Dominion Puts Profits Ahead of Public Necessity

Charlottesville, VA — Expert analysis filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission today reveals that Dominion customers will end up paying anywhere between $1.6 to 2.3 billion in unneeded costs if Dominion Energy builds the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.  The analysis is included in one of three expert testimonies on Dominion Energy’s Integrated Resource Plan filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center at the SCC today.

“Today’s filings add to mounting evidence that Dominion Energy is not getting the numbers right in its planning process,” says Staff Attorney Will Cleveland with the Southern Environmental Law Center.  “That’s a problem not just from an environmental standpoint but in terms of wasting billions of customer dollars.”

The detailed analysis of Dominion’s IRP reveals that the company persists in using outdated data and modeling to come up with an energy plan for Virginia – one that skews in favor of the most lucrative plan for shareholders rather than the soundest one for energy consumption and customer cost.

SELC’s experts reviewed Dominion’s IRP and found the following:

• Dominion is dramatically over-projecting the demand for electricity in Virginia and as a result is planning on building costly, and completely unnecessary, power plants at customer expense.  This follows a pattern of bad analysis in Dominion IRPs that has been going on for a decade resulting in years of poor and inefficient planning.
• Dominion’s claim, that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is needed for cost-saving reasons, does not add up.  Using Dominion’s own data, the analysis shows that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will not save its customers a single dollar, instead adding billions to customers’ bills.
• Dominion is setting an arbitrary cap on the amount of solar it is willing to commit to in favor of building more natural gas infrastructure. By creating this artificially constrained model to determine solar use, Dominion overestimates its need for reliance on natural gas.

SELC will represent Appalachian Voices, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the National Resources Defense Council at Dominion’s IRP hearing at the Virginia SCC in September.

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About The Southern Environmental Law Center:

The Southern Environmental Law Center is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. With nine offices across the region (Charlottesville, VA; Chapel Hill, NC; Atlanta, GA; Charleston, SC; Washington, DC; Birmingham, AL; Nashville, TN; Asheville, NC; and Richmond, VA), SELC is widely recognized as the Southeast’s foremost environmental organization and regional leader. SELC works on a full range of environmental issues to protect the South’s natural resources and the health and well-being of all the people in our region. www.SouthernEnvironment.org