A few days ago, our small-town mayor in rural Virginia, about 45 minutes from a major nuclear power plant, announced she had received an offer from a company desiring 125 acres of town-owned woodland for a solar farm.  It made little business sense until learning of Executive Order 43, signed on Sep. 16 by Virginia's Gov. Ralph Northam.  EO-43 mandates expansion of solar energy and other renewable energy ideas like those in the Democrats' radical Green New Deal.  Perhaps he had noble intentions, but more likely, it was to regain support from his base after being weakened politically by his alleged blackface photo and endorsement of infanticide.

A paragraph from EO-43 outlines the main objectives:  

The Director of Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME), in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce and Trade, the Secretary of Natural Resources, and the Director of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), shall develop a plan of action to produce thirty percent of Virginia's electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and one hundred percent of Virginia's electricity from carbon-free sources by 2050.

Northam's mandated solutions make no mention of carbon-free nuclear power, instead deferring to the usual suspects: offshore and land based wind farms, solar farms and building energy storage capability such as mega-batteries and pumped hydroelectric storage (dams).  I doubt many environmental activists will approve since they have already successfully blocked construction of several less invasive natural gas pipelines.  And like the Green New Deal, the plan also advances socialist-sounding notions of social, energy, equity, and environmental justice. 

EO-43 also includes a mandate to improve energy efficiency with a statewide goal of reducing retail electricity consumption by ten percent by 2022.  These reductions will allegedly come from building codes, energy performance contracting, private financing programs, and investments from the Commonwealth's utilities. 

The plan is supposedly budget-neutral and a job-creator, but more likely statewide utility rates will soar with few other benefits except for the enrichment of the green energy industrial complex.

A quote from C.S. Lewis seems applicable to this and virtually all recent Democrat campaign proposals.

A tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

Image: Craig via Flickr.