WASHINGTON -- Virginians' electricity bills face a double whammy this year: higher prices of natural gas and coal, and pending climate-change legislation, leaders of three Virginia electric cooperatives warned yesterday.

In the nation's capital for a National Rural Electric Cooperative Association conference and to lobby members of Congress, the chief executives said electricity costs will rise with natural gas and coal, which many power plants convert to electricity.

The cooperatives are working to change a bill sponsored by Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., that they say relies on technology that's unavailable.

Jackson Reasor, president and chief executive of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative in Glen Allen, said he wants the senator's bill scaled back to be "practical, reasonable and doable, and most importantly affordable."

At the heart of the bill is a cap-and-trade system that would limit industry carbon emissions starting in 2012. Companies could buy or trade permits to allow excess emissions. Government revenue from such a system would be invested in clean-energy technologies.

A spokeswoman for Warner, Bronwyn Lance Chester, said government studies show money from a cap-and-trade system would make carbon-capturing technology commercially available by 2015.

Rural electric plants would be eligible for technology funds under the bill, she said. A Senate vote on the bill is scheduled June 2.

Electric cooperatives provide power to roughly 1 million Virginians.

Old Dominion raised rates April 1 by roughly 4 percent.

"If prices continue to increase, we're probably going to have to look at the possibility of another rate increase toward the end of the year," Reasor said.

Using cleaner technology at their plants, as Warner's bill would require, would cost too, industry leaders warned.

Warning that if utilities have to buy new emission-lowering technology, consumers would pay the added cost, the head of Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative in Mount Crawford said, "Consumers have seen nothing as far as rate increases."

Shenandoah consumers have seen about a 15 percent increase in the past year, Myron Rummel said.

"Nobody's seen the full force of environmental legislation," Rummel said.

At a lunch for about 80 members of Virginia electricity distributors, the members said they were "on a mission."

"We're hoping to protect our customers," said Jeff Edwards, president and chief executive Southside Electric Cooperative in Crewe. We're here to "ask lawmakers to take a hard look at what they're doing."
Contact Neil H. Simon at nsimon@mediageneral.com.