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byline: Kate Andrews

Making do

Todd Estes, vice president of workforce development and innovation at Virginia Peninsula Community College, says the college’s new Toano trades facility is more accessible for students. Photo by Mark Rhodes

A flat tire can mean different things to different people. Maybe it’s a postponed appointment and a call to AAA. Or maybe you have to get a ride to work from your spouse.

But for some folks, a flat tire can start a snowball effect.

“For so many, that flat tire, that’s the end, right? It means they’re missing a shift at work. If they miss a shift at work, and they’re an hourly employee, they’ve lost a day’s pay, and they still have to repair that tire. And, ‘Oh, am I going to school now, too?’ That’s how quickly it can unravel for far too many people,” says Paula Pando, president of Reynolds Community College, based in metro Richmond. “I’m going to say in our region — but I would say across the country — that they’re one life emergency from being completely derailed from fulfilling their potential.”

Meeting students where they are and helping them succeed is part of the mission behind the Virginia Community College System, which has 23 state-funded colleges with 40 campuses serving more than 200,000 students across the commonwealth.

People attend community college for many reasons, but getting certifications and training for desirable careers is a major motivation for many, especially students who are older than average college age and often juggle family and work responsibilities with their educations. Pando says the state’s community college students often are the ones who view a flat tire as a major obstacle, not just an inconvenience.

Similarly, community colleges are working with shoestring budgets, with relatively tight state funding.

Do community college students need English as a Second Language classes? Of course. Do they need remote learning classes? Sure thing. Scholarship money? Yep.

And at many of the state’s community colleges, leaders are figuring out other ways to bring learning directly to students, or at least within a bus or shuttle ride. Virginia Highlands Community College offers free bus trips to the Abingdon college from the city of Bristol and Washington and Smyth counties, while Eastern Shore Community College reimburses toll payments to students who commute via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Most other schools have agreements with local public transportation systems that allow students to ride for free or at reduced fares.

For Pando, accessibility also means offering more classes at Reynolds’ downtown Richmond campus, which is convenient to the regional bus line, and offering free shuttle service to its Parham Road campus in Henrico County.

For Virginia Peninsula Community College, which covers the region of James City County, Williamsburg, Hampton and Newport News, it means building new satellite classrooms.

“If I want to get to a program that’s only offered on one campus, or I don’t have the classes I need at my Williamsburg campus — if you had to rely on public transportation, you now have to figure out two different bus companies and what their schedules are,” says VPCC President Towuanna Porter Brannon. “If you’re traveling what for me is a 25-minute ride in my car from Newport News to Williamsburg, it could possibly [take] two hours for a student who is relying on public transportation.”

Answering student needs

To respond to these challenges, VPCC opened a trades center in Toano in 2023, offering welding and commercial driver’s license classes, which previously were only offered in Hampton, about 37 miles away.

But building new classrooms and hiring faculty, especially for specialty workforce programs, is not cheap — and community colleges can’t rely on tuition to pay for them.

At $163 per credit hour, Virginia’s community colleges offer the lowest-cost postsecondary education in the state. For most of VPCC’s students, tuition is affordable, Brannon notes, but transportation has been a big roadblock for some students when classes are offered in only one location, especially for hands-on skills training classes.

“The individuals in [the Toano] part of our service region, it’s just probably impossible for them to train at our Hampton campus,” explains Todd Estes, VPCC’s vice president of workforce development and innovation. “We were able to open that facility and offer four different trades training courses in 2023 with the help of a U.S. [Department of Labor] grant, and we also are in the process of opening another facility in southeast Newport News, which is the other end of our service area, and a historically underserved community.”

Elsewhere in the state, colleges have purchased or leased older buildings to convert them into classrooms. Wytheville Community College opened WCC WEST (standing for workforce, education and skills training) in Marion, in a former auto dealership purchased by the Smyth County Economic Development Authority. And next year, Paul D. Camp Community College is set to open a new nursing and allied health facility in the former Tidewater News building in Franklin, a project funded in part by the Sentara Foundation.

In October, Danville, Southside Virginia and Patrick & Henry community colleges signed an agreement to expand building trades programs in Southern Virginia, collaborating with K-12 schools and regional business partners. 

Tidewater Community College, VPCC’s neighbor to the southeast, partners with the Virginia Ship Repair Association on its maritime trades program, says Laura Hanson, associate vice president of corporate solutions at TCC. Students complete training in welding, pipefitting, marine painting and other trades in two or three weeks.

“One of our motivators at TCC … is accessibility for our students, and our current skilled trades academy is in Portsmouth,” Hanson says. “So, when you factor in tunnels, [students] have a hard time with that, especially if you’re unemployed. So, our next goal is to acquire a location in Norfolk. And then the next step, we are renovating a building on our Virginia Beach campus,” which will also host skilled training courses for maritime trades, including offshore wind.

