance looks like. And I'm happy to talk about some of the early results that we've been hearing back about that. But the long story short is, I think we're seeing all the expectations borne out, if not exceeded, in regards to performance and sort of larger impacts. So that's very encouraging. They've gone about working to mitigate that risk by, not just sort of, hypothetically saying, "Well, we think things will be like this, but going out, testing, having data, and being able to come back." And that's why we're, in some ways, in the second stage of offshore wind. We started with two turbines that are almost adjacent to where this, this larger project will be, to see how they would operate. And then you're able to say, "Okay, we see how these are operating. Now we can come back." And that's that has sort of precipitated this larger conversation here.
Michael Pope
So actually, you just pointed out something that I wanted to talk about, which is this is not just a theoretical discussion about the future. So phase two is 176 wind turbines that are built, like 26 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. So that's the future, those wind turbines don't yet exist. But right now, we've got a pilot project up and running. There are two wind turbines right now, today, this hour, whirring away off the coast of Virginia Beach, cranking out like 12 megawatts of power each year. So that's small on the scale that we're talking about. But at least it's there, and we can learn from it. So what have we learned from this pilot project and these two existing wind turbines?
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, a couple of things right off the bat. And I, I'm not a representative of Dominion, I don't have all that inside knowledge. So I can only sort of share what I have gleaned from public reports. But a couple of things worth noting. So Dominion estimated that there would be, at least, a 42% capacity factor in operation, IE, you know, you put those projects out there, and how often are they sort of generating at full capacity? 42% of the time. And to be clear, some people say, "Oh, why that sounds like it's relatively low." That's higher than some other forms of generation. And no form of generation generates 100% of the time. All of them are taken offline, or they're only utilized in certain situations. So that's actually a very reasonable number in terms of generation. But here's that here's the key thing. All reports indicate that they are actually exceeding that capacity factor. So those two turbines that are out there are generating more electricity, more consistently, than was expected. That's great, in terms of performance standards and metrics. And the second thing I note, and this sort of interesting, you know, this has been raised, actually, by the Youngkin Administration very recently, is, you know, there are questions about, okay, if we go out and we build these these sort of projects, are they going to impact Virginia's fisheries, and the offshore ecosystem? The really fascinating thing is, these the turbine foundations that are planted all the way down on the on the seabed, have actually shown to be great ecosystems, or estuaries, of essentially artificial reefs, for for fish and other sea life in that area. So this actually may be a positive environmental boon as a result. So long story short, really positive results, at least so far, as had been reported publicly from that pilot project.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, so this wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach would be just the second in the nation, but the first owned by an electric utility, it's also going to be the first in federal waters. So Harry, how does that change the dynamics?
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, a couple of things worth noting here. And this comes back to this sort of cost question. Look, there are a lot of reasons why it makes a lot of sense to build offshore wind, if you care about doing lots of clean energy at scale. Doing that without using additional land, doing that relatively close to population centers, it's a lot easier to run a transmission line on the seabed and drop it in right into Virginia Beach, than build a project half a state away, and then try to pipe that energy. And that that's, that's a lot easier. So there are a lot of places that you save. And the other thing, again, I think this was implicit before, but explicitly, like, once you build an offshore wind project, there's no fuel factor costs. So you know, next time Vladimir Putin decides to invade somewhere else, Dominion doesn't have to come back to the SCC and say, "Yeah, we know we got that offshore wind farm. But now I need to raise your costs, again, as a result of that." So there's a whole host of reasons why we need to think about that. Here's the thing, I would also say, and this comes to the sort of core of the cost conversation, yes, this project is being built by Dominion. And thus, the the monopoly utility gets to take those costs and, provided they are approved by the SCC, placed them on the back of ratepayers. That's not the only way to build these projects. The other way that you can do this is actually to have a third party developer build, even own and operate the project, and then the utility serves as an off taker. What happens in that regard, is you actually take the risks that you know, are really embedded in the cost. That's where the debate is, and you move them from the utility to a private sector actor who has to come in under budget, who has to say if, "I, if there's an overage on this, like, I signed the contract, I gotta swallow that overage." And so there are different ways of building this project. So I think as we sort of continue moving forward around this, it's really worth discussing, can we explore other ways the next offshore wind project doesn't necessarily look the same as this, in terms of the risk borne by ratepayers. That being said, what the SCC is charged with doing, what they are currently deliberating upon, is what are the particular cost controls and parameters, the constraints that that they can place upon the utility, and there are a number of different options, some of which they've used before, cost caps that say, "Okay, we're going to approve this much. And if you go over that, you're gonna have to come back for additional approval before you could ever ask for another cent from ratepayers," particular performance metrics requirements, if you if this doesn't perform at this level, you need to compensate ratepayers for it. So there are a number of different tools that were laid out really explicitly in the VCA for the commission to be able to say, "We're going to we're going to allow this wants to move forward, but we're going to protect ratepayers in the process." And that's that's what the commission is currently deliberating on.
