Loudoun County v. State Corporation Commission: “Consideration,” Not “Substantial Accord,” Governs Local Plans in CPCNs; Undergrounding May Be Rejected as Infeasible Based on Cost, Engineering, and Schedule Impediments

Court: Supreme Court of Virginia
Date: February 19, 2026
Opinion by: Justice Teresa M. Chafin
Appeals from: State Corporation Commission (CPCNs for two Loudoun County transmission projects)

1. Introduction

These consolidated appeals arise from the State Corporation Commission’s approval of two Virginia Electric and Power Company (“VEPCO”) applications for certificates of public convenience and necessity (“CPCNs”) to build new high-voltage transmission facilities in Loudoun County near “Data Center Alley,” where rapid load growth and reliability constraints were projected.

The first project, the Aspen-Golden Project, proposed roughly nine miles of 500 kV and 230 kV overhead transmission lines and related substations, including a segment alongside Route 7 in the Lansdowne community. The second, the Apollo-Twin Creeks Project, proposed roughly 1.9 miles of 230 kV lines and substations, partially collocated with Aspen-Golden.

Loudoun County (the “County”) and Lansdowne Conservancy (the “Conservancy”) opposed overhead construction—especially along Route 7—arguing it would harm scenic, historic, cultural, and environmental assets (including views of Belmont Manor). They urged the Commission to require underground construction of a portion of the Aspen-Golden line based on a County-supported “Updated Hybrid Proposal” (“UHP”) prepared by RLC Engineering, PLLC (“RLC”).

The core legal questions were:

• Whether the Commission satisfied Code § 56-46.1(B)’s verification duty for need and method of installation;
• Whether the Commission properly rejected undergrounding as infeasible under Code § 56-46.1(B), including consideration of cost, benefits, and impediments to timely completion;
• How local instruments (a viewshed easement and the County comprehensive plan) constrain (or do not constrain) SCC approvals;
• Whether additional mitigation conditions must be imposed when requested late and without evidentiary support;
• Whether the Apollo-Twin Creeks CPCN had to accommodate undergrounding of Aspen-Golden due to collocation.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the Commission in full. It held that:

• The Commission sufficiently verified the load flow modeling and reliability basis for the Aspen-Golden Project through its staff’s review; Code § 56-46.1(B) did not require an independent consultant.
• The Commission reasonably found undergrounding infeasible given substantially higher costs, engineering challenges (including diabase rock, utility relocations, specialized materials/crews), and the schedule imperative to avoid projected NERC reliability violations by summer 2028.
• The Commission could treat shortcomings in the County’s UHP (uncertain route details; insufficient environmental impact and environmental justice analyses) as relevant to feasibility because they signaled impediments to timely construction—a statutory factor under Code § 56-46.1(B).
• The Commission adequately considered impacts to Belmont Manor and the Belmont Scenic Viewshed Easement and still could select the route that best minimized overall impacts to the greatest extent reasonably practicable.
• The Commission’s duty regarding the County’s comprehensive plan was to “receive and give consideration” (Code § 56-46.1(A)), not to make a “substantial accord” finding under Code § 15.2-2232—especially because Code § 56-46.1(F) deems SCC approval to satisfy Code § 15.2-2232.
• The Commission did not abuse its discretion in declining additional visual-mitigation conditions sought by the Conservancy because the requests were raised after the evidentiary hearings and were unsupported by evidence.
• The Apollo-Twin Creeks challenge failed because it depended on success of the undergrounding arguments.

3. Analysis

3.1. Precedents Cited

The Court’s deference framework and statutory interpretation were anchored in a line of SCC cases:

