dominion energy
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see dom resources
BROWN U
Furthermore, since 2019, Environmental Progress
has accepted $125,000 from the Rodel Charitable
Foundation which is committed to the
“advancement of nuclear energy because our
current technologies (particularly wind, solar and
hydro power) will not produce enough energy
supply to significantly reduce the use of fossil fuel
sources.”83 84
Michael Shellenberger, the founding president of
Environmental Progress, has ties to the Nuclear
Energy Institute, which includes utilities and fossil
fuel-affiliated companies such as Dominion Energy
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Shellenberger is also on the}:
advisory board of Alliance for Responsible
Citizenship, which has stated, “Nuclear +
petrochemicals...will keep us going” and includes
prolific climate obstructionist Bjørn Lomborg and
Republican presidential candidate Vivek
Ramaswamy on its board.87
We can do this. We can get out of a world where we have to go kowtow, fist-bump the idiot king of Saudi Arabia. We can do it, but only if we’re willing to make the effort that Joe Manchin has kept us from making this week.
AMY GOODMAN:
Let’s name some names. I’m looking at a Politico piece that talks about where Senator Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, you know, the top recipient of oil and gas funds, gets his money. Last quarter’s campaign finance data shows the trend is continuing. 'The senator received donations from executives at Georgia Power, including the utility’s CFO Aaron Abramovitz, and from Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue.Energy services firm Concord Energy CEO Matthew Flavin gave Manchin the maximum allowable amount of $5,800, as did Southern CompanyGas CEO Kim Greene and Harvest Midstream CEO Jason Rebrook. Southern Company’s chair and CEO Chris Cummiskey gave Manchin $2,000, while three other company executives gave at least $1,000. An in-house lobbyist for the company donated $1,000 as well. Kara G. Moriarty, president of the Alaska Oil & Gas Association, gave $1,000, too, along with two executives from the energy storage company Form Energy.'
And it goes on: 'Manchin also took in more than $19,000 from political action committees belonging to fossil fuel or energy companies and their trade groups, including the Coterra Energy, NextEra Energy, North American Coal Corp., the American Exploration & Production Council’s PAC. The PACs for private equity giant the Carlyle Group and AT&T contributed $10,000 and $5,000, respectively.' Your response, Bill?
BILL McKIBBEN:
You know what’s pathetic? It’s pathetic how cheap it is to buy these guys. So, you know, for a few hundred thousand dollars, you can afford a senator, and he is able to put the kibosh on hundreds of billions of dollars in renewable energy spending. The list you just read is a list of all the people who don’t want the status quo to change, who want to slow down that change as much as they can. That’s what they are paying for, and that’s what they got, man. This was money well spent, from their point of view.
1020
Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile project that would have crossed the Appalachian Trail, was recently abandoned thanks in part to the tireless organizing of climate justice advocates. The pipeline was planned to fragment some of the most intact, forested landscapes and cut through rivers, streams, and wetlands. It also would have forced people of color to continue to bear the brunt of the risks posed by the nation's power infrastructure. And the project was pushed by Dominion Energy, one of the most powerful energy monopolies in America, and its leader, Tom Farrell.
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icn so coal conf 619
Chart: How Renewable Energy Costs Are Falling
"We are embarking on coal's new era, but we have to face reality," said J.P. Richardson, chairman of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance, a mining industry group.
Part of that reality is that four of the energy board's states and territories—Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Puerto Rico—are led by governors who are members of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors who have committed to work toward achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement, despite Trump's moves to pull the U.S. out of that international accord.
"We are seeing more and more cities, states and utilities, in particular, that are moving toward clean energy," said Julie Cerqueira, the executive director of the alliance, who was not at the meeting. "Economically, it just makes sense. Coal is increasingly expensive" and "the clean energy sector produces a lot of jobs."
Dominion's View of the Future Is Low-Carbon
One of those utilities is Virginia-based Dominion Energy,which operates in 18 states and was one of the conference sponsors.
Instead of dwelling on coal, one of Dominion's top lobbyists, James Beamer, said the utility plans to cut its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050.
He highlighted plans for new offshore wind power, forconverting factory-scale farm hog waste to methane, and for new solar power. He also said the company is developing a new hydroelectric pump storage facility that will work like a large battery and be powered in part by renewable energy.
