Chasing the Green Energy Dragon

Welcome to RVA’s Got Issues, a podcast about politics and public affairs in and around Richmond, Virginia. I’m your host, Rich Marr. On this episode, RVA’s got issues with green energy. We’ll talk with expert Adam Sledd about how solar, wind, and other renewables are coming to RVA.

Will they be enough? Then RVA’s got questions about no soliciting signs. How do I stop people from knocking on my door, especially if it’s for politics? Finally, for our Community Spotlight, we’ll talk with Tariq Karim of the Black Virginia Theatre Alliance about how his group is putting on a show and everyone’s invited.

All that, coming up on RVA’s Got Issues.

 

On this episode, RVA’s got issues with green energy. It seems every week a new solar farm is announced in Chesterfield County. That, plus a huge offshore wind project, could reshape how Virginia will power itself in the future. But there are also sizable challenges. Data centers, like the ones popping up in Hanover County, require huge amounts of energy.

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Dropping a two square mile project roughly half the size of the Richmond International Airport in this location is unfathomable.

everyone moves here and says the same thing. I love that it feels rural. I love supporting Ashland. And then you are just shoving all this industrial stuff around us.

Energy, environment, infrastructure. These are the really critical issues this project presents for the next 20 years.

[ MUSIC FADES OUT UNDER RICH’s NEXT VO, FULLY OUT BY “WORLD”]

What’s happening, who’s going to have to pay for it all, and is it enough to meet the state’s climate goals? Adam Sledd has worked with public utilities, energy companies, and startups all over the world. He’s also executive director of the Dominion Energy Innovation Center, A business hub and incubator located right here in Hanover County.

Welcome Adam.

Hi, thanks for having me.

So solar wind renewables. Why does it seem like this is all happening now? Like really coming to a

a That is a good question. I would say it’s it’s been, um, happening. slowly and then suddenly more quickly. Right? So maybe you’re just noticing it now, but we really saw, um, solar start to take off here.

I would say grow steadily from, say, 2008, 2009 onwards. Right? And so the, the, uh, what you’re noticing now is this sort of rapid growth and utility, what we call utility scale solar, which is the sort of large solar farm.

of large solar farm. Right, and it’s so, there’s political pressure, right, there’s legal pressure, like, there’s, there’s actual law in place that’s forcing this kind of, like, more recent change, isn’t there?

Yeah, absolutely. So we have the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which was signed a couple years ago, which mandates that the Virginia utilities go net zero. So for Dominion, that’s 2045 and then for the other utilities, Appalachian Power 2050.

2050.

So we are sort of on this state mandated path towards net zero carbon.

For our power generation.

So that’s talking about dominion utilities. Why, uh, can’t we just put a solar panel on everybody’s house? Right? I feel like some people think that’s just gonna solve everything, right? Uh, we will just fix the climate change and solve our energy needs. Uh, if you want, you can come by. My house later, we’ll put one up there, right?

It’s super simple. Why don’t we just solve everything like that?

that. Um, Well, the simplest answer is even if you put solar panels on your home, it wouldn’t be enough to cover all of the commercial uses that we have, like a data center or even a shopping mall. Um, And, uh, a shopping mall or an office building typically doesn’t have enough roof space to sort of cover it with solar panels and have that cover the entire electricity usage.

So even if we somehow magically covered every residential home in solar panels, it still wouldn’t be enough to make up for, say, multifamily housing, industrial uses, retail uses, office uses. Uh, much less sort of data center uses

So, Adam, just from a consumer perspective, I mean, people, obviously, there’s lots of folks who want to help with the climate change problem. They want to be more renewable and less pollution, but they’re probably also worried about their rates.

Like, what is this move towards renewables going to do? Is it expensive? Is it going to mean that we’re going to be paying through the nose for utilities in the future?

Well, So again, I mean, this is, this is part of the conversation, right? It’s about how, how fast are we sort of having this transition happen, right?

Is it something that we’re, we’re managing over decades? Is it something that’s happening, you know, maybe in a more sped up fashion because of the sort of new loads with data centers, or is it something where we’re again, able to plan, Hey, here’s the target 2030, here’s the target 2035, here’s the target 2040, let’s go.

Um,

But can we do that?

Can we get to those targets without putting the cost onto homeowners and to renters and to folks, you know, commercial businesses so that they’re suddenly, you know, 20 percent of their income is going towards utility bills? Uh,

Yeah, absolutely.

or something.

I, I think that the long term goal, I think anyone in the state in a position where they’re actually doing this work, and let me say, like, I’m not, you know, I’m not the planner here and I’m, I’m not someone with, with power to make this happen.

Um, but what we see is, you know, there’s a real commitment, um, both from the, the legislative sort of the policymaker side and the utility side. There’s a real commitment to do this in as cost effective a manner as, as possible. And that’s why we’re moving sort of. At the speed we are in the state versus other places, right?

Where it’s sort of like breakneck speed, right? Um, you look at somewhere like Texas and they have a super deregulated power market, and you can kind of, if I say Texas is the wild west, that’s probably not going to surprise anyone. You’ve got to do whatever you want, but also things are getting broken a lot there, right?

They’re like moving fast and breaking stuff in Texas. And so they have, they have the real good highs and they have a lot of lows. Whereas in Virginia, we are not moving fast and breaking things, right? We are planning and we’re trying to do it in a very responsible way. So, will people’s electricity prices probably go up in the near term as we have a lot of new stuff come online?

Because we just kind of have to build a lot of stuff. Like, yes, if you are like me and you’re thinking about I’m going to be paying electric bills in this state for the next 30 years, 35 years hopefully, Um, Over time, all that stuff will even out, right? And our goal is always as a state to be sort of on the lower end of what retail electricity price prices cost, right?

We, we never want to be like a top 10 cost state. We always sort of want to be on the lower end. Um, so what we try to do, um, Uh, and again, I’m just sort of speaking very broadly for everyone here for all the sort of stakeholders involved is how do we manage having a really good, reliable, clean grid without going overboard on costs?

And that’s why I think we have so much push and pull, and it can be frustrating from the consumer side, right? Because if you’re somebody who’s like, no, go net zero now, mad because it’s not happening fast enough. And if you’re someone who’s like, all I care about is price, you’re mad because things are changing.

And so like, that’s why we kind of get stuck in the middle, but, but we still have good movement. I think, I think it’s safe to say that we still have a lot of really good movement happening here without prices getting out of control. And the tricky part is just sort of managing How to continue that process.

And sometimes you have something that throws a wrench in there, right? Like a data center shows up and needs a gigawatt of power. And we have no idea how to power that right now. Um, so, you know, everybody’s kind of targets are, are shifting.

So that’s talking about dominion utilities. Why, uh, can’t we just put a solar panel on everybody’s house? Right? I feel like some people think that’s just gonna solve everything, right? Uh, we will just fix the climate change and solve our energy needs. Uh, if you want, you can come by. My house later, we’ll put one up there, right?

