Virginia--Color Me Purple

No Democrat has carried Virginia in a Presidential election since 1964. Not even Jimmy Carter, who carried much of the South in 1976, could manage to snag Virginia.

Could 2008 be the year that streak ends? Who knows, maybe Navy beating Notre Dame was an omen.

By the time the general election campaign rolls around in oh, say, March, Virginia may well become a "battleground" state. That would be nice--we'd get some attention for a change.

Indeed, if you go to the Wikipedia entry for "United States Presidential Election--2008" you'll already see Virginia listed as one of about 15 battleground states.

With 13 electoral votes up for grabs, Virginia is worth the fight. It's still a bit early--after all, we can't yet be sure who the major party nominees will be, nor whether there will be one or more credible third-party challengers. Still, let's take a look at the contest.

If you were betting real money, you'd probably want to bet on Virginia still going Republican in 2008, at least if the odds you were getting were even money. While Democrats have made tremendous strides in the past few years--electing Mark Warner and Tim Kaine governor; electing Jim Webb as U.S. Senator, and capturing additional legislative seats in each successive election--the Republican Party is hardly dead. Indeed, all the statewide races except Governor went to Republicans last time around; they still control the House of Delegates; and a majority of the state's congressional delegation is Republican.

Furthermore, moderate, home-grown Democrats like Warner, Kaine and former Republican (and former, former Democrat) Webb tend to do better with the state's broad swath of independent voters than do national Democrats.

On the other hand, the demographic trendlines in the state favor Democrats, the Republican party in the state is deeply split, and there's not a lot of enthusiasm among state Republicans for any of the potential GOP candidates.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it's Hillary versus Rudy, with no credible independent candidate. And also that Mark Warner is running against Jim Gilmore for Sen. John Warner's open Senate seat. In that race, Northern Virginia is pretty energized (and might be further energized by tight congressional races for the seats held by Republicans Tom Davis and Frank Wolf). Meanwhile, the right wing of the Republican party is pretty dispirited--not enthused by Rudy and doubtful of Gilmore's prospects. We could see Hillary winning by a couple of points in that scenario.

Indeed, a very recent SurveyUSA poll of approximately 500 Virginia voters confirms our view: it had Hillary beating each of the leading Republican contenders EXCEPT John McCain. In the poll, she beat Giuliani by a statistically insignificant 47-46. And yet she lost to McCain by a margin of 52-42(!)

We're not predicting that Hillary--or any other Democrat--will carry Virginia next November. It's simply too early and far too fluid a situation. But the state's in play. Color us purple!

Virginia At 500--What Will The 2107 Jamestown Quincentennial Look Like?

As we celebrate Jamestown’s 400th birthday, it’s worth considering what Virginia’s Quincentennial—it’s 500th birthday—will be like.

History is a helpful guide. When the first English settlers arrived at the mouth of the James River in three small, rickety wooden sailing ships in 1607, there were approximately 13 million people living on the North American continent, mostly in tribal units, some of which had formed impressive federations covering thousands of square miles of territory. Those North American natives had been here for the better part of 12,000 years, gradually spreading across the continent in self-sustaining enclaves that sometimes prospered and traded with each other, and other times fought and clung to survival.

Who would’ve thought that a couple hundred pallid, ill-clothed English people who could barely feed themselves—three quarters died of illness and starvation—would displace those native masses in a matter of only a few decades.

A hundred years can make a big difference.

At Jamestown’s tricentennial, in 1907, most Virginians had never seen an airplane or automobile. Electronic communication was virtually unheard of, apart from the occasional telegram. Approximately 1.9 million citizens lived in the state, and they were lucky to reach a 50th birthday, the average life expectancy at birth being about 48 years.

In 1907, Virginia’s economy, centered in the state capital at Richmond, was still reeling from the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws assured that Negroes, as former slaves and their descendants were called in polite company, could not vote and had little role in the economy and commerce of the state. The races were strictly segregated in all aspects of life.

A lot can change in a century.

By 2007, the biggest political issue in the state had become what to do with all those automobiles clogging the state’s roads. The electronic revolution and the massive growth of the federal government had turned Northern Virginia into the state’s economic engine. And the Civil Rights revolution had freed African-Americans to become full participants in the state’s political, economic and commercial life.

So what will Virginia look like in 2107? No one can say for sure—could anyone in 1907 have predicted where we’d be today? Still, making a guess is fun, if for no other reason than to see (when our great-grandchildren read this—if people still read then, rather than simply absorb information) how far off we are.

Today’s population of 7.5 million will have grown to 20 million, of which 5 million—25 percent—will be of Latino heritage (most, however, will be of mixed race and ethnicity, reflecting the continued melding of American ethnic identity). The oldest citizen is 141 years old, and 15 percent of the state’s population is more than 90 years old. Many of those older citizens still remember the intensely unpopular President of the United States from 100 years ago, still regarded as the worst in history.