Set to open in June 2025, VPCC’s Newport News satellite center is a response to achieve “geographic accessibility” in a community that “historically has had transportation issues,” Estes says. “That community is not as far as, say, Toano, but if you’re talking about public transportation, it’s still an hour and a half or two hours to get to our Hampton campus, which is just prohibitive for anybody in that area.”

The Newport News facility will offer training for three maritime trades and four construction trades, and its proximity to major employer Newport News Shipbuilding will be a big benefit to students, Estes says. “So, that community will have that direct connection of training within their community, and then employment less than a mile away.”

Newport News Shipbuilding is one of multiple large employers with big expansion plans in Virginia, hoping to hire 19,000 people over the next decade for its nuclear shipbuilding workforce. And that’s just one work sector. Across the state, businesses and other institutions need to fill vacancies in health care, vehicle repair, teaching and child care, as well as in the growing industries of renewable energy, cybersecurity and manufacturing, among other fields. Many employers and state officials are looking to community colleges to train the next generation of these employees.

A heavy responsibility

The community college system is tasked with a large segment of the state’s workforce development strategy. The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a collaboration between VCCS and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, trains workers for specific job duties at no cost to businesses relocating or expanding in Virginia.

Additionally, the community colleges’ FastForward and G3 programs, created in the past decade, are specifically geared toward people training for in-demand careers, and some courses take less than a month to complete. According to the college system, more than 53,000 students have completed FastForward programs, seeing average wage increases of more than $11,000 within 12 months of receiving their new credentials.

Total enrollment in Virginia’s community colleges has grown for six consecutive semesters, after about 10 years of declining enrollment. Approximately 230,000 students enrolled in 2024.

The state has nearly 250,000 unfilled jobs, according to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, and a big reason is a dearth of relevant job skills among Virginians. In a February op-ed published by Cardinal News, VCCS Chancellor David Doré and Virginia Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Barry DuVal noted that 3.2 million Virginians lack postsecondary credentials that would qualify some of them for open jobs.

Community college students, many of whom stay in their communities after completion, are often a good fit for these jobs, but Doré and DuVal note that for every dollar spent on students at four-year public universities in Virginia, the state invests only 57 cents per community college student, which impacts how many classes community colleges can offer and leaves institutions pursuing outside funding.

The community college system, Doré says, plans to ask for $90 million in one-time funding from the state for the 2025 fiscal year, going toward facility improvements, equipment and program startup costs. VCCS also expects to request an additional $46.2 million in recurring state funding, which would go toward hiring additional faculty and support staff, as well as other costs associated with expanding educational programs.

Additionally, VCCS is asking the state to increase its investment in nondegree program FastForward by $32.5 million, Doré says. He also hopes legislators will change the funding mechanism in Virginia so that the state automatically allocates more money for higher-cost workforce programs that train in-demand professionals such as nurses, dental hygienists, welders and mechanics.

In the meantime, private and public sector partners are a crucial funding source for new projects and expansions.

“I would love to get more funding, but I can just say that I’m really very impressed by how entrepreneurial our presidents are,” Doré says. “Our presidents are really looking for every opportunity to get investment to build these workforce centers, but … it’s my hope that we’re going to make our case to the General Assembly to get funding for these programs.” 

Reynolds Community College now offers HVAC and other skilled trades classes at its downtown Richmond campus, which is on the city’s bus line. Photo courtesy Reynolds Community College

‘Rob Peter to pay Paul’

As Pando and Brannon note, to fill the state’s open jobs, community college students need training courses available and accessible to them, and that’s not always easy, especially when its costs a lot more to build a welding training workshop than a traditional classroom.

“When we start talking about needing to triple the number of welders, OK, that welding job — that’s a million-dollar lab,” Pando explains. “Finding a welding instructor who is going to take a pay cut to come teach welding is another challenge, and that story is replicated in virtually all of our programs — HVAC instruction, health care programs, our automotive program.”

Asked how her college affords new high-tech facilities, Brannon replies with a laugh, “Begging,” as well as applying for “tons of grants.”

In Virginia, “there’s not a lot of infusion of state funds that help us buy new equipment … to stay competitive with what someone may be experiencing in the workplace,” Brannon adds. “And so, a lot of the ways that we have been getting funding is to ask [for donations] from our local businesses — people who are actually interested in hiring, who have a high demand for those positions.”

Ultimately, Pando says, “the way we do it is through aggressive fundraising. I mean, we’re constantly hat in hand. I had to raise money and do a song and dance and rob Peter to pay Paul to build our automotive tech building, which is modest but beautiful.”

Reynolds has partnered with Richmond city government, Loyalty Toyota and VCU Health, among other institutions, to staff and fund workforce training programs to produce auto mechanics, nurses and truck drivers. The community college’s automotive program includes a specialty master technician course for Toyotas and Lexuses, and students work at Loyalty Toyota service centers around the Richmond area, earning wages while learning on the job.