It’s super simple. Why don’t we just solve everything like that?

that. Um, Well, the simplest answer is even if you put solar panels on your home, it wouldn’t be enough to cover all of the commercial uses that we have, like a data center or even a shopping mall. Um, And, uh, a shopping mall or an office building typically doesn’t have enough roof space to sort of cover it with solar panels and have that cover the entire electricity usage.

So even if we somehow magically covered every residential home in solar panels, it still wouldn’t be enough to make up for, say, multifamily housing, industrial uses, retail uses, office uses. Uh, much less sort of data center uses.

So if I do put a solar panel on my home, because I think people are being approached about this or some people are doing it, does that help?

Is that at least contributing to our energy crisis, our energy problems? Does it help?

it’s always good. It’s always good. It’s, um, It’s probably easier to take kind of like a step back and think about how the grid works and why we talk about different types of solar and different types of renewables that we want to use.

And if you’ll let me, I’m going to get a little wonky, but I’m going to try to not get too technical.

I’ll let you know if you leave me behind.

Okay. So. Um, the way sort of electricity use works around, not just Virginia, but say all over the country is, um, we have different peak times, right? So if you think about it, So if you think about it, um, you know, we’re recording this sort of late morning, right?

Um, I dropped my kids off, uh, one at daycare, one at camp, uh, earlier. I’m out of the house, my wife’s out of the house. There’s no one in our house using electricity right now. So if you think of sort of how electricity works throughout the day. When we get from morning through early afternoon through lunchtime, um, it’s sort of when we say the load is at its lowest, right?

And then later today, we’re all going to go home. I’m going to go pick up my kids. Um, we’re going to get home. We’re going to start making dinner. Um, my children will be incredibly dirty. I’m going to strip off their dirty clothes, throw those in the laundry. I might run the laundry. Um, everyone’s going to get on their

everything, turn on the TV.

gonna, we’re gonna have TVs on, we’re gonna have machines whirring, and so, so the standard, um, what we call peak load of electricity use, like everywhere, is early evening hours, right? So like, say this time of year, it’d be like six to nine o’clock. That’s when we’re using the most electricity possible.

Um,

And so you have this sort of like different times of day we have different use of electricity overall So that’s the first thing you have to kind of keep in mind here

Um,

Now like mentally try and juxtapose that with how solar works rich How does solar work? When does solar produce, produce electricity?

yeah, sunshine. You need sunshine. It happens during the day, not night. Yeah.

So, um, we have a different sort of base load curve for when solar gets produced, which is the time that I just described when we use the least electricity. Right now, like middle of the day, through those early evening hours, that’s when we’re producing a ton of power. As soon as the sun starts to go down, we’re still using all that electricity at home, but thus the amount of solar that’s being produced by your rooftop, say, has now declined.

And so, um, where you hear When you hear the common political argument, well, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. That’s, that’s essentially what people are talking about is that, is that our sort of top curve of usage for electricity doesn’t match when solar is producing the most.

And so, to kind of understand Why our policies are the way that they are, why utilities are doing the things that they’re doing is because we have this gap and in order to get where we want to go in terms of net zero, we have to figure out how do we fill that gap?

And so you could fill the gap by burning stuff, right? oil and gas and, and these are not renewables and might cause problems with pollution and things like that. So how do we meet the gap?

Is it just more solar everywhere? Because that still seems like you’re, you’re still going to run into that darkness problem. So how do we, how do we fill that gap?

It’s a good question. And so the first thing you said is absolutely right. What we have right now are what’s called peaker plants. And, um, these exist all over the country again, in every utility jurisdiction, every utility has peaker plants, which are at this point usually gas fired. Um, because those ramp up and down the easiest and they exist purely for.

Oh, no, it’s 7 30 at night. We’re not getting solar anymore. And the power usage has just gone up. Turn on those peaker plants and let’s get that last 5 percent of the electricity that we need across the system. Um, but what we have to do is look, uh, Broadly speaking, um, continue to look for different ways of producing carbon free power or storing carbon free power, right?

So, uh, battery storage is becoming, um, more and more important. And it’s something, if we sort of look out west, if we look at California and Texas, that’s kind of where you can see the future of how the power system works because they’re By necessity and by law kind of going after it first, but pairing solar with storage.

Okay, so we need new, we need batteries. We have to figure out to have more batteries. Now, batteries doesn’t necessarily mean, like storing energy doesn’t necessarily mean like a giant Duracell battery, right? You sometimes do, sometimes it is a giant Duracell battery.

it’s not Duracell, but, but it’s a battery. Yeah. It’s just a battery.

Alright. There are other ways though you can store energy, isn’t there like a water pumping mechanism that you can

So there is, there is, we actually have, so we have the nation’s largest, it’s called pumped hydro storage. Um, we have the nation’s largest pump hydro storage. It’s in Bath County. Uh, it was, it was, um, a project dominion created a couple of years ago.

Um,

As far as I know, the only one in the world that’s larger is in China.

Um, but it’s essentially like imagine a hollowed out mountain and you have like water at the bottom and a way to pump the water to the top. So when you have sort of plentiful electricity, you pump the water to the top of the mountain and it sits there. And then when you need electricity, you basically open up the floodgate.

Water rushes down the mountain. It spins the flywheels as it goes. And that’s how we get electricity. So it’s just sort of pushing water up to the top and letting it flow back downhill and the mountain essentially acts as a giant battery. Could

we could do that, but we don’t necessarily have a mountain in Richmond, for

it’s pretty hard find a bunch of hollowed out mountains that you can pump water up and send it back down.

But we do have, it is like we have the nation’s largest. It’s pretty cool.

so let’s get back to the idea of solar, right?

So we are building

we are building,

We are helping at least with solar panels. We still have to solve kind of this battery problem. It’s not going to solve all of our problems. And, you know, so if someone puts a solar panel on their house, they’re not necessarily going to generate enough electricity for themselves at the time that they need that energy.

Is that the idea?

that they need that energy, is that the idea? Um, so we see it other places, but it’s most prevalent in California, and it is because the, the curve of solar power generation compared to the need required winds up looking sort of like the shape of a duck if you’re looking at it on a graph and interpreting it to be the shape of a duck.

You could also just say it’s a line that goes up and down, call it the duck curve. So again, in a state like California where you have a ton of rooftop solar, where renewables can comprise up to like 30 percent of the grid on a given day. Um, when they get to the afternoon, they’re actually producing too much power.

They’re producing too much solar power. It’s way more than their need across the state. And so you wind up basically just wasting, right? You’re just wasting solar and then the sun goes down and then they’ve got to fire up all the gas plants. And so, to kind of understand Why our policies are the way that they are, why utilities are doing the things that they’re doing is because we have this gap and in order to get where we want to go in terms of net zero, we have to figure out how do we fill that gap? Um, and so what you’re trying to figure out is kind of how do we, how do we bridge that gap? at the same time, if you’re thinking about it on a personal level. So, yeah, like you can put enough solar on your house to cover most of your, your needs, you’ll still need the grid on occasion, say in a, uh, ice storm or an insanely hot summer evening, right? We’re like, It’s 10 o’clock and somehow it’s still in the eighties.

