Fighting for climate justice means taking on big polluters – including the richest corporations in the world. That’s why CCAN Action Fund hosts a Climate All Stars awards ceremony to say thank you to the state legislative champions who are willing to take on those big fights because it’s the right thing to do.
Winners in each chamber reflect the lawmakers who not only voted the right way, but went out of their way to be champions for critical causes to lower energy bills, reduce air pollution, and hold corporate polluters accountable.
House of Delegates Winners
This year, our House MVP was Delegate Rae Cousins. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, which devastated Southwest Virginia communities and inflicted billions of dollars of damage to the state, Delegate Cousins introduced the Extreme Weather Relief Act (EWRA). The EWRA ensures that climate disaster clean-up is paid for by the entities responsible for causing the damage – Big Oil. It’s the old Pottery Barn rule: “If you break it, you buy it.” Big Oil has broken the global climate, and they – not taxpayers – should pay to repair our communities.
“Thank you for this honor. It was great to work alongside CCAN and Victoria this session to introduce the Extreme Weather Relief Act. We know the extreme and significant cost that climate change has on Virginia’s economy, our environment, and our communities. And so this legislation simply would have shifted the burden from taxpayers to pay for disaster relief to the companies that we know have contributed the most to climate change. And so while we were not successful, I am excited that we were able to start the conversation with all of the attacks that are happening on the federal level against clean energy initiatives and long-standing environmental rules, regulations, and principles.”
Delegate Destiny LeVere Bolling was one of our incredible House winners. She introduced a bill to ensure low-income Virginia households can keep electricity costs low by getting access to energy efficiency services.
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Delegate Nadarius Clark won an All-Star award for the second year in a row! He was a co-sponsor for many of CCAN Action Fund’s priorities this session, including our effort to build electric vehicle charging stations in rural and low-income areas.
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Delegate Phil Hernandez has been a major voice for commonsense reform at the General Assembly. His focus has been on modernizing our grid to help lower costs and usher in more clean energy.
Delegate Kathy Tran had a perfect voting record and sponsored a bill to lower the cost of interconnecting rooftop solar projects on schools and other large buildings.
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Our other House winner was Delegate Rip Sullivan, who has been a longtime climate champion, introducing groundbreaking legislation to move Virginia to 100% clean energy. This past year, he took on several critical initiatives, introducing bills to require data centers to utilize clean energy, pave the way for more low-cost solar, and increase our energy storage commitments.
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Virginia Senate Winners
Our Senate MVP this year was Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg. Senator VanValkenburg understands the speed and scale necessary to bring to bear the clean energy transition we need to stop global climate change. He has introduced bills to both accelerate the deployment of low-cost, utility-scale solar and expand the ability of urban localities to deploy rooftop solar.
“There was an article today that talked about housing and how much people wanted it. If you look at the numbers, it’s pretty amazing. And one of the data points that’s in that article says that 60 % of Virginians want legislators to prioritize housing over local authority. Well, they also want us to prioritize cheap and affordable, and clean energy. They want bills to go down, they want to protect our environment, and we know, because it just came out today, that the states that are building the most clean energy are seeing the biggest drop in their energy bills. And the states that are building the least amount of clean energy are seeing the biggest increases in their energy bill. And so, we need to build. We need to get [clean] energy online.”
Senator Jennifer Boysko was the Senate patron for the Extreme Weather Relief Act, spearheading Virginia’s contribution to the global movement to ensure Big Oil pays for climate disaster relief.
Senator Creigh Deeds has taken on the biggest challenges in the climate and clean energy space, from pushing Big Tech to power their enormous data center campuses with clean energy to solar siting reform.
Senator Kannan Srinivasan was a co-sponsor for the Extreme Weather Relief Act and posted a perfect record on CCAN Action Fund’s priorities this past session.
Senator Danica Roem was busy meeting with constituents at her in-district town hall, but she was recognized for her outspoken advocacy to stop the data center industry’s all-out attack on our communities, climate, and wallets.