“Then the other three days are in lab with us,” Pando says, “and those students are pretty much guaranteed a job interview because they’ve been [essentially] interviewing for a few years. It’s an excellent example of an earn-and-learn program that keeps students from having to work a job at McDonald’s.”

Similarly, VPCC has received funding from Newport News Shipbuilding and other partners to help them hire and retain more faculty members, as well as advising the college on what skills employers need.

“I don’t believe we’ve gotten a generous donation from a donor in a while. We’ve been really lucky to have a community of business partners to support us, but we’re all dealing with a very similar, small profit margin,” Brannon says. “So, a lot of what we’ve been doing is trying to advocate at the state level for some sort of parity and funding when it comes to these high-cost programs.”

Freelance writer Courtney Mabeus-Brown contributed to this article.

At A Glance: Virginia Community College System

Founded

The Virginia Technical College System started in 1964 with two schools: Roanoke Technical College and Northern Virginia Technical College. In 1966, it was renamed the Virginia Community College System, and by 1972, it had expanded to all 23 community colleges in existence today. In 1987, the system began offering dual enrollment courses, allowing high school students to earn college credits at community colleges, and in 1996, the system launched online classes. In 2016, the General Assembly created the nation’s first short-term, pay-for-performance workforce training program, now known as FastForward. Today, VCCS has 40 campuses across the state, with approximately 230,000 students enrolled in 2024. 

Enrollment*

Total enrollment: 207,108
Full-time students: 89,338

Student profile**

Male: 42%
Female: 56%
Unknown: 2%
Students of color: 47%

Academic programs

VCCS offers hundreds of programs of study at its 23 colleges statewide. They include two-year associate degrees, one-year certificates and career studies certificates. Some programs offer college credits that are transferrable to four-year colleges and universities, and others offer noncredit programs geared toward training for specific careers, including welding, auto mechanics and HVAC technology.

Teaching Faculty*

Full-time: 2,052
Part-time: 4,168

Tuition**

$163 per credit hour

*2023-24 academic year
**Spring 2024

Dominion completes $2.6B sale of stake in offshore wind farm

Dominion Energy has completed its $2.6 billion sale of a 50% noncontrolling stake in its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project to investor Stonepeak, the Fortune 500 utility announced Tuesday.

This transaction and several other recent sales reduce Dominion’s debt by approximately $21 billion, meeting a goal the utility set in a recent business review, according to its news release Wednesday.

The Stonepeak deal was announced in February and was estimated at nearly $3 billion, a number that went down to $2.6 billion at closing. Dominion will retain full operational control of construction and operations of the $9.8 billion CVOW project, under construction 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. As of August, the 50th monopile foundation for CVOW’s 174 turbines was installed, and Dominion officials said in October the project, set to be complete in 2026, is on time and on budget.

Dominion’s deal with Stonepeak improves its estimated 2024 consolidated FFO-to-debt by approximately 1%, as well as lowering risks and reducing its overall financing needs during the wind farm’s construction.

Dominion has announced several acquisitions and sales over the past year:

  • In July, a Dominion subsidiary announced its plan to purchase the 40,000-acre Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease from Avangrid for $160 million.
  • In August, the utility won a 176,505-acre lease about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for a $17.65 million bid in a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction.
  • Last year, Dominion sold its remaining interest in the Cove Point natural gas liquefaction facility in Maryland to Berkshire Hathaway Energy for $3.5 billion.
  • In March, the utility completed its sale of East Ohio Gas to Canadian pipeline and energy company Enbridge for $6.6 billion.
  • In June, Dominion sold subsidiaries Questar Gas and Wexpro to Enbridge for $4.3 billion.
  • Earlier this month, Dominion closed on its $3.2 billion sale of the Gastonia, North Carolina, natural gas utility Public Service Co. of North Carolina to Enbridge.

“We are pleased to partner with Stonepeak on CVOW, which continues to proceed on-time and on-budget, consistent with our previously communicated timing and cost expectations,” Dominion Chair, President and CEO Bob Blue said in a statement. “Stonepeak is one of the world’s largest infrastructure investors in large energy projects such as offshore wind, and its financial participation in CVOW will benefit both the project and the people who will rely on electricity from CVOW to keep the lights on and fuel economic growth in the commonwealth.”

Stonepeak, headquartered in New York, will fund 50% of remaining project costs, according to the statement.

Former NFL, U.Va. football player indicted on embezzlement charges

Real estate developer Christopher A. Harrison, a former University of Virginia and NFL football player, was indicted last week on federal embezzlement charges connected to a downtown Richmond residential project and Petersburg’s former Ramada Inn, which he purchased in 2018 to redevelop.

According to a news release by the U.S. Department of Justice, a grand jury at the Eastern District of Virginia federal court returned an indictment Oct. 15 against Harrison, charging him with wire fraud and mail fraud, which carry a maximum 20-year prison sentence; engaging in monetary transactions with criminally derived property, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years; and aggravated identity theft, which has a mandatory minimum prison term of two years.

