As stories of Southwest Virginians paying $800 monthly electric bills emerged in a heated Senate Commerce and Labor Committee hearing, GOP senators on Tuesday blamed green energy policy.

They said they will push the issue in this year’s elections for governor and the House of Delegates.

State Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell, asks state senators to help constituents with big electric bills.

“I just can’t see the compassion, the humanity,” said an emotional state Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell, as the committee prepared to kill his proposal that would have let Appalachian Power customers in Southwest Virginia shop around for cheaper electricity.

Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, said the hearing shows that bills could rise even more, and that Virginians need to debate the cost of green energy policies.

“I don’t think Virginians realize that they are paying billions and billions of dollars for these policies,” McDougle said on Tuesday.

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Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, at left, says Republicans will assert that green energy policies are causing customers' electric bills to rise.

“So, we’re going to have that conversation going forward to November,” he added.

State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, said a police officer he knows in Carroll County is facing an $800 bill. He said that people in his district sometimes have to choose between groceries and paying power bills.

"We now have, unfortunately, the serious situation that men and women in Southwest Virginia are going to the mailbox every month dreading that monster bill than says you owe me $800 and I will cut you off unless you pay," he told the Senate committee.

In 2020, Gov. Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which sets goals for clean power generation and requires the state’s two big electric utilities to eliminate carbon emissions from their power plants by 2045 and 2050. Critics on the left have said it does not go far enough on climate change, and critics on the right say it hurts Virginia ratepayers.

McDougle said the Virginia Clean Economy Act would levy a $9.6 billion cost on electric utility customers over the next 10 years, beginning with a bill next year for $1.2 billion.

Until the State Corporation Commission "got us those numbers yesterday, while we were in the committee, I think it caught many of us by surprise, and we were shocked how big that number was,” he said.

He said that excludes the cost of returning to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Under RGGI, power plants have to pay to buy allowances for every ton of carbon they emit. Virginia withdrew in 2023, at Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s direction, but a court has said ruled that he did not have the authority to do that. He has said he will pursue an appeal.

Youngkin has also said the Virginia Clean Economy Act is not working.

Democrats and environmentalist say hitting the act’s targets for adding solar and wind facilities and closing down fossil fuel plants means Virginia can rein in the costs of climate change, including rising sea levels and the increasingly intense storms.

They also argue that once operating, solar and wind plants cost less to run than fossil fuel plants: Dominion customers currently pay 2.073 cents per kilowatt-hour to cover the utility’s fuel costs, or $20.73 out of a benchmark 1,000 kilowatt-hour monthly bill, which now totals $142. Sunshine and wind are free, they add.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said: “Climate change is happening and costing Virginia billions of dollars every year while we all pay for in our taxes and insurance bills."

He added: "We can't keep sticking our head in the sand while the planet throws multiple disasters at us every year."

Surovell said the Virginia Clean Economy Act "does not cost $10 billion per decade."

He said "It creates billions of dollars of investments in new capital and jobs for non-college educated workers in some of the most distressed areas of the commonwealth who need to help build our new solar farms, energy storage facilities, wind projects, and new distribution grid while reducing our risk to climate change catastrophes like Hurricane Helene or the constant flooding we're now seeing throughout Virginia, and improving air and water quality and our public health."

During the years Virginia was in RGGI, the state received $372.5 million for flood prevention projects and $413.9 million for energy efficiency work, which includes such efforts as insulating and weatherizing homes.

From the Archives: The Virginia state Capitol building

01-29-1970 (cutline): Capitol is focus for women lobbyists' work during session.

01-23-1973 (cutline): Maybe a last look--legislative page David King, 13, looks at model of the State Capitol by Thomas Jefferson which soon may be removed from the building.

02-06-1962 (cutline): Byrd (left) and Del. Pollard view model of Capitol at Commitees' session yesterday.

10-10-1963: Capitol's lunch room.

03-13-1972: Inside of Capitol.

01-13-1962 (cutline): Virginia's Capitol early today, all ready for the Harrison inaguration ceremony.

02-21-1968 (cutline): Sign proclaims 'Fire Lane' along north side of Capitol. Parked cars are almost bumper-to-bumper, but Fire Chief is tolerant.

03-12-1974:In March 1974 at the state Capitol, Virginia first lady Katherine Godwin (second front right) unveiled a painting of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. The work, by Jack Clifton of Hampton (front), was presented by the Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution; it commissioned the painting in cooperation with the Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission. Assisting Godwin with the unveiling were state Sen. Edward E. Willey Sr. of Richmond and DAR official Mrs. John S. Biscoe.