35th Annual Environment Virginia Symposium Held at VMI

The 35th annual Environment Virginia Symposium at Virginia Military Institute was held April 8–10. The unseasonably chilly weather did not deter nearly 500 representatives from state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, higher education, and the private sector from attending, nor did it stifle their enthusiasm. The conference was organized and co-hosted by the Center for Leadership & Ethics. Col. Dave Gray, CLE executive director, served as master of ceremonies.

Opening remarks were offered by Matthew Lohr, secretary of Agriculture and Forestry, and Stefanie Taillon, acting secretary of Natural and Historic Resources.

Breakout session topics included conserving Virginia’s natural diversity, water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, resilient coasts and wetlands, data tools, ecosystems health and fisheries, solar power, parks and recreation, composting, conservation, forest regeneration, stormwater management, beneficial use of dredge material, flood risk management, offshore wind projects, oyster resources, clean water, and more.

The agency directors panel was moderated by Margaret L. “Peggy” Sanner, former Chesapeake Bay Foundation executive director, and featured five state government officials from the conference’s co-hosting agencies: Ryan Brown, Department of Wildlife Resources executive director; Rob Farrell, Department of Forestry director; Jamie Green, Virginia Marine Resources Commission commissioner; Mike Rolband, Department of Environmental Quality director; and Matthew Wells, Department of Conservation and Recreation director.

The plenary speaker was Ben Byboth, who leads commercial strategy and business development at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the world’s largest and leading commercial fusion company, headquartered in Devens, Massachusetts. Byboth discussed fusion power, a subject he is extremely passionate about, and CFS’s multi-billion dollar investment to build, own, and operate the world’s first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant at the James River Industrial Center in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The power plant, called ARC, will produce about 400 megawatts of clean, zero-carbon power to help meet the Commonwealth’s growing electricity demand. CFS expects to start generating power with ARC in the early 2030s.

Byboth explained that fusion is the most common reaction in the universe. “Over 99.99% of all energy comes from fusion, in the form of what happens in the stars. Hot plasmas are confined by gravity to make and fuse particles together to make energy, and in the process, releasing enough energy to power our solar systems.” He stated that fusion is the opposite process of fission, which takes big, heavy particles and breaks them apart, releasing energy.

“Fusion combines the most abundant and lightest isotopes to make heavier ones, and in the process, releases about four times more energy than a fission reaction, and about several 100 million times more than just burning something.”

Byboth said fusion has many positive attributes. “It’s clean. Helium is the only real byproduct of the reaction. It’s safe, not subject to runaways or meltdowns. There’s no long-lived nuclear waste, and there’s no significant health or safety impacts to the environment. It is available on demand and can be ramped up if you need more or ramped down if you need less. It can be integrated with renewables. It can be deployed around the world and is very scalable. It is a fundamental shift from the way we currently think about energy, which is the hunting and gathering of resources, the scavenging of things, digging up things, and burning them. It is moving away from those to energy as a technology and breaking the tether from these other resources.”

He stated that research on fusion has been ongoing since the 1950s. “We’ve been making progress toward a goal where the fusion reaction actually produces more energy than it takes to run the reaction. It takes a lot of work to cultivate the environment, to keep a little bit of a star comfortable in a bottle.”

Before joining CFS, Byboth held leadership roles at Eversource, Entergy, and NextEra, where he launched new energy businesses, led modernization of the grid, and developed new and innovative regulatory strategies. A U.S. Navy veteran and former nuclear plant operator, he holds an MBA from Tulane University and a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering technologies. His career spans legacy nuclear fission, renewables, storage, and grid modernization. More about CFS and the ARC power plant can be found at cfs.energy.

A meaningful part of the annual symposium is the announcement of the winner of the Erchul Environmental Leadership Award. This year’s winner was Tanya Denckla Cobb, director of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Engagement & Negotiation. The award recognizes a Virginian who has made significant individual efforts to improve the environment.  Members of Virginia’s environmental community nominate candidates who are judged based on their vision, expertise, commitment, integrity, communication skills, accomplishments, and diplomacy. The award is named for the late VMI professor Capt. Ronald A. Erchul, Ph.D., founder of the Environment Virginia Symposium.

According to Sanner, who received the award last year, Cobb has served as the director of IEN since 2015. Her work involves overseeing the facilitation and mediation of a broad range of community and environmental issues, as well as a wide range of training in conflict management and negotiations. “Tanya and her staff continue to develop new approaches to old issues and new challenges, developing creative, innovative, and effective ways of engaging people and solving problems,” Sanner said. “Over the years, Tanya has worked with communities across the commonwealth, as well as numerous industry, governmental, indigenous, and nonprofit organizations. She’s well known in Virginia’s environmental community, highly regarded and well-liked. Tanya is very deserving of the Erchul Environmental Leadership Award for her commitment to Virginia’s environment, its communities, and its citizens.”

Cobb stated she was honored to receive the award. She told the assembly, “You all in this room are on the front line in conserving our forest lands, cleaning up our waterways, creating corridors and habitats for our wildlife. You are the wheels helping to create sustainable pathways forward, and me and my small but very mighty team at IEN, I’ve always thought of as the grease in those wheels. Through facilitation and consensus building and training, we are the grease, trying to help you find that common ground and create the pathways forward. In my mind, I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ve heard of bicycles getting awards, but when does grease ever get an award?’” she quipped. She shared with her peers that they, too, can be the grease for the wheel of their organizations and their interpersonal relationships. “You can do something radical. You can reach out to someone. Maybe it is someone sitting on the sideline not participating. Maybe it’s someone on the opposite side of the issue from you. Have the courage and the intention to suspend judgment, use your compassion and caring to extend grace, listen more deeply, bring curiosity, ask only questions of the other. Most of all, reach out sooner rather than later. It is often hard, but it is rewarding, and it works.”

Each year, VMI donates $1,500 to a nonprofit environmental organization of the recipient’s choice in their honor. Cobb has requested this donation be made to the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute.

Next year’s Environment Virginia Symposium is scheduled for March 31–April 2, 2026, at VMI.