A Washington, D.C., resident, Harrison allegedly used more than $22 million in bank loans for development and construction of two development projects in Richmond and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for other uses, including expenses related to the Petersburg Ramada Inn.

The DOJ alleges that Harrison secured a $14.4 million loan from Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust to redevelop the Model Tobacco building, a downtown Richmond residence in which his company was investing $59 million to build 203 high-end apartments. He also secured a $7.7 million loan for Whitaker Park, a Winston-Salem residential development project.

Instead of using the funds for those projects, “Harrison skimmed loan proceeds … by first creating a straw demolition company, Virginia Demolition LLC, that had no employees, demolition equipment or office space,” according to the DOJ. He allegedly forged and falsified documents that purported to show that Virginia Demolition had done actual work on the two commercial real estate projects, and “is alleged to have doctored and inflated invoices in the name of a separate construction vendor for Model Tobacco, inducing CRBT to disburse inflated loan amounts. In total, Harrison allegedly submitted over a dozen falsified invoices and lien waivers in draw requests to induce CRBT to disburse over $3.6 million in loan proceeds to Harrison to satisfy purported expenditures.”

Some of that money, the DOJ alleges, went toward expenses related to the shuttered Petersburg Ramada Inn, which Harrison purchased in 2018 and promised to replace with a $20 million multiuse development that included a hotel, 100 apartments and retail space. However, in 2021, the City of Petersburg sued Harrison’s company, C.A. Harrison Cos., after the former hotel — considered an eyesore — was still standing. In 2020, Harrison said he had trouble financing the Petersburg project after he lost a $5 million tourism grant from the city, and in 2022, he sold the property back to the city.

According to the DOJ, he “allegedly used fraud proceeds to pay legal fees to a law firm for Harrison’s litigation against the City of Petersburg pertaining to the project,” as well as for personal use, including Rolex watches, mortgage payments, home landscaping, and tuition and tutoring for his child.

Atlantic Union to buy Maryland’s Sandy Spring Bank for $1.6B

Atlantic Union Bank is expanding further into Northern Virginia and Maryland with the $1.6 billion purchase of Maryland’s Sandy Spring Bank, an acquisition announced Monday.

The two banks’ parent companies, Atlantic Union Bankshares and Sandy Spring Bancorp, have entered into a merger agreement that would create a combined bank with $39.2 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, they said in a news release.

Based in Olney, Maryland, Sandy Spring had $14.4 billion in assets, $11.7 billion in total deposits and $11.5 billion in total loans as of Sept. 30, and it has 53 branch offices in Maryland and Northern Virginia. Upon completion of the deal, Richmond-based Atlantic Union will have total deposits of $32 billion and gross loans of $29.8 billion, according to Monday’s statement.

Sandy Spring also has two wealth management subsidiaries, Rembert Pendleton Jackson and West Financial Services, that will be part of the acquisition, and will approximately double Atlantic Union’s wealth management business, increasing its assets under management by more than $6.5 billion.

“At our 2018 investor day, I noted that part of our long-term vision was to complete the ‘Golden Crescent’ from Baltimore through Washington, D.C., and Richmond to Hampton Roads, and recreate a banking franchise that had not existed since the 1990s,” John C. Asbury, Atlantic Union’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “With today’s announcement of our partnership with Sandy Spring, Atlantic Union will create a preeminent regional bank, with Virginia as its linchpin, that spans the lower mid-Atlantic into the Southeast and that is committed to the communities it serves.”

By deposit market share in the state as of June 30, Sandy Spring Bank is the largest regional bank in Maryland and the seventh largest in the state overall. By deposit market share in Virginia as of June 30, Atlantic Union Bank is Virginia’s largest regional bank and its fifth largest bank overall.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, each outstanding share of Sandy Spring common stock will be converted into the right to receive 0.9 shares of Atlantic Union common stock, a value of about $34.93 per Sandy Spring common share, based on Atlantic Union’s closing stock price on Oct. 18.

Both banks’ boards have approved the agreement, and the banks expect to complete the transaction by the end of the third quarter of 2025, they said in a statement.

Monday’s announcement follows Atlantic Union’s acquisition of Danville’s American National Bank and Trust, which was completed in April. The $507 million deal was announced in July 2023.

Atlantic Union has 129 branches throughout Virginia and in parts of North Carolina and Maryland, according to Monday’s announcement.

In terms of potential consolidation of Virginia branches, Asbury said during a virtual press conference: “Where we see overlap, we have identified potentially five locations in Northern Virginia that would be candidates for consolidation simply because of their very close proximity,” but said it would be premature to provide details on those locations.

Additionally, he said, “We would anticipate retaining 100% of all branch personnel. The branch network in the area is large enough to absorb them.”

Branches wouldn’t close until after systems are converted post-merger, which would likely be the first quarter of 2026, said Bill Cimino, senior vice president and director of investor relations for Atlantic Union.

The bank is also planning to open three branches — one in Baltimore, one in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and one in Prince William County — but does not yet have specifics as it needs to assess location options, Asbury said.

