Utility Dive and CleanTechnica reported extensively on Dominion Energy's proposal to build a 944-megawatt methane-fired generating station in Chesterfield, Virginia, which Dominion defended as necessary 'dispatchable' generation. The argument: solar and wind cannot always be activated on demand, and the data centers being built in northern Virginia require firm, reliable power that intermittent renewables cannot guarantee. Even the State Corporation Commission's nonpartisan staff criticized the rationale. The clean energy sector acknowledged the load growth but argued Dominion had not seriously evaluated the full range of alternatives.
The Dominion argument rests on a real problem. Dispatchable power — power that can be activated on operator command, regardless of weather, season, or time of day — is genuinely scarce in a grid increasingly supplied by solar and wind. Battery storage extends the window during which renewable generation is available. It does not create new generation. When the storage is depleted, the dispatchable generation problem remains.
The utility industry is not wrong about the problem. It has not yet found the technology that solves it without the fuel cost, emissions, and regulatory risk that gas generation carries.
"Renewables are not the problem. The dispatchable baseload gap is the problem. More Natural Energy is the solution the argument was always pointing toward."
How More Natural Energy Resolves the Argument
More Natural Energy's closed-loop hydroelectric system is 100% dispatchable. It is operator-controlled, on-demand, and weather-independent. The water in the closed loop circulates continuously — it does not depend on rainfall, reservoir levels, river flow, or any external hydrological condition. When the operator calls for power, the system generates power. When the operator reduces load, the system reduces generation. The response is immediate, controllable, and continuous.
It produces 34 megawatts per 10-acre footprint from three independent parallel systems of 11.32 MW each. The behind-the-meter architecture means it does not require a utility interconnection queue — the power is generated at the point of use, by the enterprise that owns it, without regulatory exposure to transmission congestion or curtailment.
The Structural Advantage Utilities Cannot Offer
A regulated utility is structurally incentivized to build capital assets — the rate base model rewards capital investment, not operational efficiency. A gas plant earns a regulated return on the capital invested in building it. A battery storage system earns a return on its capital cost. More Natural Energy's closed-loop system earns a return on the real output it generates — dispatchable, clean power delivered at the point of use, without fuel cost volatility, without emissions liability, and without the ratepayer burden that comes with large-scale transmission infrastructure.
The Dominion argument was really about a structural gap — a technology that can deliver dispatchable clean power at the scale data centers require, without the emissions and regulatory risk of gas. Every utility executive who has read the Utility Dive coverage of the dispatchable trap has been looking for exactly what More Natural Energy delivers. They have been looking in the wrong places because they have been searching within the existing technology set.
"The dispatchable trap is not a trap. It is a specification. More Natural Energy was built to exactly that specification."
Co-Creator Group for Sustainability PBC is prepared to work with utilities, regulators, and data center operators to deploy the technology that the utility industry's own diagnosis demands. The Dominion Energy debate was not a failure of clean energy. It was a market signal — the clearest articulation yet of the exact problem More Natural Energy was engineered to solve.
Co-Creator Group for Sustainability PBC is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation operating five wholly owned subsidiaries across regenerative energy generation, advanced construction materials, electric marine logistics, and community development. Kevin B. Gandy, Founder and CEO.