Michael Pope
Yeah, so the SCC right now is looking at the potential risk here for the ratepayers. So like, what happens if the cost overruns and what happens if they don't put out the amount of energy that we're expecting? What happens if the massive storm comes through and wipes out the wind farm? So they're trying to sort of figure- take a look at the money part of this, the risk and the money that's involved. So one of the important parts of this conversation is the jobs that it might create. So there are lots of jobs here. There's jobs that the wind turbine factory in Portsmouth, there are jobs out in Southwest at New College Institute in Martinsville, where they're training the wind farm technicians. And there's also the jobs you know, at the wind farm itself, once it's up and running in 2026. People tend to focus on the environmental aspect of wind power. But what kind of economic impact is this expected to have on employment in Virginia?
Harry Godfrey
There's an extraordinary economic opportunity here. Look, most studies estimate that by 2030, we are looking at an order of upwards of 20, maybe even 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in development, or in operation, off the coast of the Eastern Seaboard. The turbines, the nacelles, the towers, the blades that go into that, they have to be manufactured somewhere. The ships that are utilized to construct that, particularly given the Jones Act, that requires that this sort of stuff, the stuff coming out of American ports, needs to fly, be shipped on American flag ships, you know, requires that we actually build more of these ships in the United States. And then, of course, all of the engineering, and the technical expertise for for installation, for operations for maintenance. That has to happen somewhere, those people have to be somewhere. The factories have to exist somewhere. Right now, the vast majority of them are overseas. But if you're building out a domestic industry, there's a real desire to to actually construct factories closer to where demand exists.
Michael Pope
Like in Portsmouth, right? I mean, like, isn't there a wind turbine blade facility that has like 310 jobs in Portsmouth right now today?
Harry Godfrey
Yes, yes. And that was announced. That's the Siemens Gamesa facility that's going to be working on those turbines, actually constructing them. That's the first Siemens Gamesa facility of that nature in the United States. And they're building it, specifically, because the sea board that because they know there's going to be that immediate demand. That doesn't happen without Virginia, doing this now. So if we lead on this now, they picked they picked Portsmouth both because that demand was immediately there. But because there are a host of other factors, you know, great deepwater port, access to actual acreage where they can build the factories right next to harbors, the access directly to the ocean, without having to worry about going under a bridge. Some of these components for these offshore wind turbines are incredibly large. Like, if you have to worry, "I've got to clear a bridge at some point," that's a real problem. And then an educated adaptive workforce in, particularly, Virginia shipbuilding industry, that is uniquely suited to transfer those skills over to this. And then you think about our larger tax regulatory and labor standards in Virginia, and you've got the makings for a great industrial cluster, where Virginia can be a hub not just for manufacturing to serve Virginia, offshore wind, but also an up and down the Eastern Seaboard, as well.
Michael Pope
And that wind farm there off the coast of Virginia Beach, that's like 1000, more than 1000 jobs, right?
Harry Godfrey
That's, that's more than 1000 jobs. If Virginia then becomes that larger hub for manufacturing, and for maintenance, economic estimates, things that we could see 5000 plus jobs, as a result of that. So orders of magnitude more in terms of employment. And let's be clear, these aren't just construction jobs that are there for 2, 3, 4 years, these are good, middle class, manufacturing jobs in these communities that are there for decades to come.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, so Governor Youngkin, recently declined to join a partnership of 11 East Coast states created to speed up offshore wind development. And when Sarah Vogelsong, at the Virginia Mercury asked the Governor's office about this, a spokeswoman for the Governor said the Federal State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership, which is a mouthful, was not consistent with Virginias quote, "Right to Work philosophy." So, Harry, what's the deal here? Our understanding is that there is an MOU, not a project labor agreement. So what does Virginia lose by not being a part of this?
Harry Godfrey
Thomas, it's a good question. You know, I can't get into the minds of the the Youngkin administration making this decision. You know, if I were advising them, I would have told them, they should absolutely join this. And let's be really clear about this. So the partnership is about a set of states collaborating with the federal government on offshore wind development. And it's really explicit, if you actually look at the President's announcement around this last month, it's about development of domestic offshore wind supply chain. So all that manufacturing work that we were talking about, this is about coordination around that so the states can build it out. 11 states joined this from North Carolina to Maine, that included red states and blue states. So you had three Republican governors in there, you know, Governor Sununu of New Hampshire, nobody's definition of a sort of weak knned Republican, as well as Governors Hogan and Baker, as well, as well as a host of other folks. All of them, trying to move towards broader regional coordination. And that's important because as we talked about, the economic opportunity here isn't just from one state. It's all of these states working in tandem. That regional development approach had been to date the approach that Virginia had been taking, talking with other Mid Atlantic neighbors about, "Okay, we're gonna build a an industrial cluster here, but what are you building in the Port of Baltimore? What are you thinking about in Wilmington? How do we connect these dots?" Great facilitation opportunity, it strikes me as a as a missed opportunity on the part of the Youngkin administration to do this. And, you know, coming, you know, only days before the announcement that Virginia had slipped out of the ranking is the best state for business, you know, it just... if the Governor cares deeply about business development, as certainly we do, this seems to be moving Virginia, at least on offshore wind development and manufacturing, in the wrong direction.