We get those days a couple times a year. Um, so largely, I think when we talk about people going solar, there is some benefit to savings, right? And we do have net metering in Virginia, which means you do have the ability to sell your excess capacity back to your utility at essentially a retail rate. So we have net metering that makes it more attractive, uh, to do home solar than in some other states, lots of other states.

Um, you know, the exact price at which the utility pays you for that excess capacity is something that is constantly, that’s like a state legislature issue, um, and it kind of goes up and down depending on how the state legislature feels in a given year. But overall, like we still have a pretty reasonable system, uh, politically for people who want to put solar on the rooftop and then have the ability to sell excess capacity back to the utility.

But really like savings at this point, um, are an okay reason to do it. But the primary reason you’re going to put solar on your rooftop is like, you want to feel good about having solar on your rooftop. And you want some form of energy independence, right? You want to, you want to feel like you are able to power your own house.

Um, and what I would say is from like an overall system perspective, if you’re going to do it at this point, if you’re going to do it and you can, you should put a battery in there as well. You should get, you should get a Tesla power wall or, um, you know, whatever else you, you can get, because what’s really useful at the end of the day, isn’t just that you can produce power at noon, but that you can produce power at noon and store some of that, and then use it again at 9 PM at night.

And when we think long term again about bridging that gap and what’s going to be most useful from a climate and Virginia perspective is getting more people with solar on the roof and a battery in their garage that can pair those things and help us sort of fix the duck curve.

Gotcha.

And that’s what we’re seeing in California.

That’s what we’re seeing in Texas. That’s what we’re seeing in North Carolina and Massachusetts and every other state with a large solar component is there’s this push to go. Hey, solar is great. But unless you pair it with a battery, you’re only getting a portion of the real benefit here.

So I think from a like a listener perspective, I think a lot of people are hearing about solar and they might even have people kind of wandering through their neighborhood, offering them.

Solar and maybe some of those people are very good and legitimate and maybe some of them are not, right? So from a, just a kind of like consumer perspective, how are you supposed to know like what you’re doing if someone wanders to your neighborhood and says, Solar’s going to solve all your problems, let’s just throw some up and sign away your life to us here on this dotted line.

Well, I, I think you should probably have the same reaction as for everyone that shows up to your doorstep selling a thing, which I think for all of us is, is constantly, whether it’s, um, pest control, I seem to get more pest control than anything else. Um, but you know, if you want to take a look at it, talk to them, get information, look at reviews online, things like that, but I would say you just have to be very careful with vendors.

Um, you, you have to, you know, really like do your due, due diligence. Do your due diligence. Um, you just, you have to be careful with vendors. You have to get really comfortable with their reviews. You want to talk to other customers.

but

You’re not going to make money. Like if someone’s promising you that you’re going to make a bunch of money by having solar, you’re not, um, you’re looking to offset your costs to a certain extent.

And there are like incentives from the state government, from federal government, maybe to do to help in offset those costs, but it’s not going to suddenly you’re not going to turn yourself into like little dominion in Chesterfield County, like generating energy for everyone and making

do not have a regulatory structure here that supports that. Um, we do have more incentives coming down the line and the state just, uh, announced maybe a month or so ago that we got 156 million, uh, federal award for our solar for all program that Virginia Energy is going to administer.

And that’s. Huge. I mean, that’s huge, right? Like that’s a lot of money over five years that is going to help offset the cost of putting solar on mostly like low income housing and do some community solar projects. So that that money is going to, I mean, have an immediate impact, um, in the Richmond area.

So, Adam, just from a consumer perspective, I mean, people, obviously, there’s lots of folks who want to help with the climate change problem. They want to be more renewable and less pollution, but they’re probably also worried about their rates.

Like, what is this move towards renewables going to do? Is it expensive? Is it going to mean that we’re going to be paying through the nose for utilities in the future?

Well, So again, I mean, this is, this is part of the conversation, right? It’s about how, how fast are we sort of having this transition happen, right?

Is it something that we’re, we’re managing over decades? Is it something that’s happening, you know, maybe in a more sped up fashion because of the sort of new loads with data centers, or is it something where we’re again, able to plan, Hey, here’s the target 2030, here’s the target 2035, here’s the target 2040, let’s go.

Um,

But can we do that?

Can we get to those targets without putting the cost onto homeowners and to renters and to folks, you know, commercial businesses so that they’re suddenly, you know, 20 percent of their income is going towards utility bills? Uh,

Yeah, absolutely.

or something.

I, I think that the long term goal, I think anyone in the state in a position where they’re actually doing this work, and let me say, like, I’m not, you know, I’m not the planner here and I’m, I’m not someone with, with power to make this happen.

Um, but what we see is, you know, there’s a real commitment, um, both from the, the legislative sort of the policymaker side and the utility side. There’s a real commitment to do this in as cost effective a manner as, as possible. And that’s why we’re moving sort of. At the speed we are in the state versus other places, right?

Where it’s sort of like breakneck speed, right? Um, you look at somewhere like Texas and they have a super deregulated power market, and you can kind of, if I say Texas is the wild west, that’s probably not going to surprise anyone. You’ve got to do whatever you want, but also things are getting broken a lot there, right?

They’re like moving fast and breaking stuff in Texas. And so they have, they have the real good highs and they have a lot of lows. Whereas in Virginia, we are not moving fast and breaking things, right? We are planning and we’re trying to do it in a very responsible way. So, will people’s electricity prices probably go up in the near term as we have a lot of new stuff come online?

Because we just kind of have to build a lot of stuff. Like, yes, if you are like me and you’re thinking about I’m going to be paying electric bills in this state for the next 30 years, 35 years hopefully, Um, Over time, all that stuff will even out, right? And our goal is always as a state to be sort of on the lower end of what retail electricity price prices cost, right?

And we’re really excited to have that, have them win that. And it’s great for Virginia Energy. Um, and we’re really, really proud of the work that they did.

really proud of the work that they do. Yes, it’s incredible how quickly the solar panels

it’s incredible how quickly the solar panels grow.

And so that is a kind of utility scale that we would need to generate energy at a, at a broader scale. Um, but that, you know, raises all sorts of concerns about land use. There’s some people who worry about pollution.

God’s rain will fall somewhere,

but won’t put out a lithium battery fire. Otherwise,

the number of buildings and the height of the buildings will completely destroy the landscape and the rural part of that community. Um, I urge you to vote no to this until we can get something different.

for the safety of the humans who live in this area, we need to know exactly what the county is planning to do with this

I mean, what, what do you say people who might say that’s a waste of space or we should be using that for farming instead?

People understand like, yeah, I could put a solar panel on my house, but look around and they’re seeing the landscape transform and that can be very disconcerting. Maybe they’re not like opposed to solar. They care about climate change, but they just see everything getting different around them. I mean, what would you say to to someone who’s worried about their landscape changing that way?

