Wielding irony like a razor-sharp butcher’s knife, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has proposed a series of amendments on bills intended to promote renewable energy that basically reverse the impact and do just the opposite. One amendment would even repeal the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which is central to Virginia Democratic climate politics and future utility profits.

Youngkin opened the 2025 session calling the VCEA a “quagmire,” but had not proposed his own bill to repeal it. Now he has placed an opportunity for repeal on the table. 

Many of the energy bills identified earlier by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy as unwise were vetoed outright by the Governor. For others, he offered the changes that remove the harm they would do. Youngkin’s deadline for actions was Monday at midnight but many of the substitutes were not available for review until Tuesday afternoon.

The General Assembly returns on April 2 to consider overrides of the vetoes, but that motion requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers. With only narrow Democratic majorities, the vetoes are likely to stand. There are enough Democrats, however, to reject the Governor’s amendments and substitutes, so the new proposals described below are unlikely to pass. If the General Assembly rejects his changes, the Governor gets a final opportunity to veto the underlying bill. 

The worst energy legislation to reach his desk was two matching bills to completely revise the monopoly utility’s integrated resource process, incorporating a mandate to consider the social cost of carbon in all analyses, among other changes detrimental to consumers. House Bill 2413 and Senate Bill 1021 were vetoed. 

Youngkin also vetoed House Bill 2744, an open effort to force homeowners and businesses away from using propane or fuel oils and to convert to using electricity. It would have been a bonanza for the people selling electricity and electric appliances. The Orwellian operative phrase in the now vetoed bill was “prescriptive efficiency measures.”

Also vetoed were several bills demanding prevailing wage labor rates on energy construction projects, a bill empowering local governments to demand solar panels above parking lots, and a new subsidy program to build out electric vehicle charging stations in rural areas.

Another bill dealing with the issue of vehicle charging was subjected to one of the proposed substitutes. House Bill 2087 as passed increased the opportunity for the major utilities to own and operate charging systems. The Governor’s substitute flips the issue, and reads “no…utility shall develop, own, maintain, or operate any retail electric vehicle charging stations that sell directly to the public.” It also makes it easier for a non-utility firm seeking to sell charging services to get the electricity it needs.

Youngkin repeated the tactic on several other bills, including some that passed with bipartisan votes. Many Republican state senators voted for a bill to massively expand the mandate for future battery installations under the Virginia Clean Economy Act. None of that language about building out batteries survives in the Youngkin substitutes for House Bill 2537 or Senate Bill 1394.

Instead, the substitute ends with a simple statement that Title 56, Section 558.5 of the Code of Virginia is repealed. That is the Virginia Clean Economy Act. In another set of bills dealing with solar on schools, a substitute is offered that guts the VCEA piece by piece with a long list of individual redactions from the existing law. 

Two bills outlined a pilot program for what is called (here is the Orwellian language again) a virtual power plant (VPP). The bills also revive the plan by one utility, Dominion Energy Virginia, to drain electric school bus batteries as part of the VPP when the buses aren’t needed. The substitute for House Bill 2346 and Senate Bill 1100 is a one paragraph directive to the State Corporation Commission to do a report on the VPP concept’s use in Virginia. 

Two identical bills expanded upon the renewable energy requirements in the VCEA by adding more “behind the meter” solar or wind and “anaerobic digestion resources.” House Bill 1883 and Senate Bill 1040 now face substitute versions that remove all that, and instead fully suspend the requirement that any renewable energy certificates be purchased to comply with VCEA for 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2028. If approved that would be a huge savings to consumers, but approval is doubtful. So is the survival of the underlying bills.

To round out the bills mentioned in that earlier column, the Governor did sign the two bills dealing with billing issues for customers of the Appalachian Power Company, House Bill 2621 and Senate Bill 1076. Both were pushed hard by legislators hearing from angry customers in the region, and both will do very little to help their constituents. That will not be clear until after the next election.

And he signed two bills allowing the member-owned rural electric cooperatives to make unregulated sales to large customers (read data centers) in certain circumstances. House Bill 2644 and Senate Bill 1197 both reek of unintended consequences, but the data centers do pose a special challenge to the cooperatives and this approach might protect their owner-members.  

Few of the many other bills seeking to regulate or reduce the flood of data center development passed during the session. One that did was House Bill 1601, giving local governments more authority to require various impact studies, viewed as one of the less restrictive ideas proposed. It didn’t survive the Governor’s cleaver either. 

For once, the Governor offered line amendments, not a substitute. Where the approved bill said a locality “shall” do something he would change the word to “may.” Then adding insult to injury, he proposes a reenactment clause, requiring the bill to come back to the 2026 session. As with the other examples above, if his suggestions are ignored April 2, he retains the option of a full veto.

Either outcome is fine with the Thomas Jefferson Institute – approvals of the Governor’s various proposed changes listed above, or a final veto of the original bills if those amendments and substitutes fail. In either case, most of these issues will likely return in 2026 when there will be a new governor and a new House of Delegates to deal with them.   

Steve Haner is a Senior Fellow for Environment and Energy Policy. He can be reached at Steve@thomasjeffersoninst.org.