Governor Glenn Youngkin unveiled the 2022 Virginia Energy Plan in Lynchburg, Virginia.
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"To ensure that Virginia is the best place to live, work and raise a family, Virginia must grow. We need to grow new jobs.
"We need to grow new businesses. We need to grow our population. And, to fuel that growth, we need a sensible, achievable, energy plan that provides abundant, reliable, affordable and clean energy.
"We need to keep families warm in the winter and safe from the summer heat. We need to keep the kitchen humming at the family-owned restaurant getting ready for the dinner rush.
"We need to keep the lights on, the internet powered, communication flowing, and we need to do it without driving further runaway inflation.
"As we look to build on our dominance in energy-intensive industries like data centers and advanced computing and increase our leadership in emerging fields like advanced manufacturing, ag-tech, and biopharmaceuticals, we know that our grid must deliver power, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and it must deliver that power at a competitive price.
"The plan adopted in recent years by the previous administration goes too far in establishing rigid and inflexible rules for the transition in energy generation in Virginia.
"We need to recognize that a clean energy future does not have to come at the cost of a healthy, resilient, and growing economy.
"We first must embrace a measure of humility as to our ability to project and predict 30-years of energy demand and technological innovation.
"And we certainly should not make irreversible decisions today to exit critical elements of power stack.
"Additionally, we must reject the mindset that it is “either/or,” and embrace the reality that it is “both/and.”
"In fact, the only way to confidently move towards a reliable, affordable and clean energy future in Virginia is to go all-in on innovation in nuclear, carbon capture, and new technology like hydrogen generation, along with building on our leadership in offshore wind and solar.
"I want to thank the hundreds of individuals and groups who had a role in shaping this plan over the past months. Every one of you has a part to play going forward.
"Energy innovation will not just honor our calling to environmental stewardship, it will deliver economic development and job creation opportunities across the Commonwealth, including in Southwest Virginia, where this plan calls for launching a commercial small modular nuclear reactor in the next 10 years", the governor said. ■