That just seems like there’s these weird technical farms and stuff out here that there didn’t used to be before.

Yeah, absolutely. there’s a lot of concerns about Is this the best use of land? Um, how are we going to handle water runoff?

How are we going to handle the view of the solar panels?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I work in Hanover, right? Um, so every day I’m driving through what was a sort of rural and agricultural focused community and has rapidly shifted, um, even in just the five years that I’ve been commuting there every day. So it’s, it’s definitely a land use issue, right? And there is definitely a local conversation to be had.

Um, it’s happening in Hanover all the time, but it’s, it’s also happening in every other county in, in Virginia about how we want to use land. And some of that is, like, we just have fewer farms than we used to, right? A lot of these farms aren’t working farms anymore. We know this to be true in Hanover, that a lot of times what sort of happened is farmland has been passed down through generations and it winds up in the hand of like a great grandchild.

They have a normal job and they don’t actually intend to become a farmer. In some cases they do, like we, we know the farmers in Hanover who inherited their land and decided to become working farmers and they’re awesome and we’re like, um, proud to buy their products at Cross Brothers and other places.

Um, But a lot of the time people just inherit that land and they don’t know what to do with it. And they’re not going to turn it into a working farm. Um, and in that case, maybe the best way for them to make money off of it, off that land, while still doing something beneficial for the planet is letting it become solar power.

Um, and again, we talk about like, um, what’s being done in terms of, uh, new innovations in utility scale solar in order to make it, Um, you know, not an eyesore and also not like completely the only thing that that land can be used for. So there’s innovations happening there. And again, like a robust public discussion about land use is always exciting, right?

We can, we can all agree that that’s always exciting. Um, but for someone who just doesn’t want to see land used for anything other than agriculture, like I would say look around, like land is already being used for stuff other than agriculture. Like there’s already a lot of Sort of repurposing agricultural land for different uses.

And this is just one that also happens to be beneficial to society.

well, look, I can’t give you a definitive answer on what’s like, we have definitions in the state. Our land use our land planners have definitions about what is prime agricultural land, right? And so generally speaking, they’re not trying to put solar on prime agricultural land that’s still being used for agriculture.

Um,

That said, utility scale solar, which means sort of like very megawatts. Plus. Plus. Um, um, down, you know, down there on, on the ground, um, that is now essentially the cheapest form of energy available. Okay, so it’s cheaper than building coal, it’s cheaper than building natural gas, it’s cheaper than pretty much anything else that exists.

Um, when you do utility scale solar right, it is the cheapest way to produce power, uh, in the world, broadly speaking, right? So, um, we are We are lucky in a sense, and I, I, I’m, this is a, I realize just saying this is like a statement that a lot of people would argue with, um, we are lucky in a certain way that we have the regulatory environment that we do because in Virginia when we sort of decided as voters that we wanted the Virginia Clean Economy Act to exist, right, we, we voted for the politicians that created that law, that passed that law, and then the politicians and our regulatory, our SEC turned around and said to Dominion, um, Okay, now you have to start putting in solar at this rate at this amount in order to hit these goals.

That’s the way our state works. And so Dominion turned around and said, okay, well, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to try and figure out how to come up with the most cost effective version for hitting these clean energy targets and getting us to net zero. by law. Um, and the way to do that is utility scale solar.

So, um, it’s, it’s one, it’s cheap. Um, two, we’re getting better and better at figuring out the sort of, uh, how do you recycle panels at the end of 20? Right. There’s a lot of concerns. If you ever sit in on one of these like planning meetings, there’s a lot of concerns about Is this the best use of land? Um, how are we going to handle water runoff?

How are we going to handle the view of the solar panels? People, I guess, get upset if they see solar panels. Um, but they don’t get upset when they drive by, like, a substation or a natural gas plant, which is interesting to me.

so there’s a

Um, so there’s a lot of, a lot of sort of different things that go into it, and I would say, from a innovation standpoint, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening, some of which is, like, not technology based.

Like, some of the The, um, fastest growing advances and how we do utility scale solar involve like sheep grazing. Um, so it’s figuring out that actually instead of like trying to come up with a way to like bring in lawnmowers that can get under the panels and have like a lawn company that can do maintenance of the, of the thing.

Um, in some cases, the best way to do it is just bring in a shepherd. Sheep is

Um, people bring

Um, Uh, some people bring in goats, but goats eat anything so solar, so they might, they might mess up the solar panels where sheep, uh, seem like they might be a better option.

Yeah. Uh, so speaking of innovation and maybe not goats and sheep, but wind is another big thing uh, in, uh, in Virginia, um, as solar as cheap. I mean, does wind work just as cheaply? Is that such a, is, is that cost efficient as well?

Um, I know in Virginia there’s concerns about where wind turbines go. There’s big gigantic turbines, uh, but they’re doing a project out, uh, uh, by Virginia beach, right? Hampton roads area.

Beach, right, in the Hampton Roads area?

solar,

But again, we got to find kind of different, we got to use every tool at our disposal, right? Um, and so this is, you know, big offshore wind, this type of huge offshore wind project has been really prevalent in Europe for more than a decade at this point. And so Virginia, like we are, we are plowing ahead.

Again, this is part of the law that got signed. This is part of Dominion sort of fulfilling their responsibility. As a publicly regulated, uh, utility. And so, um, again, if we talk about how Virginia’s done it versus a state like New York. Okay, in Virginia, we passed a law. We said this is a thing that we want.

Okay, Dominion, it is now your job to go figure out how to do this in the most cost effective manner. Dominion looked around, they came up with a plan, they put it in front of the regulators. The regulators said, okay, this is the best plan we can come up with to protect rate payers, uh, you know, electricity customers across the state while also delivering on our clean energy goals.

And so we have plowed forward. Um, you look at a state like New York, they kind of had the same thing going on, but their regulatory system works really differently. So they like. Um, and they plowed ahead in their own way. But if you look today, the New York project is on hold because of interest rates and price increases in Virginia.

Our project is on target. It’s on schedule and it’s on budget.

And, and there’s these giant trucks with these giant, like, wind turbines, like, driving around Hampton Roads.

Somehow,

Not just giant trucks. We have a giant boat. Um, um, we have Dominion, I don’t think we, we probably don’t have time to go into the Jones Act why Dominion had to build a, a massive boat specifically to install these turbines. Um, but essentially it was because of the Jones Act, which I will encourage your listeners to go look up.

Okay.

Um, it was economically viable for Dominion to build its own giant wind turbine installation boat down in Houston, and it will make its way here pretty soon, um, to install those turbines. Uh, whereas other projects in, say, New England, what they’re going to do is they’re going to have all of the turbines, all the, the construction items, essentially, are going to sit in Canada, and a boat’s going to go to Canada, pick them up, and drive them down to offshore.

