SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Dominion’s 2022 Climate Report stated, “we must act to manage climate and climate-related change.” The 2021 Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report states “Dominion Energy’s vision is to become the most sustainable energy company in America.”

Yet in cases before the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC), solar developers argue Dominion is “throttling the development of new solar projects,” and the SCC declared Dominion’s solar interconnection rules contrary to Virginia law.1,2

Dominion receives volumes of negative press,3 for exceeding allowed profit4 and for the 2023 Integrated Resources Plan violating Virginia law by increasing fossil fuel use and slowing renewables5. Virginians do not seem to agree that Dominion is meeting its sustainability goals.

Even if the Company believed that slowing its own climate transition enhances financial performance, failure to address climate change harms its diversified shareholders, who depend upon healthy systems to support the economy in which their investments are embedded: a warming planet will create serious economic costs globally,6 and lowered GDP will directly reduce returns to diversified investors.7

As of September 2023, Dominion’s top three holders were Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street, many of whose clients are generally indexed or otherwise broadly diversified. Any improved Company financial performance that comes at the expense of the environment and economy is a bad trade for such shareholders. The impact of excess carbon emissions on the global economy may reduce the compound annual returns of an average portfolio by 30% over the next 40 years.8

Resistance to customer-generated and community solar projects may stem from the Company’s status as a traditional Virginia corporation. Focused on short-term financial gains, directors prioritize shareholders, potentially hindering sustainability initiatives. The Institutional Investors Group on Climate report9 warns that overlooking long-term factors, like carbon asset risk, exposes utilities to increasing liabilities, challenging their conventional business models.

As a Benefit Corporation, Dominion’s directors and executives could balance the interests of shareholders, employees, customers, communities in which the company operates, the local and global environment, short-term and long-term interests of the corporation, and the ability to accomplish its general and any specific public benefit purpose. This would give legal status to its promises of sustainability and protecting the portfolios of its diversified shareholders from the threat of climate change.

Green Mountain Power shows the promise of this approach. In 2014, Green Mountain Power became registered as a Vermont benefit corporation and as a Certified B Corp, a certification of its commitment to sustainability, transparency, and accountability. Since then, its net income has risen, and the company has earned significant recognition for innovation and leadership in energy transformation.

Ruth McElroy.