A Virginia Coal Town Lost Its Grocery Store After Utility Bills Nobody Could Carry

Former Virginia Ralph Northam signed the Old Dominion’s green energy mandate in 2020 and told coal country to go carbon free.

Now a family grocery store in the heart of that coal country has turned off its lights for good.

The bill that finally finished it off would make any small business owner in America sick to his stomach.

Grants Supermarket Closes Its Doors in Richlands After Nearly 25 Years

Grants Supermarket in Richlands, Virginia, served the people of Tazewell County for almost a quarter century.

Then it announced on Facebook that it was shutting down.

The store pointed to two culprits – an expiring lease and operating costs that had spiraled out of control.

Utilities topped that list.

According to WVVA, the store's average monthly utility bill topped $25,000 over the past two years.

Do the math on that.

That's roughly $300,000 a year just to keep the lights on, the freezers running, and the doors open.

Over two years, that's more than half a million dollars poured into utilities by one small-town grocer.

So when the lease came up, the owners decided not to renew it.

The store told customers the decision "did not come lightly" and thanked the workers who kept the aisles stocked over the years.

Richlands is not Northern Virginia.

This is Southwest Virginia coal country, where generations of families made their living underground.

Now those same families will be driving out of town for a gallon of milk.

Appalachian Power Customers Are Paying for a Wind Farm in Illinois

Grants didn't break its bill down line by line, and it didn't name its utility.

But the numbers across Southwest Virginia tell a brutal story.

Appalachian Power serves about 466,000 residential customers across western Virginia, according to Cardinal News.

Starting March 1, 2026, the average residential bill hit $168 a month – a $44 jump since July 2022.

That latest increase exists for one reason.

Regulators let the company pass about $69 million in green energy project costs on to customers to comply with the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

In the same ruling, they signed off on cost recovery for the Livingston Wind project.

It's in Illinois.

Appalachian Power families in Southwest Virginia will be paying for wind turbines in another state because Richmond Democrats told them to.

And Appalachian Power isn't finished.

The company is now asking for another $9.10 a month in base rates, plus $3.99 more for renewable energy costs.

That's $13.09 more every month for the average household.

Delegate Will Morefield, the Republican who represents Tazewell County, didn't mince words.

He and Delegate Mitchell Cornett warned the increase would be an "unbearable burden" that would force families to choose between the electric bill and groceries.

In Richlands, the grocery store didn't even make it that far.

The Green Mandate Richmond Democrats Refuse to Blame

Ask Governor Abigail Spanberger and Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi why power bills are soaring, and they'll point at data centers.

The Jefferson Forum ran the numbers on Dominion Energy customers and found a different villain.

A typical Dominion bill climbed about $49 a month between June 2022 and June 2026.

Over half of that – $27 – came from the clean energy and VCEA category.

The Daily Signal reported that Center of the American Experiment economists put the law's price tag at an extra $3,500 per customer by 2045.

None of that slowed Spanberger down on the campaign trail.

She took $1.38 million from the Virginia League of Conservation Voters and $700,000 from the Clean Virginia Fund.

She also promised to drag Virginia back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Britain already ran this experiment.

In 2022, the owners of a Premier grocery store in Keith, Scotland, watched their monthly electric bill explode from £872 to £4,569.

They shut down three fridges and turned off lights just to stay open.

Their message to customers was simple – "use them or lose them."

Richlands Shows the Real Cost of Virginia's Carbon Free Promise

A grocery store is not a luxury in a town like Richlands.

It's where retirees pick up what they need without a half-hour drive.

It's where teenagers get their first paycheck.

It's where neighbors run into each other on a Tuesday afternoon.

When a store like Grants goes dark, the whole town loses something it doesn't get back.

President Trump is fighting to unleash American coal and natural gas so power stays cheap and reliable.

Virginia Democrats are still marching toward a 2050 carbon-free deadline with no plan for what it does to towns like this one.

Appalachian Power's next rate hike request goes before regulators on October 19.

Every dollar it wins comes out of the pocket of the next small business on Main Street.

Richlands won't be the last town to find out what that costs.

Sources:

• Zaria Stovall, "Grants Supermarket in Richlands closing after 25 years," WVVA, October 5, 2026.
• Matt Busse, "Regulators OK Appalachian Power bill increase to cover renewable energy costs," Cardinal News, November 25, 2025.
• Matt Busse, "Regulators prepare to hear Appalachian Power's case for raising rates," Cardinal News, October 1, 2026.
• Derrick Max, "Jefferson Forum: Virginia Democrats want to talk about rising electric bills, just not the biggest cost driver," Cardinal News, September 28, 2026.
• Tyler O'Neil, "Just How Much Money Did Environmental Groups Pour Into Spanberger's Campaign?," The Daily Signal, October 29, 2025.
• Denny Andonova, "Use them or lose them: Moray grocery store owner makes desperate plea for support after monthly energy bill jump nearly £4,000," Press and Journal, September 8, 2022.