Natural gas project paused
Controversial stations in Chesapeake stalled — for now— after failing to meet crucial deadline
CHESAPEAKE — A controversial natural gas project that would impact Chesapeake appears down — but not out — after the utility behind it said last week it was unable to meet a crucial deadline.
Lawyers for Virginia Natural Gas wrote to state regulators that the utility could not meet the conditions needed before Dec. 31 in order to move the project forward. Chief among them: confirmation that an independent power producer known as C4GT had secured financing.
“The Company presents this letter to inform the Commission that the conditions precedent related to C4GT will not be satisfied on or before December 31,2020,” lawyers wrote in the Nov. 13 letter to the State Corporation Commission.
Virginia Natural Gas said it intended to file a revised version of the application within 90 days that does not include C4GT, though observers question if that’s possible given testimony given at the State Corporation Commission. In response to questions, a Virginia Natural Gas spokesman wrote in an email the application would be “for a revised project that reflects the best solution to meet the needs of VNG customers, Virginia Power Services Energy and Columbia Gas of Virginia.”
C4GT stands for Charles City Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine. It’s a 1,100-megawatt natural gas fired, combined cycle electric generation plant located on an 88-acre site in Charles City, about 77 miles from Chesapeake.
The plant is related to the Header Improvement Project, which is backed by Virginia Natural Gas and would feed gas to the Charles City plant.
The proposed $346 million Header Improvement Project includes 24 miles of new pipeline and three new or expanded gas compressor stations spanning Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads. Compressor stations push gas through pipelines.
One of those compressor stations was proposed for the city of Chesapeake, where about
$24 million would go toward the new Gidley Compressor Station located at 2512 South Military Highway. There’s an existing metering/regulation station there already, but the compression station would be new.
In June, the State Corporation Commission had declined to give the project the go-ahead, saying the company needed to do more work on environmental justice and financing.
The project has raised concerns about pollution and unfair impacts on the community, which is predominantly people of color and those living on low income.
These stations emit air pollutants like nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides and particulate matters, according to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which has dubbed the project the “Header Injustice Project.”
About 6,500 people live in communities around the Gidley Compressor Station, 65% of them people of color and nearly 31% low income, according to an analysis by Stephen Metts, a professor at The New School who studies geographic data.
The nearby neighborhoods include Portlock, Crestwood, Eva Gardens and two mobile home communities, Sturbridge Village and McMillan.
“There’s a trend of placing these fossil fuel infrastructure build-outs in neighborhoods least prepared to deal with environmental risk,” said Lynn Godfrey, a Chesapeake resident who lives within 2 miles of the proposed site and is the community outreach coordinator for the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter of Stop the Pipelines.
Godfrey and others question whether Virginia Natural
Gas will be able to file a revised application. They point to testimony given at State Corporation Commission hearings in which the utility acknowledged that if C4GT were removed from the equation, Virginia Natural Gas would be seeking an entirely different certificate of public convenience and necessity. The company, according to testimony, also confirmed that without C4GT it would need to redesign and change the project scope and come back with a new application.
Over the past decade or so, these sorts of natural gas projects have typically been rubber stamped and approved, said Mary Finley-Brook, an associate professor of geography, environmental studies and global studies at the University of Richmond.
They were deemed critical infrastructure and gas companies were able to say other sources of power like wind and solar weren’t viable or cost efficient, she said.
Finley-Brook pointed to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a natural gas project that was canceled, as a symbol of that momentum being stopped. She and others say laws like the Virginia Clean Economy Act point to fossil fuels not being dominant in the future as the state eyes becoming carbon-free in the next 25 years.
“All of this is playing together to make these (natural gas) projects riskier,” Finley-Brook said. “Regulators like the SCC are starting to question whether these are good investments.”