In Virginia, summer is no longer just a season — it’s a stress test.
Our electric grid is facing record demand, and PJM, the regional transmission operator that manages power for over 65 million people, has issued a sobering warning: we may not have enough generation capacity to meet the needs of Virginians during extreme conditions. That’s not partisan rhetoric — it’s operational reality.
So when Abigail Spanberger released her plan to make energy “more affordable,” it was fair to expect concrete solutions. After all, she’s running to be the next Governor. But what she offered wasn’t a roadmap — it was a ration book.
Her plan leans heavily on demand-side management: programmable thermostats, weatherization programs, utility subsidies, and incentives to reduce consumption during peak hours. That might sound reasonable in theory, but here’s the problem: managing scarcity isn’t a solution — it’s a symptom of failure.
Spanberger’s proposal doesn’t build new power plants. It builds new excuses. Her plan doesn't add capacity — it just tries to make Virginians comfortable with less.
This may work in the abstract, but it doesn’t meet the lived needs of families and small businesses.
No one wants to sit through a July heatwave hoping their A/C unit is grid-compliant, or that their A/C won’t be the one that someone in Richmond decides that it needs to shut off to save the grid. No one should have to worry that peak-hour surcharges or remote-control thermostats are going to make their daily life harder and more expensive.
Meanwhile, Virginia’s economy is growing. New technologies, new residents, and new industries are coming online every year — and they all need power. You cannot power a 21st-century economy with 20th-century load management. We need to generate more electricity, not ration what little we have.
Republicans understand this. Our focus is on dispatchable generation — energy that’s available on demand, not when the wind blows or the sun shines. That means modern natural gas, advanced nuclear, and other scalable technologies that can deliver reliable baseload power to homes and industries alike.
We also support streamlined permitting — not just for solar and wind, but for the infrastructure that keeps our grid stable and our costs down. We want an energy policy rooted in physics, not fantasy.
Spanberger’s plan talks a lot about lowering costs, but does very little to increase supply. She wants to weather-strip your attic while we need to build new plants. She wants to tweak billing programs while we need real infrastructure. It’s not a plan — it’s a patch.
Virginians deserve an energy policy that expands capacity, reduces volatility, and makes us stronger — not more vulnerable. That starts with honest conversations about what it takes to power a modern state.
You don’t solve an energy shortage by asking people to get used to less. You solve it by building more power. Let’s get to work.
— By House GOP Leader Terry Kilgore, GOP Whip Michael Webert, and Dels. Delores Oates, Wren Williams, Mike Cherry, Chris Obenshain, Ian Lovejoy, Geary Higgins, Paul Milde, Phil Scott, Bobby Orrock, Ellen Campbell, Bill Wiley, Eric Zehr, Tim Griffin, Chris Runion, Mark Earley, Rob Bloxom, Chad Green, Tom Garrett, Will Davis, Anne Ferrell Tata, and Jay Leftwich.
