A long walk off a short bridge?

By: Robert Zullo - July 17, 2018 11:33 am

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s biggest utility with about 2.5 million customers, is banking big on natural gas, in the near future at least.

The company has two big new combined cycle gas plants in Greensville and Brunswick counties, one already finished and the other scheduled to begin operation this year. Another eight smaller gas plants were included in the utility’s most recent long-range plan filed with the State Corporation Commission.

Dominion is also pushing hard to begin full construction on its deeply divisive 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which could cost as much as $6.5 billion, intended to power gas utilities in Virginia and North Carolina.

But what if natural gas’ role as a supposed bridge fuel between dirtier sources like coal and renewables like wind and solar combined with solar is far smaller and shorter than predicted?
This Vox piece examines the rapidly changing energy landscape.

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Robert Zullo

Robert spent 13 years as a reporter and editor at weekly and daily newspapers and was previously editor of the Virginia Mercury. He was a staff writer and managing editor at Worrall Community Newspapers in Union, N.J., before spending five years in south Louisiana covering hurricanes, oil spills and Good Friday crawfish boils as a reporter and city editor for the The Courier and the Daily Comet newspapers in Houma and Thibodaux. He covered Richmond city hall for the Richmond Times-Dispatch from 2012 to 2013 and worked as a general assignment and city hall reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 2013 to 2016. He returned to Richmond in 2016 to cover energy, environment and transportation for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Contact him at [email protected]