Governor Spanberger’s 2026 VA Energy Plan Explained

Virginia state law requires the publication of a forward-looking energy plan every four years. The 2026 plan announced by Governor Spanberger on Oct 1 outlines a series of possible approaches to tackling the accelerating electricity demands brought on by data centers while maintaining and advancing the state’s clean energy goals.

For the first time in developing a Virginia Energy Plan, public input — more than 3,000 public survey responses, six regional meetings, a public town hall, and 20 industry-specific listening sessions — was paired with rigorous energy-system modeling and analysis.

Instead of dictating a singular, rigid path, the administration modeled five different scenarios to show lawmakers, utilities, and the public the exact costs, land-use trade-offs, and grid impacts of different choices:

• No Policy Goals: Removes VCEA and RGGI requirements, showing the path forward without state clean energy and carbon policies.
• Current Policies (as of October 2026): Reflects Virginia’s current VCEA and RGGI policy requirements without assuming additional major policy changes.
• Distributed Flexibility Scenario: Builds on current policy with 10 GW of DERs by 2045, 10% demand flexibility from data centers, and up to 5 GW of non-combustion gas bridge resources.
• Distributed Flexibility Scenario with Moderate Solar/In-State Priority: Applies the Distributed Flexibility policies while reducing annual solar deployment limit from 1.8 GW to 1.2 GW 7 and reducing reliance on out-of-state capacity purchases from 20 GW to 10 GW.
• Distributed Flexibility Scenario with No New Gas: Applies the Distributed Flexibility policies but does not allow new natural gas generation—neither combustion nor non-combustion—to be built in Virginia.

The projected costs for these policy scenarios are summarized in this table from the 2026 Virginia Energy Plan.

Spanberger’s administration proposes that the most affordable path forward for Virginia is to focus on renewable energy resources, battery storage, demand management, and emerging energy technologies by focusing on distributed flexibility. It’s worth noting that none of these plans include reducing the percentage of power we “import” from out of state – that remains consistent at 30% and regional cooperation remains an important factor.

“I know there are some who think that the commonwealth could potentially save money if we walked away from our clean energy goals through the [Virginia] Clean Economy Act, or we walked away from [the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative] yet again,” Spanberger said at a press conference at the state capitol on Thursday. “But this model quantitatively disputes that notion.”

Because the plan itself does not enact policy, the administration is using these findings to build a bipartisan legislative package for the upcoming General Assembly session. Lawmakers will vote on specific bills—like streamlining solar permitting or adjusting data center taxes.

There are pros and cons of all the options beyond costs, such as land use and jobs, so we’ll be watching carefully to see how this plays out in the next few months and during the 2027 General Assembly Session. The executive summary is a fairly digestible 17 pages, so check that out if you want to learn more. If you’re really into the nitty gritty, the entire plan is available online as well.