Renewables are Winning

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

I suspect that the future is still in flux and will be for some time, but I think the trends rightly reflect what is happening. In the area where I live, two massive natural gas generating facilities have been added to the grid in the past five years. At the same time, a coal facility about twenty miles from me has been mothballed. It is still kept ready for use, if needed, but there has been little steam rising there in recent years. Our area has a lot of forest products production, and Dominion Energy has one former coal plant that is now a "waste wood cogeneration facility." Solar farms dot parts of the landscape, and there are efforts being made to provide more offshore wind generation in the Atlantic about twenty miles off the coast, a project that has yet to provide electricity but seems to be strongly supported. It is definitely a time when energy production is in flux as to what the future will bring.

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

Since my earlier response, I drove by a project that appears to be several hundred acres of solar panels on land that was clearcut two years ago for pines for paper mills. It would appear that the solar cells are close to coming online. There is one irony--the land belongs to a family that has been in the petroleum distribution business for at least 75 years, and the ownership of the project is in the hands of a former NASCAR driver. It says that he knows the future for his family will not be in the petroleum distribution arena alone. They are diversifying, and that example tells me more about what is ahead than anything the politicians tell me out of Washington or Richmond.

[Haruo]

No disrespect of Fox intended, but it's nice to see other people post here.