Because the Jones Act says that, um, you either have to have a made in America boat or you cannot use an American port to do this kind of work. So, um, our project has kind of gone all in and when it’s done, it’s going to, so I think the goal is by 2026, we’ll have enough offshore wind to power 660, 000 homes.

Which is pretty impressive. It’s a, it’s a pretty huge project. Uh, the wind farm will be far enough offshore that you won’t be able to see it from shore. It’ll be. several miles out. Um, you know, we tried doing onshore wind here in the mountains and it kind of got voted down by the locals every single time.

Um, but this offshore wind project is is moving ahead and it’s

from

energy nerd perspective, like it’s super amazing and really, really, really exciting. And there’s a lot of different kind of pieces going into it. Again, they’ve never been done in the U. S. So it is in many ways a groundbreaking project that we have going on here in Virginia.

So solar growing big. Uh, I think another area of renewable energy that people are paying a lot of attention to is wind power. Um, and that is coming to Virginia as well. Maybe not in the middle of RVA, right? But, uh, at least there’s a big offshore project that’s happening?

Yeah, absolutely. Right off the coast of Hampton Roads. We got, we call it CVAL. It’s a coastal Virginia offshore wind.

Um, it is, so there’s, there’s two test turbines that have been in the water out there, like several miles off the coast for a couple of years now. And the rest is, the construction is just getting rolling. Um, the big boat is on its way from Houston pretty soon, and we expect to have enough power there from, uh, in 2026.

We should have enough power from there to power 660, 000 homes.

Yeah. So, are there downsides

homes.

People haven’t wanted it closer to shore or on land. They’re worried about animals, they’re worried pollution, things like that. Are there downsides to

So I think the, the things that we hear the most often, um, we’re going to kill all the birds, wind turbines are going to kill all the birds, uh, to the wind turbines themselves are steel and then they fail and they have to be replaced after 20 years. And what are you going to do with all these big giant steel wind turbines?

Um,

Marine wildlife, right? So what happens to the fish? What happens to the ocean floor? You’re digging up the ocean floor to put these big giant steel things in the bottom of it And then you’re running cables along the bottom of the ocean floor. What happens there? What happens to whales? I’ve looked at a lot of graphs of Whale migration patterns in the last two years having these kind of conversations Um, so these are all legitimate concerns.

I don’t think anyone is saying that these aren’t legitimate concerns. Um, but what I would say is they’re not new. Um, people have been building this kind of offshore wind project in Europe for decades with the same kind of concerns, and we’ve gotten better and better at them over time. And we have federal regulatory bodies that are concerned only with how this works.

BOEM is the, the, uh, federal regulatory body. I’m going to get the acronym wrong. If I try explain to you, I’ll just say it’s BOEM. And, um, and they set the standards for how are we going to handle the ocean floor? How are we going to make sure the construction is done in a way that it doesn’t mess with whale migration patterns?

So there are all kinds of technologies being put to use like sonar and sound bubbles and things with drones so that. Even during construction, like, if a whale is spotted two days away, construction knows when to stop so that that whale can pass by in its standard migratory pattern without being disturbed by wind turbine construction.

Like, all of this stuff is being taken into consideration and, um, in a very serious manner. Um, I talk to people all the time who are thinking about how, what 20 years from now? And there are, say, recycling plans in place. Um, So what I would say is, they’re totally legitimate concerns. However, they do not, the environmental issues that we have to deal with in building and operating these things, do not outweigh the benefits that we’re going to get by having them.

And there are entire teams at the federal, state, and utility level, who are dedicated to making sure that this happens in the most beneficial manner to wildlife possible.

We’re

We’re talking with self proclaimed energy nerd, Adam Sled, Executive Director of the Dominion Energy Innovation Center in Hanover County.

We’ll hear more about the future of energy and RVA when we come back on RVA’s Got Issues.

 

BREAK

 

is RVA’s Got Issues. We’re back with Adam Sled of the Dominion Energy Innovation Center in Hanover County. Adam, we’re talking about this transition to renewable energy.

What’s this going to actually look like for our listeners? Like, as this gains steam, what’s going to be different about their lives or their communities?

a really good question.

Can you give me a timescale? Like, do you mean, do you mean next year or do you mean in 2035?

I imagine next year probably not all that much different. Next year not all that much. Yeah, but let’s say 20, 35, 10 years, 15, 20 years down the road.

the road. So, okay, so let’s say right now, right now, roughly of like our electricity mix in Virginia, right? Now this is wildly different than it was in, say, 2000 or 2005.

In 2005, the electricity mix would have had way more coal and like practically zero renewables and a little bit of natural gas, right? Fast forward to today, and our electricity mix today is basically like half natural gas, um, 30 percent or so nuclear, right? We have, we have a lot of great nuclear power here in the state, um, and then say like 10% ish and growing renewables, and then a teeny tiny bit of coal left over, like a couple percent of coal.

Um, which, if you grew up in Virginia, you know, As a kid 40 years ago, that’s like mind blowing in and of itself, but we’re still so 50 percent natural gas, okay? Um, what we’re looking to do over the next decade or so is start to wind down some of that natural gas. Start to wind down the rest of that coal, um, and continue to ramp up our renewables and probably continue to ramp up our nuclear, um, because going back to sort of like what happens as we bring more electricity on the grid.

So as we get more EVs. As more people get electric heat pumps to heat and cool their homes as more people, um, in theory, go to electric stovetops instead of gas stovetops. And I’ll let that be a personal choice and not argue with people about what they prefer. Um, but as we, as we increase our electrical load, right?

Um, we said solar plus storage and wind plus storage can help us get a lot of the way. But when we get to some of those bigger uses, those like industrial, we’re manufacturing pharmaceuticals because we have a rapidly growing sort of like life sciences cluster here in central Virginia. Um, we’re manufacturing things like aluminum, right?

Because of advanced manufacturing or because of data centers, We’re going to need what’s called baseload power. So baseload power means 24 7. And we want that baseload power to be clean, right? We don’t want it to be coal. We don’t want it to be natural gas necessarily. Um, natural gas has its place, but like, you know, it still has emissions.

So, um, if we’re looking at 2035, we’re going to have more nuclear. Um, we’re going to have more nuclear because it is zero carbon emissions, right? And it is 24 7 and I understand there’s an argument to be had around nuclear waste and other issues with nuclear, but generally speaking, it is very safe. It is carbon free and it runs 24 7 and there is, um, practically no scenario where we get to a net zero economy.

Without adding more nuclear. And Virginia is really well placed to do that. Um, because not only do we already have existing nuclear power plants, but we have like an incredible nuclear workforce in the state that I’m not sure everyone appreciates. We have nuclear engineering at VCU. We have nuclear engineering at Virginia Tech.

We have, um, Framatone and BWX in Lynchburg of all places. Like one in ten people in Lynchburg work in the nuclear industry.

really?