• BASF Corp. v. State Corp. Comm'n, 289 Va. 375 (2015).
  Influence: Reaffirmed SCC’s “broad, general and extensive powers” and articulated the balancing approach under Code § 56-46.1(B): the Commission must weigh a “multitude of factors,” and “minimize” does not require eliminating all impacts. The Court relied on BASF to validate the SCC’s overall “total public interest” balancing and to reject a conception of “minimization” that would effectively mandate undergrounding despite feasibility concerns.
• Office of the Att'y Gen. v. State Corp. Comm'n, 288 Va. 183 (2014).
  Influence: Quoted via BASF on the SCC’s extensive regulatory authority; supports the Court’s reluctance to reweigh technical and policy judgments entrusted to the Commission.
• Appalachian Voices v. State Corp. Comm'n, 277 Va. 509 (2009).
  Influence: Used for the proposition that SCC decisions deserve respect as a tribunal “informed by experience,” and that appellate review will not disturb SCC analysis applying correct legal principles.
• West Virginia v. State Corp. Comm'n, 304 Va. 148 (2025).
  Influence: Critical to two holdings. First, it supplied the interpretive rule that when the legislature directs the SCC to “consider” a factor, the SCC need not make specific findings; it must simply reflect on it with care. This undercut the County’s attempt to import a “substantial accord” requirement into Code § 56-46.1(A). Second, it supplied the abuse of discretion standard for reviewing the SCC’s refusal to impose additional CPCN conditions—supporting affirmance where the Conservancy’s late-raised conditions lacked evidentiary development.
• Appalachian Power Co. v. State Corp. Comm'n, 301 Va. 257 (2022).
  Influence: Restated the high bar for overturning SCC factfinding: the Court cannot substitute judgment and may reverse only if the determination is “contrary to the evidence or without evidence to support it.” This controlled the challenges to feasibility, route selection, and need verification.
• Board of Supervisors v. Appalachian Power Co., 216 Va. 93 (1975).
  Influence: The foundational balancing case embedded (via BASF) the “total public interest” frame and the notion that the SCC may approve a project despite localized harms if, on balance, the statutory criteria are met.
• Piedmont Env't Council v. Virginia Elec. & Power Co., 278 Va. 553 (2009).
  Influence: Addressed SCC staff verification practices, including that staff sometimes uses independent consultants. The Court used it to clarify a negative inference: Code § 56-46.1(B) does not require the SCC staff to hire an independent consultant to satisfy verification, so long as verification occurs.

3.2. Legal Reasoning

(a) Verification of need and method of installation (Code § 56-46.1(B))

The County and Conservancy argued that the SCC failed to verify technical predicates for the Aspen-Golden Project and its overhead method. The Court rejected this as factually unsupported: the SCC staff report stated it had verified PJM power flow models and confirmed projected NERC reliability violations absent the project, and also verified the project resolved those violations. The appellants did not meaningfully contest that verification on cross-examination.

Importantly, the Court treated “verification” as satisfied by competent staff review documented in the record; it refused to convert Piedmont Env't Council into a requirement that staff retain an independent consultant.

(b) Undergrounding and the treatment of the UHP’s deficiencies

The Court framed the undergrounding dispute through the text of Code § 56-46.1(B): once requested by the county, the SCC must consider (i) costs and economic benefits of underground placement and (ii) impediments to timely construction. The Commission did so by adopting the hearing examiner’s detailed feasibility analysis.

On feasibility, the record supported three central findings:

• Cost: the UHP was estimated at roughly $423 million more than VEPCO’s overhead plan (with testimony that the premium could be higher).
• Engineering/constructability: rarity of underground 500 kV builds, need for specialized resources, diabase rock constraints, and utility relocations.
• Schedule risk: completion was needed by summer 2028 to avoid reliability violations and thermal overload risks; undergrounding would likely extend the timeline.

The appellants’ sharper legal argument was that the SCC “impermissibly required” them to present a fully developed underground proposal sufficient for a CPCN, and then used the UHP’s lack of environmental impact/environmental justice analysis and route clarity against them. The Court recharacterized these points: the UHP’s analytical and routing uncertainties were not used to impose a CPCN-burden on opponents, but rather as evidence of “impediments to timely construction”—a statutory factor the SCC had to consider. In other words, proposal incompleteness and unresolved analyses were probative of delay risk and therefore directly relevant to feasibility under Code § 56-46.1(B).

(c) Belmont Scenic Viewshed Easement

The Court rejected the claim that impacts on the Belmont Scenic Viewshed Easement showed the SCC failed to minimize adverse impacts “to the greatest extent reasonably practicable.” The hearing examiner found, and the SCC accepted, that monopoles would likely be placed within the viewshed easement area—but also that the easement’s text permitted public utility structures. The SCC then balanced Belmont impacts against system need, broader routing constraints, and comparative impacts of alternatives, selecting Route 1AA as optimal overall.

Notably, the Court confined itself to the assignment of error and declined to consider a broader “as a matter of law” argument that easement violations categorically barred the route, citing procedural default principles applicable to Commission appeals (Rule 5:21(a)(7)).

