about the plant
The plant would be co-located with the existing Chesterfield Power Station, a largely-retired decades-old coal fired-power plant, next to the Dutch Gap Conservation Area.
Community members have raised significant concerns about the proposed plant’s impact on increasing energy bills, public health and the environment.
How the plant would work
In gas-fired power plants that rely only on a gas turbine, the process goes like this:
- Gas is extracted via hydraulic fracturing (i.e. fracking) or other means.
- Gas is compressed and transported via Transco, EGTS, Cove Point, and/or Transcanada interstate pipelines into Virginia.
- Gas is delivered to the site via two distribution companies — CGV and VNG.
- Air is drawn into a compressor.
- The compressed air is led into a combustor, where it is mixed with fuel and the air-fuel mixture is ignited.
- The pressurized gas resulting from the combustion causes the turbine blades to spin.
- This spinning motion is transmitted to an alternator which converts it into electricity.
- Polluted exhaust air is released. This gas plant will emit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter2.5 pollution.
Why we're in this fight
To stop rising electricity bills
- State regulators predict that the average Dominion customer’s energy bill could increase by 120% by 2039, before accounting for inflation.
- This plant is intended to meet the rising energy demand driven almost entirely by huge data centers owned by the wealthiest corporations in the world, yet everyday Virginians would be forced to foot this bill.
- An alternative portfolio of clean energy, storage and energy efficiency could meet the same amount of energy demand as the proposed plant, but at less than half the cost.
- Dominion’s March 2025 filing at the SCC revealed the total cost to ratepayers will reach at least $4.5 billion by 2064—a figure that does not include the increasingly expensive cost of fuel.
To protect a vulnerable community
- Annually the plant would release more than 1100 tons of toxic air pollutants (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter2.5) linked to serious health risks, increased emergency room visits and death.
- More than 56,000 residents are estimated to live within a five-mile radius of the proposed plant. The surrounding area also includes 20 places of worship, eleven schools and the local YMCA.1,2,3,4
- The plant will have significant impacts on the health of nearby residents in Chesterfield and Henrico County, a community that has already shouldered the burden of living in the shadow of a coal-fired power plant since 1944.
- The community will continue to experience coal ash pollution through 2035, the time period required to remove the approximately 15 million cubic yards of coal ash stored at the same site, in close proximity to the James River.
To prevent environmental impacts
- The plant will increase Dominion’s total annual carbon emissions by 2.2 million tons of CO2 equivalents. This is the equivalent of adding 489,000 cars to our roads every year.
- Methane, the main component of gas, has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years that it enters the atmosphere.
- Increased carbon and methane emissions lead to more extreme weather throughout the state, including more intense hurricanes and flooding, rising sea levels and declining biodiversity.
Long-term consequences
Dominion Energy’s latest long-term plan includes building 5,934 megawatts of new gas generation over the next 15 years—equivalent to nearly six Chesterfield gas plants. The Chesterfield proposal is more than a standalone project; it’s the start of a broader push to lock Virginians into decades of reliance on expensive methane gas infrastructure.
Approving this project would pave the way for a new generation of pollution. The action would undermine Virginia’s ability to transition to cleaner, more affordable energy. At the same time, it would burden Virginians with rising electric bills and long-term health impacts.
What you can do
Public opposition to this project is vital—and soon, we’ll be calling on you to submit comments to both the State Corporation Commission and the Department of Environmental Quality. Sign up for our email list to be notified about action opportunities and updates on the project.
Sources:
1. U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2018-2022 5-Year Estimates (ACS 2022).
2. United States Environmental Protection Agency. 2025 version 2.3. EJScreen. Retrieved: January 30th, 2025, from https://ejscreen.epa.gov/mapper/ejscreen_SOE.aspx.
3. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), “Places of Worship,” 2020, https://nepassisttool.epa.gov/nepassist/metadata_soe.aspx?lyrIndex=2&service=NEPAssist/Places.