Dominion and NextEra want you to know: They’ve heard your concerns and are coming back with an improved offer.
The utilities filed an application at the Virginia State Corporation Commission in July to merge in a $67 billion deal.
“We’ve been listening to a number of different stakeholders: our customers, elected officials, business leaders, among others,” Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia, told reporters Monday. “These proposed commitments are in response to what we’ve heard.”
The top-line commitment: Instead of two years of monthly $10 bill credits for residential customers, the utilities are now proposing four years. Baine noted that would be done “largely by reallocating the credits that would have gone to data centers to our residential customers.”
The companies are also proposing a brand new NextEra headquarters building located across the street from Dominion’s 600 E. Canal St. HQ, on the site of a Dominion building that was demolished in 2020. The new building would be paid for by shareholders.
“I know there was a lot of concerns about the presence in Richmond and in the commonwealth,” Baine told reporters. “This is a clear indication of that presence.”
The building would have offices focusing on renewable energy, battery storage and nuclear energy development, along with a team focusing on new technology and cybersecurity. In all, it would add 600 jobs.
The deal would now also extend job protections, at least maintaining Dominion’s current headcount of 10,431 jobs in the commonwealth for five years. Those jobs would be split across the two entities. The companies originally proposed protecting Dominion jobs for 18 months, with two years of compensation and benefits protection for non-union employees.
Baine said deals with suppliers — the utilities claim nine companies have signed letters of intent — would add another 400 jobs in energy infrastructure development and operations, including engineers, contractors and vendors.
New career pathways would be supported by another shareholder commitment. The companies propose spending $100 million on establishing an organization to expand training opportunities at Virginia schools, universities, colleges and trade unions. The job training would be energy-focused, with the goal of training new engineers, line workers, boilermakers and more.
And Dominion says it would increase spending on EnergyShare, its bill assistance program, by $100 million through 2038.
Asked about the Virginia Clean Economy Act, the state legislation ordering carbon-emitting power plants to be retired by 2045 barring reliability concerns, Baine said the companies would be committed to following the law — and accelerating renewable energy and storage buildout in Virginia.
“NextEra is the largest company in the nation building renewables, and so with our experience in Dominion Energy and their experience building renewables, we’ll be able to execute on the policies within the commonwealth,” Baine said.
He added the company would continue to pursue an “all of the above” approach to generation — that means keeping dispatchable fossil fuel-powered generation online to quickly respond to changes in demand on the grid. Renewables like solar, with currently available battery technology, aren’t able to serve as dispatchable resources in the same way.
“This is a full commitment to make sure that NextEra and Dominion Energy have a great presence in the commonwealth, both now and in the future, and can support the reliability, affordability, and the clean energy for our customers,” Baine said, concluding his remarks.
Concerns about NextEra’s size, structure remain
The new offerings won’t satisfy all critics of the deal, including Brennan Gilmore, executive director of Clean Virginia — an advocacy group and political donation machine that positions itself as a counterweight against Dominion’s influence on state politics.
Gilmore told VPM News he sees the new offerings as attempts to “sweeten the deal.”
“Any time someone does that, you have to ask: Well, what’s wrong with the deal on its own?” he said.
He said nothing’s changed the core question the SCC is charged with answering: Would the Dominion–NextEra deal threaten adequate electric service at just and reasonable rates in Virginia?
Gilmore argued that it is more a question of corporate structure.
“A lot of the sweeteners on this deal don’t really have anything to do with that core question of ‘Does the corporate structure introduce new risk to Virginia ratepayers?’” Gilmore said. “We certainly will argue that it does, and the deal should be rejected because it exposes Virginia ratepayers to massive risk not present in the current monopoly construct.”
Clean Virginia’s concern has to do with NextEra’s size and structure. Dominion Energy Virginia is predominantly a regulated electric utility — for the most part, it does not operate in competitive markets.
NextEra, however, has many subsidiaries, including several operating in competitive markets.
In August, the state Energy Commission heard from public utility law expert Josh Macey, who described what he saw as the risk of those competitive subsidiaries.
He explained that as a utility with subsidiaries operating both in regulated and competitive markets, NextEra could use state-grantedguaranteed returns in Dominion’s Virginia territory to benefit its unregulated businesses — “the regulated utility is essentially used as a piggybank.”
“This,” he said, “is not a good reason to approve a merger.”
He pointed to NextEra’s attempt to acquire Texas-based Oncor, which failed in part due to “ring fencing” provisions required by that state’s Public Utilities Commission. NextEra opposed those provisions, which were designed to isolate the subsidiary’s finances from the parent company.
Gilmore said the SCC should protect Virginia ratepayers from those competitive markets — in the case that NextEra’s other businesses start to struggle, he said, Dominion’s captive ratepayers should not pay to support those businesses.
He also repeated calls for a special session of the state legislature to extend the review’s timeline — calls that Gov. Abigail Spanberger rebuffed earlier this month.
Dominion and NextEra maintain that the merger would be a benefit to Virginia ratepayers by improving Dominion’s credit rating and expanding the utility’s buying power and access to supply chains.
With significant infrastructure investments to serve data centers already facing Dominion’s rate base, the utilities argue efficiency will help all customers.
Macey agreed during the August Energy Commission meeting that the deal has the potential to bring genuine efficiencies to Dominion’s business that would benefit ratepayers — if the commission adequately protects ratepayers in its final order.
“Imposing certain substantive requirements can be a way to deter mergers that are motivated by the wrong reasons,” he said.
The new proposals were filed at the State Corporation Commission on Monday. That regulatory body has until Jan. 11, 2027, to complete its review of the case.
Disclosure: Clean Virginia and Dominion Energy are VPM sponsors.
More VPM News coverage of the Dominion–NextEra merger:
- State regulators add in-person hearings in Dominion–NextEra merger
- Lawmakers continue weighing in on Dominion–NextEra deal
- ‘Unprecedented’: Spanberger to intervene in Dominion–NextEra merger
- NextEra–Dominion merger filings start 6-month clock on regulatory review
- Hashmi asks state regulators to postpone Dominion–NextEra merger
- Merger expert: Virginia regulators need more time for NextEra–Dominion
- What can consumers expect from the proposed Dominion deal?
- Florida-based NextEra agrees to $67B Dominion Energy acquisition