James Beamer, one of Dominion Energy’s top lobbyists, told the conference about the utility's goal to cut its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050 with plans including more offshore wind power, solar power and pumped hydropower storage. Credit: James Bruggers
Other speakers touted what they considered time-tested attributes of coal as an energy source—its reliability and price, though analysts have found new wind and solar power, bolstered by battery storage, is cheaper than coal in much of the U.S. now.
Wind and solar? It's too intermittent, the coal supporters say, omitting any mention of the growing use of energy storage. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, they said.
Natural gas? It's a national security threat because natural gas plants rely on just-in-time delivery of fuel that could be disrupted by terrorists and doesn't perform as well in the extreme cold, they argued.
A speaker from the grid operator PJM, which serves 13 eastern and Midwestern states, acknowledged fuel security is important but said a stress test had found no threats to its grid reliability through at least 2023 as it shifts to more renewable energy and gas and less coal.
Kenneth Nemeth, executive director of the energy board, argued that coal-related jobs, security and reliability aren't being factored into decision electric utilities and regulators are making when they allow coal plants to close or approve new power sources. That needs to change, he said.
The Trump administration has tried to use those same arguments to bail out coal by suggesting that grid operators be required to buy power from uneconomical coal power plants in the name of national security. So far, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected that idea.
Mini Coal Plants and Carbon Capture?
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/14/skdknickerbocker-biden-advisor-anita-dunn-fracked-gas-dominion-energy
uproar ensued last week within Democratic party circles with the news that Heather Zichal, a former fossil fuel company board member, is serving as an advisor on climate change to presidential hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Yet the fossil fuel connections of Biden’s burgeoning circle of advisors do not end with Zichal.
Anita Dunn, another Biden campaign advisor whose hiring was reported in late April, is a managing director at SKDKnickerbocker, a PR and lobbying firm with strong ties to top Democratic brass, which has been promoting natural gas for the utility and pipeline company Dominion Energy.
Biden’s ‘Middle Ground’ on Climate?
In an interview with Reuters, Zichal, who previously advised President Barack Obama, called for a “middle ground” stance on climate change, saying a Biden presidency will likely rejoin the Paris Agreement and protect Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations while supporting nuclear energy, natural gas, and carbon capture technologies.
When the progressive flank of the party and activists both fired back, saying there can be no middle ground on climate change, Zichal tweeted that Reuters got it wrong: “Biden would enact a bold policy to tackle climate change in a meaningful and lasting way.”
Zichal left the Obama administration for a seat on the Board of Directors of Texas-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) company Cheniere Energy, netting her nearly $1.1 million. As DeSmog previously reported, shortly before her appointment to Cheniere’s board and while still advising Obama on energy and climate change matters, Zichal met with company executives at least twice.
Anita Dunn and Dominion Energy
Biden’s team of advisors has other ties to fossil fuels through Anita Dunn’s position with SKDKnickerbocker. Dunn had a short stint as President Obama’s first White House communications director.
A recent filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows that Dominion Energy, one of the nation’s largest electric and gas utilities, employs SKDKnickerbocker as a contractor. In 2018 alone, Dominion payed the firm over $2.7 million dollars.
As DeSmog reported in 2017, SKDK worked for Dominion in the past, producing TV spots that touted the benefits of natural gas, a fossil fuel that some studies show can have an even worse climate impact than coal.
SKDK received more than $2.7 million from Dominion Energy for contract work in 2018. Credit: FERC
Dominion operates a sprawling system of gas transmission lines and LNG terminals. One of its most ambitious and controversial endeavors is the Atlantic Coast pipeline, a three-state 600-mile project that plans to bring fracked gas from the Marcellus Shale fields of Ohio and West Virginia south to North Carolina.
Documents filed in February this year with the South Carolina Public Service Commission reveal that most recently, SKDKnickerbocker supported Dominion in its merger with utility company SCANA. The firm produced TV ads touting the merger’s supposed benefits for energy consumers.
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Anita Dunn told DeSmog via email that she does not advise the campaign on policy and does not work on the Dominion Energy account at SKDKnickerbocker. The Reuters story, she added, “isn’t true. The campaign didn’t confirm the policy. Heather Zichal disavowed the story.”
“Joe Biden has called climate change an existential threat and in the coming weeks will release a bold proposal that addresses climate change in a lasting and meaningful way,” Dunn said.
