By: Maria-Paula

The Virginia League of Conservation Voters has launched a $120,000 digital accountability program targeting Republican incumbents in nine legislative districts. This followed the incumbents’ votes against efforts to lower Virginians’ energy bills and securing an affordable, clean energy transition.

“Raking in the Cash,” and “Sweat” video-format ads will be running on various social media platforms including Meta, Connected TV, Snapchat and YouTube for three weeks in House Districts 22 (Lovejoy), 30 (Higgins), 41 (Obenshain), 57 (Owen), 71 (Batten), 73 (Early), 75 (Coyner), 82 (Taylor) and 86 (Cordoza). The campaign is estimated to cap out at nearly four million impressions and more than 2.5 million video completions.

Michael Town, executive director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, in a statement during the ad launch said that in peak summer, as energy consumption and electric bills hit their highest point of the year, it was important for Virginians to know that if Republicans had their way at the General Assembly their energy costs would be much higher. 

“At a time when clean energy is our cheapest, most deployable resource, Republicans want to double down on harmful, dirty, and expensive coal and methane to keep the lights on, efforts that would make our air dirtier while boosting corporate polluters’ bottom lines,” said Town. “The ‘Mega bill’ that just passed out of Congress is estimated to drive up energy costs in Virginia by more than $7 billion, making it that much more important that we do everything we can here in the commonwealth to cut bills and secure a better path forward, one that meets energy demand with cheap wind and solar and puts Virginians, not corporations first.”

The targeted Republican incumbents in this campaign voted against some bills in the year aimed at helping cut energy costs and secure a clean, affordable energy future for Virginians.

The bills include:

House Bill 2266 proposed to cut excessive interconnection costs. Interconnection costs are the charges that big utilities levy on third-party energy developers as they bring clean energy onto the grid. This in turn makes small clean energy projects more affordable and brings projects online faster.

House Bill 2346 which creates a virtual power plant (“VPP”) pilot program in Dominion Energy territory that coordinates distributed energy resources (“DERs”) in helping meet power demand when it’s at its highest instead of building new, costly, and polluting generation infrastructure.

House Bill 1935 which creates a task force to identify ways to cut energy costs and make home weatherization programs more effective.

On record, these same Republican incumbents voted to give Dominion Energy a blank check for nuclear development. This happened even as they rejected measures to expand affordable small solar projects and advance cost-saving grid-enhancing technologies.


The Virginia League of Conservation Voters notes that it therefore amplifies the political voice of the state’s conservation community by ensuring Virginia’s elected officials recognize that the Commonwealth’s natural heritage is an environmental and economic treasure for all. Virginia LCV works with conservation leaders across Virginia aiming at a conservation majority in state government by securing good public policies on the state level and holding public officials accountable for their positions on environmental issues.