“Our partnership with Atlantic Union is the right long-term decision for our shareholders, clients and employees. This combination will deliver enhanced scale, diversity in the market, and capabilities for our clients, and it will provide greater opportunities for our employees to grow within a larger organization,” Daniel J. Schrider, Sandy Spring’s chair, president and CEO, said in a statement. “Sandy Spring Bank and Atlantic Union Bank share a people-first approach to doing business and serving our communities, and together we will add even greater value to the individuals, families and businesses we serve across our expanded footprint.”

Schrider and two other Sandy Spring board members will join Atlantic Union’s board upon closing of the transaction.

Hardee to retire as Lawson Cos. CEO in 2025

Lawson Cos., the Norfolk-based residential real estate development and construction company, announced Thursday its president and CEO, Carl Hardee, will retire at the end of 2025.

Aaron Phipps, Lawson’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, is expected to succeed Hardee, who was named president and CEO in 2016, according to the company’s announcement. Hardee joined Lawson in 1991 as a regional property manager at Lawson Realty Corp., one of the company’s subsidiaries, and became its president in 1996. He then was promoted to vice president and chief operating officer of the parent company in 1999.

“It has been an incredible journey growing alongside Lawson. I am immensely proud of what we’ve achieved together as a team, and I have the utmost confidence in Aaron to lead Lawson into the next phase of its growth,” Hardee said in a statement. “Aaron’s leadership and financial acumen have already strengthened our position, and I know he will continue to drive the company forward.”

Aaron Phipps

Lawson, which has 190 employees, was started in Hampton Roads and is still based there, but it’s expanded into Richmond, Lynchburg, Roanoke and Woodbridge. During Hardee’s tenure, the company grew from 2,500 units under management to a development, construction and property management business with 5,100 units in its portfolio. It specializes in multifamily properties and has more than 30 new Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) communities with 3,200 affordable apartments, according to Lawson.

Phipps joined Lawson in 2013 in his current position, and he previously worked for private and publicly traded investment real estate companies, specializing in accounting and financial reporting. He is a graduate of Purdue University, while Hardee, a Gulf War veteran, is an alumnus of Virginia Military Institute.

VCU wins approval to start lung transplant surgeries

VCU Health announced Wednesday it has received approval to start lung transplantation surgeries at its Hume-Lee Transplant Center, becoming one of three facilities in the state providing lung transplants.

“This will be extremely beneficial for the hundreds of patients living with advanced lung disease in Eastern and Central Virginia,” Dr. Marlon Levy, interim VCU Health System Authority CEO and interim senior vice president of VCU Health Sciences, said in a statement. “It removes the barrier of long-distant travel for those awaiting transplants and completes the continuum of care VCU Health can provide to those patients.”

Richmond-based United Network for Organ Sharing approved VCU Health’s application to conduct lung transplant surgeries, which often must take place quickly after an organ is received — and for some patients, requiring long-distance travel and staying away from home for lengthy periods.

According to VCU Health, the Hume-Lee Transplant Center in Richmond performs 37% of all transplants in Virginia. More than 1 million people in Virginia have chronic lung disease, and there are 930 people waiting for a lung transplant nationally, including roughly 30 Virginians. Inova Health System and UVA Health provide lung transplants, too.

“We are thrilled to expand our services to include lung transplantation,” said Dr. David Bruno, director of the Hume-Lee Transplant Center. “This milestone reflects our unwavering commitment to say ‘yes’ to more patients in need, ultimately saving more lives and offering renewed hope to those battling advanced lung diseases.”

J-Lab scientist to receive nuclear physics prize

Volker D. Burkert, a scientist at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, aka the Jefferson Lab, has been chosen to receive the 2025 Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics, the lab announced Wednesday.

Burkert has worked at the U.S. Department of Energy lab for 39 years of its 40-year history, and is being recognized for his work in developing “high-performance instrumentation for large acceptance spectrometers that have enabled breakthroughs in fundamental nuclear physics through electroproduction measurements of exclusive processes,” according to the prize citation. The American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics awards the Bonner Prize annually to recognize experimental research in nuclear physics.

In laymen’s terms, Burkert has led and shaped physics research at the lab for years, and was instrumental in coming up with the concept for a high-precision detector at the lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), a tool that lets scientists discover more about the structure of protons and neutrons. The detector, which operated at the lab from 1997 to 2012, could measure large amounts of momentum and angles of particles produced in electron-proton collisions within the CEBAF.

A native of Ellwangen, Germany, Burkert earned his doctorate at the University of Bonne in 1975, and in 1985, he came to the Jefferson Lab for the first time to participate in a workshop defining the scope of the CEBAF science program. By that fall, he had joined the lab as a staff scientist, and he and colleagues Latifa Eouadrhiri and Francois-Xavier Girod made a discovery about the proton’s physical pressure distribution that was published in the science journal Nature.