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Richmond-based energy giant Dominion Resources Inc. is planning to change its name and adopt a new corporate logo. ... Dominion Resources owns Virginia's largest electric utility, operates one of the nation's largest natural gas storage systems, and owns gas and electric distribution companies in multiple states.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Energy
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https://www.ecowatch.com/cash-buys-elections-and-continued-fossil-fuel-dominance-2619922863.html
Cash Buys Elections—and Continued Fossil Fuel Dominance
By Wenonah Hauter
Last week, the fossil fuel industry successfully squashed several local measures it didn't like—thanks to the more than $100 million it shelled out to oppose them.
Initiatives to rein in fracking failed in Colorado, where the industry spent a whopping $40 million (outspending advocates 40-1) and in San Luis Obispo County, where a measure to ban fracking lost in the face of $8 million in industry cash (proponents of the measure spent only $240,000). An Arizona initiative to mandate 50 percent renewable energy by 2050 failed, thanks to $30 million in energy cash to fight it. And, despite increasingly touting its approval for carbon taxes with modest funding of greenwashing groups like the Climate Leadership Council, the industry spent $30 million to oppose a carbon tax initiative in Washington.
The fossil fuel industry is doing more of the same in many states across the country, including Virginia. A new Food & Water Watch report out now looks at Dominion Energy's outsized influence in the state—how it buys policy, buys elections and squashes renewable energy to further its profits.
One of the ways Dominion buys policy in Virginia is through its multi-million dollar political and lobbying operation. Since 1998, the company has built the infrastructure to buy off policy and is the biggest corporate contributor to political campaigns in Virginia—with its political action committee and employees plowing more than $10 million into Virginia campaign coffers. Whether it's meals, cocktails, sporting tickets or other associated spending, it's repeatedly bought access to policy through the state's elected officials.
Dominion's primary interests have been in pushing policies that ensure they won't be regulated. Between 2017 and 2018, the company increased its lobbying and advertising expenditures 10-fold while pushing to enact a law that would ensure Virginia ratepayers would pay more for polluting fossil energy. It also spent more than $4 million on ads this year promoting its legislative agenda to build out more fossil fuel infrastructure—like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—and its acquisition of SCANA, a South Carolina utility that brought with it a portfolio of coal- and gas-fired power plants.
Poisonous coal ash and climate pollution aren't Dominion's only toxic legacy in the state: its lobbying machine worked to obstruct clean energy initiatives as well. The company has successfully thwarted popular and progressive energy measures, ensuring, for example, that utilities (like its subsidiary, Virginia Power) would be gatekeepers for community-based solar projects instead of allowing churches and other community organizations to develop their own. This is a move to keep them stuck in the polluting fossil fuel system from which the company extracts great profits that keep them powerful.
And this is just in Virginia. Nationally, Dominion dumped at least $59 million into state and federal political advocacy, including campaign contributions, gifts and lobbying since 1998. In the late 1990s, Dominion joined disgraced energy company Enron in a national fight to deregulate utilities so that they could instead implement a market-based scheme to separate electricity distribution from power generation, essentially taking energy out of the realm of "public good" and into the realm of commodity. We know how well that worked out: Enron went bankrupt from the scheme, a development that also saddled Dominion with nearly $100 million in losses. But the damage had been done for ratepayers nationwide, with the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 entrenching the deregulation these companies sought—the same legislation that enshrined the "Halliburton Loophole" into federal law exempting frackers from federal drinking water protections. Dominion is also investing in infrastructure to connect its facilities to fracked gas from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Industry influence can mean the difference between a renewable future or more climate-throttling fossil fuel infrastructure. In Virginia, local advocates are taking the fight to Dominion's doorstep—and their cronies in the statehouse. We're joining with Virginia NAACP, Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, People Demanding Action, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, League of United Latin American Citizens—Richmond, and others to pass legislation just introduced by state delegates Sam Rasoul and Elizabeth Guzman to transition the state to 100 percent renewables by 2035.
We're ready for the fight ahead because we have no choice but to ensure that Dominion, and the industry as a whole, doesn't win. We must begin the transition off of fossil fuels immediately if we want to protect our communities and avert the worst of catastrophic climate change ahead.
Wenonah Hauter is executive director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Action.
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desmog
Five employees of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have financial interests in Dominion, the state’s largest utility and energy company. The officials are involved, in one way or another, in permitting or overseeing the company’s activities, ranging from water discharges to emissions controls on power plants.
According to financial disclosures filed with the state’s ethics council, four of them directly own stock in the company, while the wife of a fifth official works for Dominion. Read more....
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