We have one of the most advanced nuclear workforces in the entire world here in Virginia. So of all of the places that are going to try and figure out how to increase their supply of nuclear power over the coming decades, we are really, really well positioned to do that. And we’re kind of in a position, I would say at this point, of Um, sort of determining what the next best step is. Is it putting a reactor out in Southwest Virginia and former coal areas? Is it putting an additional reactor where we already kind of have current nuclear reactors? What’s the best place to do it?

What’s the best type of reactor to do it? There’s a lot of conversations happening around that and then figuring out how we’re going to pay for it because that’s kind of the, the remaining, um, boogeyman in terms of building more nuclear. Um, and that is its own hour long conversation. But as a, as a betting man, by 2035, we’re going to have another nuclear facility in the state.

nuclear facility. And so the, that’s a sort of supply side of things, the demand side of things, you mentioned, and we’ve talked about this a little bit, data centers, right? seems to be.

The big concern about like energy draw is it’s not just that people are plugging in an extra iPad in their house. It’s that giant facilities need tons of energy all the time to run AI, to run the internet, do all the computer stuff that we do today. Um, how is that going to shape the future here?

the future here?

I mean, it is currently shaping how we use energy. I mean. It is, say, roughly, I think it’s 25 percent or so of the electricity use in Virginia right now,

now.

right? That’s 25 percent or so that, like, you go back 30 years, just didn’t exist at all. So, to your point, right, as we electrify our homes, yeah, you might double your home’s electricity use, but you’re going from, you know, we’re talking about a couple of kilowatt hours here.

Um, that’s something we can handle. We can handle that with some batteries, we can handle that with some of the, Software analytics tools that utilities are looking at. Some of the other cool stuff, you know, happening in terms of technology. Like, utilities can figure that out. Data centers are a massive economic opportunity.

Right. I mean, this is, this is the economic engine of our time and of our state. Um, but they do create a massive challenge in terms of how are we going to power them. And, you know, the companies doing these data centers, Google, Meta, um, uh, Apple, Amazon, you know, the leaders, they all have carbon neutral goals as well.

So they’re trying to figure this out from their end. And, um, we’re going to need as much solar and wind and other renewables as we can. But again, this is where I say, if I had to put money on something, we’re going to have more nuclear in the state. The reason we’re going to have more nuclear in the state is you can’t power the data centers that we’re going to power 24 7 without some kind of 24 7 base load power.

And so what’s the role of local governments in all this? I mean, we’re talking about the state, we’re talking, you know, federal and world thing. Are, are there things that Hanover County can do? Are there things that the city of Richmond can do? Um, what, what’s their role in this whole energy structure? Just data Just data centers or the

And just data centers or the whole

I think all of it, right? Is it that they should be working to incentivize more solar? Should they be making it easier for some of these large scale projects? Is it that they need to educate their, um, list, you know, their residents about what’s going on in the energy field? I’ll

I mean Is it a cop out to say all of the above? I, I think, look, we’re, we’re really lucky in this state, in a way. Well, if your perspective is that you want a carbon free economy, that you want us to be net zero, you want to lower pollution, you want to be powering our day to day lives with renewables, we live in a great state for that.

A lot of states aren’t in the place that we’re at. Um, Virginia’s been a top ten state for solar for the last couple years, right? We have a wind project that’s really, actually, truly coming online. Um, so what we’ve done as a state, we’ve elected politicians both locally and at a state level that have pushed these policies through that have promoted a carbon free economy.

And as a result, we have utilities that are moving in that direction. Not just Dominion, Appalachian Power, also our co ops, Old Dominion Electric Co op, uh, Rappahannock, you know, that serves Hanover and other areas. Thank you very much. So our co ops are going this way, too. We’re going this way as a state.

And while putting solar and a battery on your house is great, buying an EV is great, buying an electric heat pump or electric water heater is great, you know, the best thing you can do is, as a voter, continue to support candidates, if you want,

that

that support those things.

Um,

That’s like, just from an impact standpoint, that’s probably the biggest impact you can have, right?

You, you vote for the electricity future that you want. Um, that’s why we say, you know, like, again, putting rooftop solar on your house is great. Buying an EV is great, but when we talk scale, when we talk transforming the economy, that’s really happening at the utility level. So, and things happen at the utility level because the regulatory environment and the business environment tells them to do certain things.

So that’s why we’re seeing these kind of huge projects happen. Now, it’s still important to have these local conversations about land use and is this the right place to put a solar farm? Should that solar farm, uh, maintain some level of agricultural, um,

you know,

output. And then we’re talking about something like agrivoltaics, which I won’t go into, but as a, is another sort of like how you kind of mash up a solar plus farming in the same place.

And as a thing that we’re, we’re looking at and, and working with. So I think all of these conversations about land use and the best way to do it is a really positive conversation because we should be doing this, but we should also trying to be not just making the grid clean, but also not making it super expensive.

Right? Like, um, the transition to solar power and clean power has happened faster in places like Massachusetts, California, Hawaii. You know what else happened? Their electricity costs went up significantly and way faster than they have here. So, there’s a little bit of trade off, right? Like, maybe our path forward is a little bit, it feels plodding at times, but at the same time, we’re all trying to do it while being cognizant of like, We don’t want, um, the, the cost of energy to just be too high for rate, for rate payers in, in the state of Virginia.

So, so we have this kind of push and pull in the state and ultimately I think that’s a good thing. Executive Director of Dominion Energy Innovation Center

Located in the center of the universe, town of Ashland in Hanover County. Thanks Adam.

very much.

 RGQ – SOLICITING

  On each episode of RVA’s Got Issues, we’ll answer a question from listeners like you. Something they want or need to know about their government or community. On this episode, RVA’s Got Questions about no soliciting signs. As always, our producer Amber Coles is here to help. Hi

Hi, Rich.

Amber, what you got for

for us?

Okay, so we have a question from an anonymous listener who says, My partner and I partner and I purchased a no soliciting sign for our property because of the high number of people knocking on our door. A person who works for the casino came to our home with a survey, this was a while back, and requested our input.

Okay. She said what she was doing was not soliciting, which appears to be correct per city code. What kind of language should we use instead, I’m assuming, to prevent people from knocking on her door?

and already looked up city code, so they’re like, doing advanced work. Yeah, exactly. So, do you understand, like, you get this no soliciting thing?

Well, earlier we were talking to Adam and he said he gets a lot of people coming for, like, pest control stuff, so I’m assuming it’s people, like, trying to, like, get you to buy things or, like, sign up for something?

I mean, back in the day, it used to be like Bible salesman or vacuum salesman, and now it is usually more people selling services like gutter guards or pest control or things like that. Um, but I’m no lawyer, but the local laws, it’s true. If you have a no soliciting sign, that’s to solicit to ask for something to ask for money to sell.

If people come up to your door and still try to sell you something, they are technically trespassing. In the city of Richmond, that’s a Class 1 misdemeanor. Um, some localities in our area actually require you to get a permit to sell door to door. Richmond does not require that, but Hanover County does. Um, although their exclusions are pretty wild.