The original Jamestown settlement—and the visitor center, and Yorktown, and Williamsburg—have long been underwater, victims of the global warming crisis that peaked in about 2060 before the nations of the world finally stabilized the environment.

The Hampton Roads region, vibrant in the early part of the century, has never fully recovered from the effects of the four mega-hurricanes that struck between 2020 and 2045, which, combined with rising sea levels, left the region devastated. With the new floodgates and the offshore wind and wave energy facilities, the region is starting what is likely to be a long road to a comeback.

Northern Virginia, with 9 million residents, is also struggling. Life is not safe outside the Washington Security Zone, which encompasses what used to be known as Arlington and the remnants of Alexandria (after the Great Chesapeake Floods). Residents are generally constricted to the 80-140 story high-rise enclaves that dot the region, it being too dangerous and time-consuming to travel much beyond those crowded self-contained cities.

Western Virginia is booming, although it is fighting sprawl. The million residents of Roanoke are proud of their model city, where one and two person robotic electric vehicles zoom quietly along carefully engineered thoroughfares. The cities of Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Lexington and Harrisonburg—with a combined 2 million residents—are hubs of modern commerce in the new industry that uses molecular building to create customized items of every shape, size and description.

In Richmond, state political leaders are preparing to welcome the Premier of China, leader of the world’s largest and most powerful nation, to the Quincentennial celebration. Recent archaeological evidence that an ancient Chinese treasure fleet visited the Virginia coast and explored the Chesapeake Bay in 1421, possibly interbreeding with some of the natives, has fueled speculation that Virginia shares a special bond with China.

As the Governor prepares his speech, to be beamed directly into the chip implants in most Virginians’ brains, he thinks about his great-grandfather, a “blogger” who, it was reported, had to use his fingers to input letters into one of those ancient devices known as a “computer.” Thank goodness, the Governor thinks, we are not so backward in this modern day and age of May 2107.

Fluorescent Aussies, Green Californians, Red Virginians

In a rather stunning development, Australia has announced that it will ban traditional incandescent light bulbs in just three years, requiring the entire country to conserve electricity by adopting energy-saving compact flourescent lights.

Imagine the United States having the willpower to do something that dramatic! (If we did, we could reduce electric consumption by several percentage points.)

We hope that by the time the Aussies' long-lasting fluorescents burn out (7-8 years) the next generation of even more energy stingy lights--LED's like those blinking on your modem--will be ready for prime time.

We were at the Wisp ski resort in western Maryland this weekend and are happy to report that the lodge there has converted most of its lights, including basic lamps in guest rooms, to flourescents. (Soon, we'll review Wisp from the skiing standpoint and compare it to Wintergreen, another nearby ski resort we visited this season.)

On our way home, we also noted with interest a large wind farm perched along a ridge near the continental divide, which much be as good a place as any to "mine" the wind. No doubt some see the huge turbines as ugly, but we think they're beautiful--a lot nicer than a tanker full of Arab oil.

While it's good to see individuals and businesses in our neck of the woods adopting conservation measures and investing in renewable energy, it was rather shocking to learn this weekend (courtesy of the Washington Post) that Californians, on average, have just half the per capita electricity use of Virginians. (Californians: 6732 kwh's/per capita; Virginians: 13,748 kwh's per capita.)

That proves the point of some of our regular commenters, who note that Dominion Power would not need to string ugly new high voltage cables (or build a costly new nuclear power plant) if Virginians simply adopted a number of fairly simple conservation measures.

(By the way, those California figures are BEFORE factoring in California's aggressive program to invest in renewable sources of electricity, particularly solar.)

How does California do it? Partly it is the high cost of electricity in the Golden State, but a lot of it has to do with how the utilities are regulated. California has adopted de-coupling, which allows a utility to profit even as its sales decline. This encourages the utilities to invest in conservation instead of simply promoting increased demand. (Also, we note that if you pay double the rate for electricity, but use half as much, the cost really isn't any higher.)

It's pretty clear that decoupling, along with some aggressive state programs such as strict building codes that require conseration measures, really works. If the entire U.S. consumed electricity at the same rate as California, we could retire dozens and dozens of dirty coal-fired electric plants and reduce our dependence on mid-east oil.

Virginia legislators are still considering a bill to re-regulate the electric utilities here--essentially Dominion Power. Previously, we urged the General Assmbly to table the bill that they've been rushing through (it was drafted by Dominion) so that a broader group can study it and make recommendations. Seeing that Virginians are using double the electricity of Californians (who aren't exactly living a deprived lifestyle) only reinforces the point. Something is wrong here in the Old Dominion. With thoughtful regulation, we, too, can live the good life without destroying the environment and contributing to flooding of our coastal communities.

Net Metering Update--Need For A National Law

Yesterday, the Curmudgeon highlighted a report from the Network for New Energy Choices grading various states' net metering laws and giving Virginia a "D".