Thomas Bowman
And Harry, I can provide a little bit more context here, because most of the energy industry is unionized, anyway. There's, if you think about pipelines, there's a National Pipeline agreement that anybody building pipelines or maintaining pipelines, works with labor unions to do that. And so they were wondering, how do they keep their partners- how do they bring them up into the 21st century, and keep that standard of safety and health training and skills training, and bring that to the Advanced Manufacturing of wind, and perhaps solar one day? And so if you look back at Dominions press release about them deciding to work with the National Building Trades Unions, or the North American Building Trades Unions, you need somebody like these labor unions, who have over 100 years worth of health and safety training, because this is really tough work. And you can't just pull somebody off the street. Somebody has to do that skills training, and that's what the labor union is able to step in and provide.
Harry Godfrey
Yeah, Thomas, you know, wherever you are on the role of of labor and organized labor in America's next manufacturing boom, and in the clean energy industry, I have a hard time looking into this partnership and seeing how that changes where Virginia is around labor. I think this is just an opportunity for us to attract more business to the state, to grow a really promising avenue for economic development in the state.
Michael Pope
All right, Harry, one last question before we let you leave. Take us inside the SCC. What are they thinking about? What are they looking at? I mean, so they've got- they're taking a look at this $10 billion project. And so they can either accept it or reject it. And there's a lot at stake here, like 176 wind turbines, you mentioned 660,000 homes? I mean, it's difficult to even fathom the scale of this thing. Are we expecting the SCC to approve this thing or reject it? Or maybe send it back for for more study and discussion? Or like what are we expecting to come out of this decision next month?
Harry Godfrey
So, and far be it for me to try and determine what all that the commissioners are going to weigh, or the decision they're going to, they're going to come to. What I would say is, you know, our experience, and if anybody who watches the commission close, you know, the Commission will first start with a letter of the law and say, what is the law? What does the law tell us we need to do, what sort of space do we have to function in here? And then what are other interests in the in the commission has always thinking about what's the law tell us to do? What are those sort of policy goals that policymakers have laid out? And then what is our sort of underlying responsibility? And then an underlying responsibilities allowed for Virginia and Virginias regulated monopolies to move forward around important projects, important development, while making certain that the sort of ratepayer interests are paramount, and kept closely in mind. And so I think our expectation is in part, because if you look at the docket, if you look at the folks who actually intervene, in this case, no one so far as I can see, actually contested that this is not a reasonable improvement project and should not be approved. So I would reasonably expect that the Commission looking at the letter of the law, looking at what they sort of need to do, and what they might be obligated to says, you know, we see an obligation here, we need to go about proving that. The real question becomes, with what sort of constraints, what sort of cost parameters, safety valve, etc, do they place upon it? That is the real sort of core of the debate and they've got, I think, it is our belief, certainly, it was part of the intent in, you know, in the VCA, to, to have those sort of safety relief valves in place and to provide the SCC some parameters to rein in those costs. But that was a subject to the conversation. And then I think if we look beyond this case, to sort of future clean energy development, you know, our hope is that we think about other models for development, as well. Is the utility, you know, building owning, operating this the best way to both meet our clean energy goals and protect ratepayers? It might be, it might not be. It's certainly a reasonable question. This isn't the only model that allows us to achieve those goals. You can believe in offshore wind and the energy transition, while also saying, "Are there other ways to do this and presenting that reasonably?" So you've got the immediate, I think, relatively focused debate around how do you impose cost controls here and allow the utility to move forward with this? And then I think you have a larger debate around, how do we continue the energy transition in a way that is most protective ratepayers? What are the other business models that we might embrace? And I think that's a really fascinating question.
Thomas Bowman
All right, well I guess we'll have to leave it there. But we'll circle back in August when we have more information on the SCCs decision. And so this is a great place to leave it. Harry Godfrey of the Virginia Advanced Energy Economy, thanks for being back on Pod Virginia.
Harry Godfrey
Happy to be here.
Michael Pope
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Thomas Bowman
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Michael Pope
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