Burkert was named the state’s outstanding scientist in 2019, and he has been a principal staff scientist in the J-Lab’s Experimental Nuclear Physics division, as well as a member of the Electron-Ion Collider’s leadership team, since 2020.

“Naturally, I am thrilled about receiving the award, though mindful that, while individual initiative is important, it is also an award that honors the science achievements of the research teams and of Jefferson Lab’s discoveries in nuclear science,” Burkert said in a statement. “None of this would have been possible without the generous funding of cutting-edge science by the U.S. Department of Energy.”

The prize will be presented at a future American Physical Society meeting and includes an award of $10,000 and a certificate citing Burkert’s scientific contributions.

As data centers grow, Amazon and Dominion explore small nuclear reactors

With power consumption by data centers and AI projected to more than quadruple in Virginia in the next 15 years, Amazon.com and Dominion Energy Virginia have entered into an agreement to explore potential development of small modular nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Plant in Louisa County, the two companies announced at an event Wednesday at Amazon’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington County.

Dominion and Amazon’s memorandum of understanding means the companies will “jointly explore innovative ways to advance SMR development and financing while also mitigating potential cost and development risks for customers and capital providers,” according to Dominion’s announcement.

“This is a milestone along the path,” Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said at Wednesday’s event. “There’s a ton that we need to do between here and there, and there’s a lot of work that needs to go into this, but this is a really important milestone that we’re celebrating today.”

At Wednesday morning’s event, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Dominion Energy Virginia President Ed Baine were on hand, among other state and national dignitaries.

“I am thrilled that Virginia is among the first states to take this big step,” Youngkin said. “Just two-and-a-half years ago, Virginia was literally accelerating on what has been an uninterrupted renaissance in growth, job growth and investment by companies who’ve committed $83 billion to expand or come to Virginia, and hire more people than we’ve ever had working before in the history of the commonwealth.”

He noted that the state is “poised to take this giant step with our partners,” as home to the nuclear Navy, multiple research universities and Dominion.

In his comments, Kaine also mentioned Lynchburg-based nuclear fuel producer BWX Technologies and Framatome Inc., the North American subsidiary of the French nuclear equipment, services and fuel producer, as other significant players in Virginia’s nuclear energy sector. “Amazon is the largest power user in the United States,” Kaine said. “That AWS is here, and that AWS is endeavoring to help us advance our innovation together with these other innovators in Virginia makes perfect sense.”

As of now, only two SMRs are in operation — one in Russia and the other in China — and Virginia likely won’t have its own SMR before the mid-2030s.

Warner, who chairs the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, said Wednesday that energy innovation is important also as a matter of national security, particularly as the U.S. races to catch up with China’s innovations. “National security is not simply the nation state that has the most tanks and guns and ships and planes, but increasingly, it’s going to be who can win the battle in technology competition.” China, he added, is constructing “30 nuclear plants even as we speak. They have a goal of adding 150 more by 2035.”

However, he said, Virginia is “the nuclear capital for the country,” with 100,000 people already working in the nuclear sector in the commonwealth, including sailors, university researchers and employees at BWXT, Framatome, Huntington Ingalls Industries and other companies.

Ambitious plans

Amazon’s agreement with Dominion was just part of its news Wednesday, as the global e-tail giant announced it has signed three agreements to support development of small modular reactors, or SMRs, including one in the state of Washington with Energy Northwest, to develop four advanced SMRs. According to Amazon’s announcement, the four reactors would generate roughly 960 megawatts of electricity at full operation, beginning in the early 2030s. Amazon, which in March acquired a nuclear-powered data center campus in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy, also has committed to invest in SMR developer X-energy, whose reactor design will be used in the Energy Northwest project.

“Nuclear is a safe source of carbon-free energy that can help power our operations and meet the growing demands of our customers, while helping us progress toward our Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon across our operation by 2040,” Garman said in a statement released Wednesday morning.

Dominion previously announced in July that it had issued a request for proposals to evaluate the feasibility for a small nuclear reactor to be developed at its North Anna power plant, where it has two conventional, large nuclear reactors. Nuclear technology companies received the RFP, which was not a guarantee to build an SMR but would be the first step in exploring whether such a step was feasible, the Fortune 500 utility said in July.

On Wednesday, Dominion Energy Virginia’s Baine said that the “site is well on its way to be able to be developed,” and that he expects Dominion to make a decision on the winning proposal before the end of the year. He also said that X-energy is among the companies that have submitted a proposal.

The RFP, Baine added, will “inform us how we want to move forward with companies for additional small modular reactors as well.”

Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick said Wednesday that she expects Youngkin to soon issue an executive order about accelerating permitting for nuclear sites, and the state has invited X-energy to come to Virginia for manufacturing.

Competitor Google preempted Amazon’s announcement by a day, announcing on Tuesday that the tech company had reached an agreement with Kairos Power to develop and purchase 500 megawatts of power from six to seven SMRs, planned to come online between 2030 and 2035. And in September, Microsoft forged a deal with Constellation Energy to offset power consumption by its data centers by reviving a portion of the Three Mile Island power plant, the Pennsylvania facility that in 1979 experienced a partial nuclear meltdown, the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history.