We've since done some more research and concluded that the NNEC report, while useful in some respects, was misleading and confusing in others. So we want to correct the record and pull together some additional information here.

One of the things we learned is that the NNEC, which issued the report last November ('06) had some out of date information, including with respect to the states that don't allow net metering. It turns out that only 10 states (not 16 as NNEC reported) don't have net metering laws. For example, North Carolina, listed in the NNEC report as not having such a provision, in fact allowed net metering starting in 2005 (via an order from the Public Utilities Commission). We're sorry to say that our native state of South Carolina--whose couple hundred miles of beautiful coastline and whose historic city of Charleston are potential victims of global warming and superstorms--hasn't bothered to allow net metering yet.

We also looked at the methodology of the NNEC's report and concluded that it was not very sound. In grading states' net metering laws, the NNEC gave considerable weight to the number of customers who had signed up for the net metering programs. The problem with this is that those numbers are heavily confounded by other state laws, mainly those that in some states provide direct subsidies and tax breaks to individuals and businesses who install green energy generation.

For example, both California and New Jersey, which earned an "A" grade from NNEC, heavily subsidize solar, wind and other renewable energy in their states. It is those subsidies--not the net metering law per se--that have put those states far ahead of everyone else.

The NNEC also penalized some states for their limits on the size of alternative energy generators that could be plugged into the net, and provisions such as requiring liability insurance. In Virginia, the net metering law limits homeowners to no more than a 10 kw system, which we yesterday said was too small. At the time, however, we misunderstood what this means. It turns out a 10 kw system for a homeowner is pretty big. The Curmudgeon's solar photovoltaic array, which has 14 panels, is rated at 2.3 kw. Few homeowners could fit anything four times that size on their homes (and it would cost $75,00-100,000). Still, the limit should be raised since some farm owners could install very economical wind generators well in excess of 10 kw.

In contrast, Virginia's limit for commercial enterprises is 500 kw, which is a pretty large system. (We'd like to see it raised to 2 MW to encourage large businesses--such as AOL--to go for bigger systems.)

Virginia also requires generators in the net metering program to have liability insurance, but it turns out that a standard homeowners policy will suffice as long as it does not have specific exclusion against loss arising out of the use of a renewable fuel generator. So this is really not much of a disincentive.

Virginia requires a utility to carry forward any net generation for a year (this is important, because some generators create more electricity than they need in some months and use more than they generate in others--the carryforward smooths out the peaks and valleys). And Dominion Virginia Power will consider entering a purchase power contract with someone who's generating a lot of excess electricity.

The one real problem with Virginia's law is that it limits participation in the net metering program to 0.1 percent of a utility's total peak demand for electricity. In other words, if the number of participants exceeds 0.1 percent of Dominion's peak demand, Dominion can turn down additional participants. This is a silly limitation--Virginia should hope that participation will grow as large as possible. If a limit is kept, it should be set at 5 percent. Utilities benefit from net metering because it reduces overall demand and thus staves off the building of expensive new plants and controversial high voltage transmission lines. Also, solar generators tend to produce the most energy during periods of peak demand, thus decreasing the need for a utility to purchase very expensive peak power. Accordingly, any claim that expanded participation in net metering will hurt the utility or its ratepayers is hogwash.

While we think the NNEC's grading of the states was misleading--we'd give Virginia a "B"--maybe a "B-"--the report does have some utility. It notes "best practices" among the states, which in turn can be used to model much needed federal legislation.

Here's what we'd like to see from Congress. A national net metering law based largely on that in New Jersey, which would require all utilities to allow net metering. The stated goal of such legislation should be to encourage 5% of all electricity generated in the U.S. to be from net metered installations by 2017. (That's a lot of electricity--about 200 billion kilowatt hours.) There should be few limits on the size of net metered generators and paperwork should be kept to a minimum (Dominion's form is pretty easy to use). The law should also preempt localities from discouraging net metered home installations--we recently saw a report from Scarsdale, NY where the village council prohibited a couple from putting solar panels on their roof because neighbors complained about possible glare.

Net metering alone, however, will not get us where we need to be. Congress also needs to pass a package of generous tax incentives for individuals and businesses to install renewable net-metered electric generation. At present, federal law allows a tax credit for an individual of up to 50% of the cost of certain renewable energy sources, but the credit is limited to $2000. That means on a solar panel array costing $20,000, the credit is actually only 10%. Congress should remove, or greatly increase, the limit on the tax credit, and use elimination of tax subsidies for oil to fund the increased cost of the credit. A true 50% tax credit on renewable net-metered generation would make solar economical and would spur creation of a huge industry to meet demand for these types of installations.

We believe this is an area where bipartisan action can and should be taken--almost everyone has something to gain: utilities put off expensive new plants and purchases of peak power; every state gains new jobs and businesses installing net metered generation; we reduce the need for foreign oil imports and we reduce carbon emissions. What's not to like?