Our Mission

Public Policy Virginia is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation focused on making the connection between values and public policy through local, grassroots communication across the state of Virginia. Our mission is to change the energy culture of the Commonwealth. To do this, we

• Engage in a dialogue about climate change at the grassroots level;
• Organize, motivate and staff local groups to enable them to change local public policy;
• Lead the debate on statewide public policy to reduce energy usage; and
• Act as a statewide coordinator for alternative energy policy information.

For example, currently PPV is heading an effort to identify, quantify and locate all of the potential sources of biomass energy in the Commonwealth. You can read more about this effort in our biomass section.

PPV Goals

Our goal is to educate and influence citizens, administrators, and elected officials to consider climate change when evaluating the worth and overall effect of any given ordinance, law or regulation.

Public policy is often made by leaders chosen because of their perceived shared values instead of their new ideas. Public policy changes when these values allow the embrace of new ways to deal with pressing issues.

Some issues cannot wait for the election cycle to engage the public—voting alone is not enough. It is necessary for responsible citizens, motivated by strong values and armed with solid information, to influence elected officials to pass laws, at all levels, to address those issues.

Well-informed voters armed with facts that support their values will be effective at changing public policy. Change at the local level will create a demand for change at the state level. Elected members of the General Assembly and Congress will push for laws that their constituents demand. This is how democracy can be made to work for change.

At PPV, this is where the dialogue begins—local action that leads to public policy changes all the way up the line. We identify those public policy issues which are crucial to the Commonwealth, motivating and organizing groups to influence their policymakers by giving them the necessary tools.

PPV Tools

• Public speakers, selected for their ability to communicate, and trained to deal with both the factual elements of the issues and the underlying values that inform interpretation of those facts.
• A library of background information. We are engaged in an ongoing assessment of the actual effects of climate change on the state of Virginia as well as the initiatives we feel are necessary to address that change.
• Letter writers who can assist and train grassroots groups to target the concerns of their citizens and communicate those concerns effectively to elected officials, media outlets, and the public.
• An interactive website at www.ppvir.org that offers a broad range of information on the issues related to climate change, as well as links to detailed research on other sites.
• Polling and tracking of public awareness and understanding of selected issues. PPV will publish poll results as appropriate.

PPV Methods

• We build coalitions, either with groups to create outreach and education programs on issues of mutual interest, or with grass-roots activists to form effective campaigns.
• We provide speakers and presentations for forums, meetings, and conferences.
• We communicate our analyses to the public through a broad array of media—op-ed articles, letters to the editor, press releases, radio & TV interviews, and across the Internet through viral video, news and podcast sites

PPV Issues

Climate Change—PPV recognizes that the single most important challenge facing us today is climate change, and we can only alter current dangerous trends by changing our energy culture. Addressing individual energy consumption is necessary but insufficient to accomplish this; we also need the policy changes in place to support alternative energy and fuel industry, to encourage smarter land-use management and conservation techniques.

Read More on Climate Change

Biomass Energy—In conjunction with our focus on energy culture, PPV has identified biomass energy and biofuels as an industry that could provide particular economic and environmental benefits for our Commonwealth.

Read More on Biomass Energy