You don’t need a permit if you’re 12 years old or less.

less. That’s right. That’s right. And if you want some of those sweet, sweet Girl Scouts

That’s right. That’s right. And if you want some of the sweet, sweet Girl Scout cookies and someone selling those door to door, then that’s okay as long as it’s 1200. But

listener didn’t ask about cookies or Russell from Up. They were asking about someone coming by for the casino. That was a big thing in Richmond a while back. Uh, really any kind of political cause that somebody comes by for. And, and it’s true that political door knocking, political door to door sales is not the same thing as selling cookies or selling a vacuum or selling pest

control.

Cause it’s less of you selling a physical thing and more of kind of like support. So I can see how there’s like a very fine line there.

right, and so there’s an actual different term for that. It’s not soliciting. If I come by and knock on your door asking about the casino or my candidacy for office, it’s called canvassing. Canvassing with an extra S at the end for some

okay. Where’d we get this

Yeah, so this is an old idea, I think, uh, like used to use a sheet of canvas to sift out flour.

Um, so the idea of canvassing is like sorting things out, sifting things out, discussing things. So a canvasser isn’t coming to your door to solicit. To get your money, they’re coming to your door to discuss, to canvas, to ask for your political support. Um, so if you don’t want them to do that, you don’t need a no soliciting sign, you need a no canvassing sign to keep the canvassers away.

so you’ve got a no soliciting for sales, no canvassing for kind of political needs, and then if you don’t want anyone to come to your door at all.

Then a no trespassing sign actually is your best bet. And that actually would mean you wouldn’t have to have, A billion signs, you could just have one. So if you have no trespassing, then really no one should come to your door unless you give them explicit permission to ahead of time.

to have it signed. Exactly, exactly

bet. Okay, so you got a couple options here, so you just have to think about who you actually want to come to your door. Exactly. And then put the sign out for that. Exactly right.

now Amber, what if listeners have another question about their local government or community?

If you have questions, listeners can go to our website at rvasgotissues. vpm. org and click on that ask a question button.

send us your questions. Thanks Amber.

Thanks, Rich. I  

  BLACK VIRGINIA THEATER ALLIANCE

  For this episode’s community spotlight, we are excited to have Tariq Kareem, the founder, managing director, artistic director, occasional sound designer, and probably A hundred other things for the Black Virginia Theater Alliance. Tariq, welcome.

Hi.

Tariq, there’s a kind of long standing story in movies or TV or theater, you know, like something bad is happening.

The community center is going to close. Old Man Thompson is foreclosing on Grandma’s house. And the only way to stop it is to put on a show. Why are you putting on a show?

Well, we are putting on a show  um, to hopefully make theater more accessible. Um, Ticket prices are insane for theater. Um, and it is an inaccessible art form.

And, um, for me, I always loved theater, but I didn’t have, like, the best accessibility to get it. And I was like, Now that I have the opportunity to make some theater, I should make it more accessible for people who are coming up behind me who want to do it or see it. Um, it, it changes you truly. It’s nothing like it, that audience relationship that you have like through the story.

Um, and so I think that’s, that’s what we put on shows.

doing. And so, how did this group that you’re involved in, the Black Virginia Theater Alliance, how did it start? And

in high school, um, and we were putting on a show Beauty and the Beast. Um,

the Middle East. Um, and

Yes, here in Henrico, actually, um, Henrico High School. Um, and we didn’t like the way that the process was going, like auditions and casting. Um, and there were like just a lot of inequities in the audition process through and through, um, and the show as well.

And so we were like, well, it’s senior year. We’re about to graduate anyways. Let’s, let’s raise some hell. And so, we decided to start a GoFundMe, and we raised money, and we got in contact with like some colleges, um, we formed a little small cohort of us who all felt the same, and we produced our first show, which was the Tiana Experience, um, and that’s kind of how we, how we kick started.

It was, it was a call of action at the time. It was like a, we were just like, it had built up over like years and years of like us feeling these things, and then we were like, let’s do something about it.

And so what, this, the Tiana experience, how is that different from just a, a standard, you know, musical that a, a high school would put on? What did you do differently?

So, A, it was making sure that equity was installed in our processes. And so we did our audition processes much differently. We auditioned, um, kind of blindly to a lot of factors that sometimes people bring into the rooms with them. Um, we assured that we only cared about what you brung to us and not what, um, backings you might have had that you were coming in the room with.

Um, we also, um, generally, um, made sure that our prices were really, really great. And so we got, like, such large, um, capacities of people to come. Um, because they were like, well, we couldn’t see this Disney show because it cost this much. And so we have a theater to come to now. It was also a black story and a black princess.

And seeing the little kids light up when they saw a princess come on stage every night, um, was a life changing experience. Also Everyone who was a part of the process, who were doing all the backing and the work, were about 17 to 18 years old. And theater is usually ran by old people, um, old white people specifically, and so to have a space that was completely ran by people of color and Gen Z, um, it’s, it was magical, honestly.

And you’ve also described it to our producers as the hardest thing that you’ve ever done in your life, right? Does that go along with

Yes, it was so, so stressful because we were responsible at that point, basically, for about 48 kids. Um, and mind you, all of us were still seniors in high school. And so this is the time where you’re getting ready for life, you’re getting ready for college, you’re trying to figure out what’s next. And we decided to start a theater company in the middle of that.

Um, and so it was, it was, It was definitely a struggle. Um, there were so many adversities. I know we had to like feed the kids. And like sometimes we would literally walk to Bojangles and get like 30 biscuits and like 40 pieces of chicken. And I’m like, okay, this is dinner tonight before we go into technical rehearsal.

Um, because we were figuring it out all on our own. Um, at the time it was hard to find like mentorship or adults who had experience to be able to help especially because we were just starting then. Um, so we were managing our own finances. We were managing our own operation and facilities. Um, all the things we were doing as like a group of about four of us.

What else are you facing in terms of obstacles?

are you facing in terms of obstacles? A lot of theaters have condensed their seasons, like, immensely and don’t do as many shows as they used to. In general, funding for the arts, like, federally, have, like, completely kind of gone down as well, and so not as many grants, and, um, federal funding.

Generally speaking, um, Gen Z in the world in general also is like kind of going into the streaming world. And so there is not as much of a need for the live arts as we once had, even though there still is a need for it in my opinion. But, um, you have Netflix and you have Hulu and you have all these things where you don’t have to come and buy a ticket and see our show.

And so I think that we are currently in the process of trying to overcome and figuring out how can we Cause we are a Gen Z theater. Um, and Gen Z, and a lot of other generations are this, but we are the artist generation. And all that means is that you’re a generation that has went through some type of crisis, some type of war, some type of pandemic, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, and so we are a generation that has went through that. And so there are a lot of artists who are in this generation. Um, and so we want to figure out how to overcome that and create a space where they hopefully want to come and take theater. Um, and it isn’t through a screen. So

Um, and so, it was, it was something.

it was something, but you pulled it off. Right. And you talked about the magic of it. So clearly that magic was more important than the, the work in the sense, like it was definitely more positive experience because you decided to try to keep it going.