(d) Loudoun County Comprehensive Plan; no “substantial accord” duty

The County sought to elevate comprehensive plan consistency into a “substantial accord” adjudication under Code § 15.2-2232. The Court’s analysis is strongly textual:

• Code § 56-46.1(A) requires the SCC to “receive and give consideration” to local comprehensive plans upon request—nothing more.
• Under West Virginia v. State Corp. Comm'n, a duty to “consider” does not entail specific findings; it entails reflection and careful thought.
• Code § 56-46.1(F) expressly provides that SCC approval of a transmission line “shall be deemed to satisfy the requirements of [Code] § 15.2-2232,” eliminating the need for a separate “substantial accord” analysis.

The Court thus draws a bright line: local planning informs the SCC’s judgment, but does not operate as an independent veto or separate compliance proceeding once the transmission line is approved under Code § 56-46.1.

(e) Additional mitigation conditions and evidentiary timing

The Conservancy proposed conditions (vegetation, limits on right-of-way use, no collocation of other utilities, and keeping the record open). The Court affirmed the SCC’s refusal because the Conservancy did not raise these during the evidentiary hearings and offered no evidence or specific support for their efficacy. Under the abuse of discretion standard (from West Virginia v. State Corp. Comm'n), the SCC acted within its discretion.

(f) Apollo-Twin Creeks as a derivative challenge

Because the Apollo-Twin Creeks objection depended on forcing undergrounding for Aspen-Golden (so that collocated facilities would need accommodation), the Court treated it as contingent and rejected it once overhead Aspen-Golden was affirmed.

3.3. Impact

The decision materially strengthens predictability in Virginia CPCN disputes for high-voltage transmission lines:

• Verification practice: Parties challenging need should expect that documented SCC staff verification of PJM/NERC-driven modeling will generally suffice; the Court will not impose an independent-consultant requirement absent statutory text.
• Undergrounding requests: Counties can trigger the SCC’s duty to consider undergrounding, but “consideration” will be shaped by schedule-critical reliability needs; opponents’ alternatives that are incomplete, analytically underdeveloped, or routing-uncertain can be treated as evidence of delay risk.
• Local planning limits: The Court confirms that local comprehensive plans influence but do not control CPCN approvals; Code § 56-46.1(F) preempts a separate “substantial accord” gatekeeping process for approved transmission lines.
• Condition requests: Mitigation conditions should be developed during the evidentiary phase with supporting testimony and analysis; late-stage proposals risk denial with deferential appellate review.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

• CPCN (Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity): A legal authorization required before building certain utility facilities; it reflects a determination that the project is needed and appropriately sited and configured under governing statutes.
• Code § 56-46.1(B) “verify” requirement: The SCC must confirm (not merely accept) the technical showing of need—load flow modeling, contingency analyses, and reliability needs. In practice here, SCC staff review and documented confirmation satisfied “verify.”
• NERC reliability standards; “thermal overloads”: NERC sets mandatory grid reliability rules. “Thermal overload” means equipment would carry more current than its safe limit, risking damage and outages.
• PJM power flow models: PJM is the regional transmission organization that models how electricity flows across the grid. Those models can predict overloaded lines and identify fixes.
• “Avoid or reasonably minimize … to the greatest extent reasonably practicable”: This is a balancing standard. It does not require zero harm; it requires the best practicable reduction of impacts after weighing competing factors (need, engineering, cost, timing, and alternative routes).
• Comprehensive plan “consideration” vs. “substantial accord”: “Consideration” means the SCC must take the plan into account. “Substantial accord” is a local planning-commission compatibility determination under Code § 15.2-2232—but Code § 56-46.1(F) deems it satisfied once the SCC approves a transmission line.

5. Conclusion

Loudoun County v. State Corporation Commission confirms that Virginia’s transmission-line CPCN regime vests the SCC with wide discretion to balance reliability-driven need against localized impacts, and it clarifies two recurring flashpoints. First, the SCC’s duty to “consider” local comprehensive plans does not convert into a “substantial accord” adjudication, especially in light of Code § 56-46.1(F). Second, undergrounding—though a mandatory subject of consideration upon county request—may be rejected where the record supports cost escalation, constructability challenges, and, crucially, impediments to timely completion tied to reliability deadlines. The decision thereby reinforces a pragmatic, schedule-sensitive feasibility lens for undergrounding disputes and a deferential appellate posture toward SCC evidentiary judgments.