Customers of Dominion Virginia Power would get a chance to buy electricity from renewable sources under a proposal filed with state regulators yesterday.

If the proposal is approved by the State Corporation Commission, the utility's customers would have two options for buying renewable electricity beginning in January.

Renewable electricity, which is typically more expensive than traditionally produced electricity, is generated from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass or falling water. Renewable power is, in most cases, less polluting than traditional sources of electricity.

An environmental lawyer, however, said the renewable benefits would be far outweighed by the utility's plans to build a coal-burning power plant in Southwest Virginia.

Under one renewable option proposed by the utility, customers could buy all their power each month from renewable sources. Payments for renewable power would be added to a customer's monthly bill and would be based on power use and market prices for renewables.

Renewable energy costs about 2 cents more a kilowatt hour, which would add about one-fourth more to a monthly bill.

Another option would allow customers to buy a fixed dollar amount of renewable electricity as part of their monthly use. The amount would depend on its market price.

Under either option, Dominion Virginia Power would buy renewable energy certificates from "green" power producers to support renewable energy production. The company would report periodically to customers on its renewable purchases.

The utility said it is committed to reaching a voluntary state goal for renewable energy sales. The goal calls for renewable electricity sales in 2022 to amount to 12 percent of all state electricity sales in 2007.

Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville said that his organization appreciates the utility "tipping its hat" to renewable power and conservation but that any environmental benefits would be more than offset by the coal-burning power plant. The plant would release as much global-warming pollution as all the cars and trucks in the Richmond metropolitan area in the same time frame, he calculated.

Utility spokesman David Botkins said that the proposal was intended to meet its customers' requests for renewable electricity and that the coal plant is meant to meet the state's growing electricity demand.

"It must be easier to criticize than be part of the energy solution," he said.

Jaffe said the state's renewable electricity sales goal cited by Dominion Virginia Power is misleading.

Because electricity use is expected to grow and because nuclear generation, accounting for more than two-thirds of Virginia generation, is not included in the renewables goal, the actual goal is less than 5 percent, Jaffe said. On top of that, he said, state law allows a utility to receive double renewable credit for power produced by the sun or wind.

"We think Dominion should strive to produce more than 2.5 percent of its power from renewables by 2022," Jaffe said.

Botkins did not address Jaffe's criticism.

The utility's parent company, Dominion Resources Inc., has nearly 1,300 megawatts of renewable energy either in operation or under development in the mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Midwest.

Contact Greg Edwards at (804) 649-6390 or gedwards@timesdispatch.com.