Right. And so how have you kept it going?

We’ve kept it going, I think, by continuing to stay affirmed in our mission and our purpose. Um, and for me, it’s feeding little Tariq. Um, I go to school for theater, um, and I’m a professional stage manager. Um, and when I was deciding to go into This career, I simply just didn’t see me, and I didn’t feel affirmed.

And so to know that I provide that to, um, little kids of color who are coming up who may want to be artists, who may want to engage in this art form, and they can see and hear themselves in this art form, um, it’s a different experience. Currently we are Richmond’s only um, Black owned theater that’s in operation.

And we’re the only theater like us. And so, um, We consult other larger theaters as well. So knowing that we create change within already embedded system and process also keeps us going. Um, also our patrons, our audiences, um, they’re kick ass. They love our shows. Um, they appreciate us. We appreciate them.

And so I think knowing that there is a hunger for what we’re doing, um, and to know that this process of liberation and activism, um, and changing the world for lack of better words, it’s kind of like an endless process and that in a Celsius energy drink also.

energy drink

keeps me going

me going. Not a sponsorship, but definitely it’s a big part of your life, it sounds like, right? Uh, what are some of the other ways, so you’ve already talked about, uh, you know, bringing in, it’s a, it’s a black owned theater, right, and, and having kids see themselves in ways that they don’t in traditionally white spaces.

What are some of the other ways you’re working to make theater more inclusive? You talked about the pricing, for example. What else are you all doing?

to make theater more inclusive? You talked about the pricing, for example. What else do you all do? know the kids that we’re teaching and make sure that we make them feel seen and heard in that process.

Um, we also do a lot of community engagement. We do a lot of volunteering. Um, we also, like, one of the ways that we do, um, like, make things more accessible is we do, like, a can go show. And so every show that we have, you bring a can go, you can come in the show and we also get to donate those can go’s to people who are in need for hunger.

Um, and so

uh,

Combining advocacy with the arts and making sure that we like have that consistent baby kind of Has been a really really great way that we have been able to make theater more accessible as far as equity There’s generally a lack of black shows happening in Richmond when it comes to theater Um, if you look at you know, a lot of the largest theater seasons You don’t see that many black shows and so just providing the opportunity and space for black actors black performers black scene designers, etc To be like hey, you know Come.

This is a space for you. Let’s make some art. That alone has been such a large way for us to reach our, um, Black arts community. Um, and also, we invite all people to our audiences. We don’t exclude anyone. And so, when you may not be a person of color, but you experience one of our shows, you start to ask questions.

You start to want to have conversations. Um, you start to want to put people aside and wonder the kind of, And so what are some of the challenges you’re facing? It sounds like the, you

change. And so what are some of the challenges you’re facing? It sounds like the, you know, the lack of

of

shows, the lack of, of, of opportunities for black actors and, and performers and, and behind the scenes is an opportunity for you.

But that’s also probably a challenge, right? In the sense of. Not having that community elsewhere. You’re kind of having to build it from scratch. What else are you facing in terms of obstacles?

are you facing in terms of obstacles? A lot of theaters have condensed their seasons, like, immensely and don’t do as many shows as they used to. In general, funding for the arts, like, federally, have, like, completely kind of gone down as well, and so not as many grants, and, um, federal funding.

Generally speaking, um, Gen Z in the world in general also is like kind of going into the streaming world. And so there is not as much of a need for the live arts as we once had, even though there still is a need for it in my opinion. But, um, you have Netflix and you have Hulu and you have all these things where you don’t have to come and buy a ticket and see our show.

And so I think that we are currently in the process of trying to overcome and figuring out how can we Cause we are a Gen Z theater. Um, and Gen Z, and a lot of other generations are this, but we are the artist generation. And all that means is that you’re a generation that has went through some type of crisis, some type of war, some type of pandemic, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, and so we are a generation that has went through that. And so there are a lot of artists who are in this generation. Um, and so we want to figure out how to overcome that and create a space where they hopefully want to come and take theater. Um, and it isn’t through a screen. So

that’s, you’re feeding him a little bit. Like, what’s your history with theater? Uh, right, you started producing shows at a very young

Yes, so I first went to go see Lion King was my, we call it our theater awakening. Um, and so that was my first show that I got took into on Broadway. Um, it was at the Audrey actually. Um, I left that show immediately that night and I was like, okay. I’m doing the Circle of Life tomorrow morning for my grandma.

I got my cousin and I’m pulling my first all nighter ever. We got some construction paper, some milk gallons, some like crutches, um, just a whole bunch of different stuff and we made them all different animals. Um, I made costumes that night. Um, I woke up my cousins at 5 a. m and we did our first run and our tech

our first

Um, we pulled up Circle of Life on the TV, the instrumental. I made my grandma sit down. She had the front row VIP seat and we ran the entire number in front of her that morning. And that’s when I was like, okay, I think you’re a theater weirdo and this is for you. Uh, and that was kind of like the start of, um, me getting into like this theater world.

And so, what are your plans for the future?

What’s, what’s gonna, coming down the pike for the, the Black Theatre Alliance?

We are producing our Fourth show season, next season. It’s titled Women at Ebony. It’s a season that’s dedicated to black women and protecting black women. Um, and so all the shows will be black playwrights, um, black women playwrights specifically, and all of the main leads will be, um, black women.

And next season we really, really, really want to hone in on our, um, activism and advocacy. Figuring out ways how to collaborate with other non profit organizations to see how we can help and aid them in their processes. Um, a big thing that has birthed from Meese Arts organization is I think that a lot of other younger people are realizing I can start something, or I can start a non profit, etc, etc.

Um, and so we’re also looking into channels of how to have a program where teens or youth can be able to learn how can we make our own organization to be able to meet whatever needs there are.

So sort of like, not only just growing interest in the arts, but seeding out organizations as well for, for justice.

Right, like, um, a pipeline almost. Um, our end goal, we’re very grassroots, but our end goal is to liberate and be a space for all people. Um, and so whatever that looks like, we want to make sure that we just create an aid in curating a path where people can walk and feel seen and heard. And so where can people find your shows, your performances?

We are all over Richmond. We’re in the Art District. We’ll have a show at Virginia Repertory Theatre Gym next season. We actually have a show also happening in the Henrico Theatre next season. We do a few pop ups that are like in parks. Um, but we don’t say anything because we want it just to be a surprise.

Um, and you can look on our social medias and website to see where we are specifically next season.

next season.

Tariq Kareem is founder of the Black Virginia Theatre Alliance. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you.

 

That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Adam Sled and Tariq Kareem RVA’s got issues, but we need you to tell us what those issues are. Submit a question or tell us about something exciting going on in your community at our website, rvasgotissues. vpm. org. Join us next time when RVA’s got issues with, well, if you want to know, subscribe to us wherever you download podcasts. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Amber Coles and edited by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Meg Lindholm is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. I’m your host, Rich Marr. Thanks for listening.