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Proposed Merger Fails Public Interest Scrutiny
NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy — two of the nation’s highest polluting utilities with record-high profits — submitted applications to the North Carolina Utilities Commission, South Carolina Public Service Commission, and the Virginia State Corporation Commission to merge into one single utility. The proposed merger fails public interest scrutiny.
While the proposed merger includes approximately $10 per month in bill credits for 24 months for a typical 1,000 kWh residential customer, the customer “benefit” is still lower than Dominion’s proposed rate increase of $17 per month it filed with the NCUC in May.
Beyond the temporary bill credits, the proposed merger does not improve residential customers’ experience: it doesn’t solve long-term affordability, there are no commitments to realize efficiencies in the merger that benefit customers, no commitment to retire aging and expensive coal plants, no limits on building new and increasingly expensive gas-burning power plants, no commitment to expand new energy efficiency programs or enhance existing programs, no requirement to accelerate clean energy investments, and no guardrails or protections for residential customers regarding the impacts of data centers on monthly utility bills.
