With one exception, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has now vetoed the contested energy bills that he sought to amend at the 2025 General Assembly’s reconvened session last month. The rejection of his amendments or substitutes gave him a final opportunity for a full veto of the legislation.
Friday night was his deadline for decisions. His overall number of 2025 vetoes reached 196, falling a bit short of the 201 vetoes he applied to the 2024 General Assembly’s outcome. The media coverage of his active veto pen focuses on the unprecedented number of bills he rejected, never on how liberal, expensive, or unrealistic the vetoed bills were. The list of vetoed energy bills from 2025, usually passed with unanimous Democratic votes, is a prediction of Virginia’s possible future, depending on the November election. The Democratic nominee to replace Youngkin would likely have signed all or at least most of them.
Youngkin rejected the two bills that would have mandated a massive expansion of utility-scale battery installations, House Bill 2537 and Senate Bill 1394. His proposed substitute for them basically repealed the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), a laudable goal but the Democrats in the majority in both chambers remain committed to killing hydrocarbon-based electricity.
From his veto explanation:
The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) is failing Virginians. Adding in requirements for the petitioning of additional storage technologies will not change the fact that the law is misguided and does not work. Long-duration energy storage is an expensive technology and if utilities believed it to be the best technology to meet demand, they would be actively seeking permission to build them. We must be vigilant to limit cost increases to Virginia’s residents. Dominion Energy’s recently filed biennial rate and fuel case is requesting a monthly increase to residential customers’ bills of nearly $20 starting in January 2026. On top of this, in their latest RPS filing, Dominion Energy disclosed that they expect to bill customers $5.5 billion for costs associated with renewable energy credits (REC) purchases for RPS compliance costs over the next ten years.
How much his veto changes things in the long run is debatable. If the Virginia Clean Economy Act continues to prevent the development of reliable natural gas generation in Virginia, and we keep adding wind and solar as it dictates, a ridiculous amount of battery installations will eventually be built to back them up. What made these bills unwise was their attempt to dictate timing and technology choices which are years away.
He rejected two companion bills that shuffled the rules for compliance with the renewable energy mandates of the VCEA, House Bill 1883 and Senate Bill 1040, also citing how they would increase customer costs with no real benefit. He sank the bill that would have given the major utilities more opportunity to own and profit from vehicle charging stations, at the expense of other providers.
That was House Bill 2087, and Youngkin’s explanation focused on those competitors:
Passing this bill would give explicit instruction to the SCC, effectively putting the General Assembly’s thumb on the scale to allow our regulated electric utilities to participate and compete with private charging stations… Private industry continues to develop and operate charging stations, and they should be the only ones to do so.
The one bill to pass that sought to add some local authority to further control the expansion of data centers was not directly an energy matter, but those data centers are so energy-hungry it might as well have been. With his amendments to it (including a reenactment clause) rejected, House Bill 1601 also died with a veto. That is a form of reenactment clause, too, as now it must return in 2026 for another try anyway.
Wrote the Governor:
An independent economic impact analysis of Virginia’s data center industry conducted for the JLARC study, estimates that it provides approximately 74,000 jobs, $5.5 billion in labor income, and $9.1 billion to GDP annually. Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and we should not enact legislation to allow other states to pass us by nor to restrict local government from developing data centers based on their community’s specific circumstances.
He didn’t veto every bill targeted at the reconvened session. One bill he relented upon and signed (well, again, two identical bills) would allow Dominion Energy Virginia to set up and pilot a program known as a “virtual power plant (VPP),” which is really a mechanism to give the utility control over energy demand in homes and businesses. When people get their AC cut off on a high demand day, they’ll understand the impact of a VPP.
The bills he signed are House Bill 2346 and Senate Bill 1100.
Energy is the economy and vice versa. The Virginia Clean Economy Act must be repealed, preferably the next time the General Assembly convenes.
Steve Haner is a Senior Fellow for Environment and Energy Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].