Energy & Environment

The Fight to Build a Sustainable, Circular Bioeconomy

Virginia took a monumental step forward with the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), setting mandatory goals for solar, wind, and energy storage. However, decarbonizing our electric grid is only half the battle. Virginia currently lacks a comprehensive strategy for the industrial bioeconomy, failing to capture the potential of biomanufacturing, bio-based building materials, and non-fossil industrial feedstocks.

Why This Matters to Arlington

While rural regions generate organic agricultural and forestry residuals, urban centers like Arlington are major consumers of construction, paving, and municipal materials. Arlington has set ambitious climate action goals, including community-wide carbon neutrality. However, without state-level support to incentivize low-embodied carbon materials and sustainable biomanufacturing, Arlington’s public infrastructure projects, from schools to county facility upgrades, remain reliant on carbon-intensive concrete, steel, and petroleum-based products.

Breanna’s plan connects Arlington’s green purchasing power directly with innovative Virginia producers, driving sustainable economic growth across the Commonwealth while reducing the carbon footprint of our local infrastructure.

Key Legislative Priorities

Breanna will champion two pioneering policy proposals to position Virginia as a national leader in biomanufacturing and sustainable materials:

1. The Virginia Bio-Vault & Regional Carbon Stacking Act

Breanna Fights For, "Turning Waste into Sustainable Infrastructure."

Virginia focuses heavily on clean power generation, but lacks a targeted strategy for sustainable biomanufacturing and low-carbon industrial building materials. Meanwhile, urban centers like Arlington spend millions on public infrastructure built with carbon-intensive concrete and petroleum-based products, while tons of agricultural and forestry waste are left to rot in rural counties.

• What it does: Establishes a state-backed public-private partnership that pays agricultural producers and forestry owners to harvest organic waste (such as logging residues and agricultural biomass) and sequester it directly into long-lived bio-manufactured materials, such as cross-laminated timber, structural bio-composites, and bio-asphalt, used in Virginia public infrastructure projects. It introduces a novel Dual-Yield Credit System, rewarding producers for capturing waste biomass and offering manufacturers a Permanent Biogenic Storage Premium based on the certified carbon locked into public construction.

• Why it matters: It stops agricultural waste from decomposing into greenhouse gases and creates a direct supply line of low-carbon building materials for Arlington's public school and transit construction projects. This connects Northern Virginia’s infrastructure spending with rural green jobs, permanently locking away carbon in our roads, bridges, and public buildings.

2. The Virginia Bio-Franchise Act

Breanna Fights For, "Decentralized Clean Technology for Community Economic Growth."

• What it does: Creates a streamlined regulatory framework and seed-funding grant pool for modular, decentralized "community bio-refineries" owned as worker or agricultural cooperatives. By establishing a "Plug-and-Play Bio-Enterprise License," it enables local co-ops to process raw organic waste directly on-site into high-value bioplastics, organic fertilizers, and bio-based chemicals.

• Why it matters: Standard clean-tech policies favor massive, centralized fossil-chemical industrial plants. This legislation keeps wealth within Virginia communities, accelerates the transition away from single-use petroleum plastics, and ensures Arlington businesses and local government have access to regionally produced, environmentally friendly bioproducts.

Stand With Us

Building a truly sustainable future requires bold solutions that go beyond the electric grid. Breanna is ready to lead in Richmond by bridging our urban sustainability goals with rural clean technology innovation.