Powhatan candidate for House District 74 announces opposition for Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) -- Environmental coordinator and House District 74 candidate Jonas Eppert announced his opposition to the recently proposed Dominion Energy Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center.

Eppert oversees the Administration of an Environmental Program, which regulates soil and water quality, and sent written comments to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VDEQ) ahead of the county's public hearing at 5:45 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 8.

"This gas plant is dirty, unnecessary and expensive," Eppert said. "Dirty, because it will increase pollution in a community already burdened by poor air quality. Unnecessary, because experts have shown we can meet Virginia’s energy needs with renewables, storage, and efficiency without building new fossil fuel based energy plants."

Eppert continued to state that it is expensive due to Dominion Energy already raising electric bills by 15% this year, and this project would push costs even higher for working families.

According to VDEQ, proposed equipment for the project includes the following:

• Four 250 Megawatt simple-cycle combustion turbines capable of combusting natural gas, natural gas with hydrogen (up to 10%) and low sulfur number two distillate fuel oil.
• Seven 3,500 Kilowatt black start generators firing ultra low diesel sulfur.
• Several circuit breakers using SF6 as an insulating gas.
• Eight fixed-roof fuel oil storage tanks (one 12 million gallons and seven 3,500 gallons).
• Fugitive emissions from piping components.

In a release, Eppert also criticized Delegate Mike Cherry (R-Colonial Heights), who voiced his support for the plant. Eppert also stated that Cherry accepted $30,000 of political contributions from Dominion Energy.

In January 2018, Dominion Energy stopped using two of its coal-fired boilers three and four, completely shutting them down on March 31, 2019. Coal boilers number five and six were later shut down on May 31, 2023. The facility no longer combusts coal in any units.

According to VDEQ, they received revised Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permit applications for the project on Aug. 1, 2023, and again on March 3, 2025.

Dominion Energy is searching for a PSD permit for a simple-cycle electrical generating station to be located on the site of the Chesterfield Power Station.

According to VDEQ, the facility, which is set to be located at Chesterfield Power Station, is already considered a major source of hazardous air pollutants (HAP) emissions. The proposed annual HAP emissions from the project will have a maximum individual HAP of 5.07 tons of formaldehyde and a total HAP of 13.5 tons.

Dominion Energy stated that the purpose of this project is to support the clean energy transition while optimizing reliability and economics for its system customers.