A Clean Economy Helps Virginia Businesses Plan, Grow, and Thrive
Watching the Super Bowl this past Sunday, one thing kept jumping out to me throughout the broadcast: ad after ad touting new lines of electric cars. I looked this up afterwards and yes, there were a total of 7 EV commercials, more than double from last year. That may not seem like a lot until you look up how much one of these ad spots costs… that’s a lot of investment to get the word out on EVs.
I had mixed emotions about this, ranging from “Yes!!” to “What took you so long?!” At the end of the day, though, what resonated most is the amazing transformations that are possible when our economy embraces clean technology, and when businesses are given the tools and resources to deploy it.
Now is a good time to translate this thinking to our home state of Virginia, as our own designs for a clean economy are being hashed out in the Capitol Building right now. With a party change at the governor’s mansion and in the House of Delegates majority, this General Assembly session has been a stress test for two recent cornerstone environmental policies: Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). Climate-minded legislators are looking to protect these policy gains that were passed into law over the last few years.
In the past, conventional thinking may have gone that more regulation is bad for business. However, in this state and beyond, many in the commercial sector have embraced regulations that focus on cleaning up the economy through smart investment and financial incentives. There are a number of reasons for this shift.
Leaders’ Lived Values
A well-known saying goes that the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow. For the first generations to be raised with the specter of climate change looming, tomorrow is now. Many of today’s business leaders understand the problem of climate change because they grew up with it front and center. Now, as they shape today’s economy, they are committed to being part of the solution. These leaders want to start businesses and invest in communities where they can live these values. This doesn’t just apply for those working directly in the clean energy field, either. Leaders from all sectors are now asking how they can operate their businesses to minimize their impact on the environment.
Photo credit: Unsplash
Local Job Creation
Clean energy is economically synergistic in that it can be developed, produced and used on a local basis, as opposed to being harvested abroad and imported across state or national borders. Soon, wind turbines manufactured in Virginia will be deployed in our coastal waters to generate clean power for the state. Jobs in clean energy not only represent growth in themselves, but create a tailwind for job growth across the economy. Study after study has shown that countries and states that embrace clean energy policy will reap the rewards through significant net job gains.
Asset Protection
Climate change is no longer a far-off, hypothetical threat. The impacts are being felt every day across the globe, through more intense and frequent extreme weather events. In Virginia, we are seeing increasing threats of flooding from our waterways, and extreme temperature swings that are stressing our power grid and other infrastructure. These are not only urgent public safety issues, but also jeopardize assets that businesses rely on for their continued operations, many of which provide vital public services in times of need.
Virginia’s participation in RGGI cuts at this problem in two ways. First, it targets climate change itself, by setting up a cap-and-trade carbon auction system to reduce power sector emissions. Second, it uses the funds from these carbon auctions to generate significant revenue for climate adaptation projects. In 2021, the state took in $228M in RGGI funds, nearly half of which will go to infrastructure projects targeted at flood prevention and protecting against sea level rise.
Confidence in Facility Investments
As HVAC and other gas-fired appliances age into retirement and need to be replaced, business owners need to determine the benefits of investing in an electric alternative. Even though electricity doesn’t pollute on-site, it can be sourced by polluting generators fired by coal, diesel, or natural gas. With a polluting grid, electrification pushes the pollution upstream and cuts into emissions to a degree, but doesn’t do enough to reduce it overall.
A cleaner grid, which in Virginia has been set in motion by the VCEA, provides assurance that these investments will have continued and improving emissions benefits over the long term. This allows business owners to rely on electrification as a key strategy in reducing emissions, and provides another opportunity for leaders to live their values by reducing their impact on climate change.
Charlottesville’s new Code Building's Green Rooftop Terrace
Photo credit: @code.building Instagram
The Bottom Line
Business leaders still must answer to their own bottom line, and almost always that comes down to meeting the needs of customers and employees. I’ve already discussed how many of today’s business leaders want to live their values, by operating their businesses to minimize or even reverse their effects on climate change. Increasingly, people want to be able to live out these same values, by working for and supporting businesses that strive to live up to them.
Policy support and financial incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles, and energy efficiency allow businesses to use these tools in their daily operations, and even offer access and benefits of this technology to their patrons and workers. This shows all those engaging with that business that they are truly walking the walk when it comes to climate change.
The bottom line is that our economic policy needs to continue to strive to put the tools of a clean economy into business’s hands. It will ultimately be up to these organizations to put these tools into action, and many of them are showing that, when given the chance, they will do just that.