During their regular meetings on Tuesday afternoon the Board of County Supervisors voted 5-3 to adopt the Community Energy and SustainabilityMaster Plan “to strive to meet the Climate Mitigation and Resiliency Goals established by the Board through Resolution Number 20-773.”
A little background: On
November 17, 2020, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors adopted Climate Mitigation and
Resiliency goals and authorized the creation of a Sustainability
Commission. The Commission was charged with advising on potential
enhancements to the Community Energy and Sustainability Master Plan (CESMP),
which is intended to provide the map for how the county will reach its climate
goals that includes Prince William County achieving 50% of 2005 CO2 emissions
by 2030 and net-zero by 2050; but also include plans for adaption to climate
change.
Let me get this out of the way first, if you read the plan
you will see that there are no realistic scenario that Prince William achieve
those goals in the stated time frame. “It was found that due to limited span of
control, all five goals will not likely be met through County action alone. It
is expected that there would be a gap in emissions reductions needed to hit our
2030 target even if all 25 high priority actions are implemented. It is
recommended that the actions are implemented to the best of the County’s ability
and to evaluate whether or not to bridge the potential remaining emissions
reductions gap using high quality carbon offsets in 2030.”
Carbon credits or offsets represent carbon emission
reductions or removal and are traded in on various exchanges or markets. Offsets
are tool that companies use to reduce their net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
and live up to their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, as well
as promises made to customers and consumers. They can be problematic in ensuring
that they are “real” and non-duplicative.
Our inability to meet the climate goals is that many factors
are simply out of the nexus of control of the County, but also the decisions made
within the counties nexus of control have been made and continue to be made
without regard for the climate impact or the sustainability of Prince William
County. Growth and industrial development grow’s the carbon footprint of the
county. The problem is predominately the millions of square foot of data
centers, already built, under construction and in the pipeline.
Data centers are the physical factories of the internet.
Standard data centers are warehouses filled with row upon row of servers,
routers, wires, and other information technology hardware spanning hundreds of
thousands of highly cooled square feet per building and sucking up incredible
amounts of power. Data centers operate 24/7 and increase the baseload needs for
power generation. When Dominion Energy filed
its 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) with the State Corporation Commission
(SCC) it essentially showed that Virginia plans to decarbonize the grid under
the VCEA had collided with the exploding demand of the unconstrained growth of
the data centers in Northern Virginia.
In the submission, Dominion details how it plans to meet
electricity needs and demands over the next 15 years. The picture they paint is
that Dominion cannot both meet the power demand of the exploding number of data
centers in Virginia and the mandates of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).
Also, building more roads and thousands of acres of
industrial buildings where there was once woodland and open fields exacerbates
the impacts we are already seeing from climate change. Increased rain storm
intensity and more impervious surfaces
increases dangerous flash flooding, damages our perennial streams, and
negatively impacts our water supply while increasing demand for water by
millions upon millions of gallons of water a day.
As a member of the Sustainability Commission I vote to recommend
the adaption of the CESMP with several caveats. You can read our entire comments on beginning on page 207 of the attachments. The Sustainability
Commission recommended the immediate adoption of all seven adaptation measures listed
below (A.1-A.7), as these measures are almost exclusively within the control of
the county and are necessary for the future we will have.
A.1. Develop Adaptation Plans for Critical Facilities
A.2. Manage Stormwater Flooding Outside of the Floodplain
A.3. Improve Power Resiliency for Critical Infrastructure
A.4. Assess Shoreline Protection and Nature[1]Based Solutions
A.5. Restore Streams to Reduce Flooding
A.6. Encourage Technology for Residents to Make Homes Adaptive
A.7. Plan Alternate Evacuation Routes for Flood[1]prone Areas
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