Moving toward nuclear in Va.

Over the past couple of years, SMRs have been a big part of Virginia’s energy conversation, especially as data center growth has put more demands on the state’s power grid.

According to Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan, filed Tuesday with the Virginia State Corporation Commission and the North Carolina Utilities Commission, power demand in Dominion’s coverage area in Virginia and North Carolina is expected to grow 5.5% annually over the next decade and double by 2039. Dominion has previously predicted that the data center industry in the state will demand 13 gigawatts of electricity by 2038, nearly five times the 2.8 gigawatts it used in 2023.

In Virginia, Amazon has agreed to explore the development of an SMR project near North Anna, bringing “at least 300 megawatts of power to the Virginia region, where Dominion projects that power demands will increase by 85% over the next 15 years,” according to Amazon’s news release. Additionally, Amazon signed an agreement to place a new data center next to a nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, a carbon-free energy source to power the data center.

In Loudoun County’s Ashburn area, where more than 70% of the world’s internet traffic courses through a corridor known as Data Center Alley, Amazon Web Services is the biggest fish in a gigantic pool. From 2011 to 2021, AWS invested more than $51.9 billion in Virginia, including building data centers. In January 2023, the company had at least 65 data centers in Loudoun in operation or under development, out of more than 200 data centers in the county, and AWS announced it planned to invest $35 billion by 2040 to build more data center campuses across the state.

Nationally, it’s anticipated that data centers will account for 17% of energy usage nationwide by 2030, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence report. That’s up from 4% in 2022 and 6% in 2026, according to data and projections from the International Energy Agency.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, speaking at Wednesday’s event, called Virginia “the go-to place for the concentration of data centers,” and noted that AWS is the latest company to do “BYOP,” or “bring your own power” for data centers. “And this is the important piece I mentioned, that the technology companies know that in order for these data centers to achieve great community buy-in, bringing their own power with them is an important piece of that, so the rates are not raised on everyday citizens.”

She added that the Department of Energy is announcing $900 million in funding “for those who want to deploy even more … small modular reactors,” referring to applications opening for a program to support the first commercial-use SMR in the United States.

In the past couple of years, as artificial intelligence usage and overall digital use has grown, so has demand on Virginia’s power supply. In a May earnings call, Dominion Energy CEO Bob Blue said that the utility is receiving more requests to power larger data center campuses with larger energy demands of 60 to 90 megawatts per building, or several gigawatts for multibuilding campuses.

Baine said in an interview Wednesday that “there are a number of things that are driving energy demand within Virginia. Data centers [are] absolutely one of the big ones, but there’s also manufacturer electrification that is also increasing demand.”

The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) is conducting a study on data centers as some state legislators are pushing for high-volume power users to cover infrastructure costs to keep the state’s power grid reliable. The Virginia General Assembly forwarded all data center-related bills to 2025’s session so lawmakers could take JLARC’s study — expected to be released in November — into consideration.

Freelance writer Courtney Mabeus-Brown and Virginia Business Editor Richard Foster contributed to this story.

Dominion files energy plan that includes more wind, nuclear

Dominion Energy Virginia filed its 2024 Integrated Resource Plan on Tuesday with the Virginia State Corporation Commission and the North Carolina Utilities Commission, setting out its long-term plans for energy generation over the next 15 years. The report calls for more offshore wind and solar energy development, as well as small modular nuclear reactors starting in the mid-2030s, according to Dominion’s news release.

More battery storage facilities are also part of the plan. Natural gas will produce about 20% of all power generated for its service area in the future, and the remaining 80% is expected to be carbon-free energy, the Fortune 500 utility said in its statement. Dominion notes, however, that the IRP is an estimate for the next 15 years.

“Given uncertainty in technological development and changing laws over an extended 15-year period, the company’s path forward is likely a combination of these portfolios as well as incorporation of new technologies as they become commercially available,” the plan says.

In broad terms, Dominion’s plans include:

  • Approximately 3,400 megawatts of new offshore wind in addition to the 2,600-megawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project currently under development off the coast of Virginia Beach
  • About 12,000 megawatts of new solar energy, a more than 150% increase to solar energy Dominion currently has in operation or under development
  • About 4,500 megawatts of new battery storage
  • Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) beginning in the mid-2030s
  • Natural gas will be used as backup power “to ensure the lights stay on when the company’s growing wind and solar fleet are not producing electricity.”

Dominion’s investment in wind and nuclear energy, as well as increasing electricity demands related to data center growth, have been in the headlines recently.

Power demand is expected to grow 5.5% annually over the next decade in Dominion’s service areas in Virginia and North Carolina and double by 2039, according to a forecast by PJM, the regional transmission organization that runs the electrical grid in 12 states and Washington, D.C., including Virginia.

