This summer, Dominion Energy agreed to be taken over by NextEra Energy, a Florida-based conglomerate, in a deal that would create the single largest monopoly electric utility in the world — and hand control of Virginia's power grid to an out-of-state corporation.
We, the undersigned Virginians, ask the State Corporation Commission, the General Assembly, Governor Spanberger, and Attorney General Jones to use every tool of law and oversight available to them to stop this merger.
Make no mistake about this deal: it is about profit, not people. NextEra is already on record that its interest is in profiting from the explosive growth of data centers and artificial intelligence, which are already driving energy bills up. The companies are dangling a one-time, temporary bill credit that offers no structural protections, and are not able to quantify what benefits they claim Virginia ratepayers will receive from the acquisition. Moreover, the cost of building all that infrastructure would be locked permanently into Virginians' electric bills for decades to come. Virginians would build and pay for the grid that Big Tech's data centers need; NextEra, Dominion, and their shareholders would collect the profit.
Virginians deserve to know who they'd be handing their grid to. NextEra's Florida Power & Light subsidiary agreed to settle a lawsuit for $150 million over claims that it orchestrated a “ghost candidate” election scheme to sabotage a pro-solar state senator and pledged to make his life “a living hell”; a Florida-based watchdog group concluded that the state's utility regulator has been effectively “captured” by the industry it's supposed to police. NextEra has funneled money through secret front groups to kill a competing power line, helped bankroll a deceptive ballot campaign against rooftop solar, and left customers paying in advance for nuclear reactors that were never built. Regulators in Hawaii and Texas already rejected NextEra's attempts to take over utilities there as bad deals for the public, and the company's campaign to take over a South Carolina utility also collapsed.
We ask the State Corporation Commission to deny this merger. We ask the General Assembly to use its authority to pass legislation that provides structural protections from skyrocketing costs, including protecting ratepayers from funding data center infrastructure build-out and expensive fossil fuel plants to serve them. Because of the serious, long-term risks to Virginia ratepayers, we ask Governor Spanberger and Attorney General Jay Jones to formally oppose the merger as intervenors in the Commission room. Virginia needs regulated utilities that serve people, rather than seek profit.
Sincerely,