“We are experiencing the largest growth in power demand since the years following World War II,” Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia, said in a statement. “No single energy source, grid solution or energy efficiency program will reliably serve the growing needs of our customers. We need an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach, and we are developing innovative solutions to ensure we deliver for our customers. I am proud of the affordability we deliver, with residential rates 14% below the national average, and as shown in the plan we intend to continue that focus. Our comprehensive plan ensures we can always deliver reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy — day or night, rain or shine, winter or summer.”

The “all-of-the-above” plan echoes one voiced by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has pushed development of small nuclear reactors throughout his term as governor. Under the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act, Dominion is required to shift to carbon-free, renewable energy sources for electricity generation by 2045.

In July, Dominion officials said they were issuing a request for proposals to potentially develop an SMR from nuclear technology companies, stressing that it was not a commitment to build an SMR at the North Anna nuclear power plant in Louisa County, but the first step in evaluating the feasibility of doing so. In August, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved 20-year extensions for North Anna’s two nuclear reactors, allowing them to operate through 2058 and 2060.

Meanwhile, Dominion has moved forward on its $9.8 billion CVOW project and made other moves to increase wind energy production in the future. By the end of the month, the utility expects to have about half of the monopile foundations installed for 174 turbines, with the 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind farm’s completion set for 2026. In Tuesday’s announcement, Dominion says the project is on time and on budget.

Also, in July, a Dominion subsidiary agreed to purchase the Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease from Avangrid for $160 million. The 40,000-acre lease will be renamed CVOW-South and will be capable of 800 megawatts of offshore wind generation in the 2030s, enough to serve 200,000 customers. In August, Dominion won a 176,505-acre lease about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for a $17.65 million bid in a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction. That area could support between 2.1 gigawatts and 4.0 gigawatts of electricity, in addition to other wind energy generated at CVOW.

According to the IRP, in 2023, the utility delivered 36% of all power to customers via natural gas, 29.2% by nuclear, 22.7% by third-party power purchases, and 5% by coal. Renewable energy produced by Dominion or purchased from third-party solar and energy storage resources represents 5% of all power delivered to customers last year.

The plan also notes that Dominion has completed more than 90 miles of new and rebuilt transmission lines and 13 new substations in the first half of 2024, projects that improve electric grid infrastructure.

Norfolk casino groundbreaking set for Oct. 30

Groundbreaking for Norfolk’s forthcoming casino is set to take place Oct. 30, according to a news release Tuesday.

The announcement of the event, which is slated to feature remarks by the CEO of Boyd Gaming, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe’s chief and Norfolk’s mayor, comes after the Norfolk City Council approved the project last month after multiple delays.

The tribe announced in September that it has partnered with Las Vegas casino giant Boyd Gaming on the project, which will include a temporary casino and a permanent structure built near Harbor Park, with construction starting within a few weeks of each other early next year. Boyd replaces former partner Jon Yarbrough, who formed a limited liability company, Golden Eagle Consulting II, with the tribe’s gaming authority in 2020. Yarbrough is no longer affiliated with the casino, having sold his interest in the project to Boyd Gaming, which is now majority owner of Golden Eagle Consulting II.

The temporary casino is expected to meet the state’s deadline of November 2025, by which time a casino must be built and licensed by the Virginia Lottery under state law. According to paperwork filed with the city, construction of the “transitional casino” would begin in late February 2025 and be complete by mid-October 2025, with an opening date targeted for Nov. 5, 2025. The permanent casino’s construction would start in mid-January 2025 and be complete in August 2027, with its opening taking place the following month.

Cost estimates for both the temporary and permanent casinos have not yet been announced, and in September, Uri Clinton, Boyd Gaming’s general counsel and corporate secretary, said they’re “still under review.” Under state law, the permanent casino resort must cost at least $300 million.

According to a pitchbook for the project, the permanent casino resort will include a 200-room hotel, 13,000 square feet of meeting space, a casino with 1,500 slot machines and 50 table games, eight restaurants and bars, and 4,000 square feet of spa and gym space. The HeadWaters Resort & Casino name will no longer be used, and Boyd is working on a new name and brand for the casino.

Virginia’s casinos reported $56.56 million in September revenue, according to the Virginia Lottery.

Norfolk’s casino referendum was approved by local voters in 2020, along with three other casinos in Virginia — all of which are now up and running in Portsmouth, Danville and Bristol. The latter two cities opened temporary casinos but are set to open their permanent resorts this year. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol is scheduled to host its grand opening ceremony Nov. 14, and Danville’s Caesars Virginia casino resort, a $750 million project, is anticipated to open by the end of this year.

Richmond voters defeated a casino referendum twice in 2021 and 2023, and in November, Petersburg voters will weigh in on a referendum that would allow the city to build a casino with developer The Cordish Cos. and Bruce Smith Enterprise, a Virginia Beach-based development firm led by Norfolk native and Pro Football Hall of Famer Bruce Smith.