Dominion Changes Its Answer—Admitting There Was No Independent Review–On Key Application For Natural Gas Plant – Inside Climate News

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electric utility, did not have an independent monitor review  bids for its planned gas plant in Chesterfield County and now has told state authorities that it alone reviewed the bids. 

Questions raised by Virginia’s Attorney General’s Division of Consumer Counsel prompted Dominion this month to amend its months-old filing about the plant, making clear that an outside monitor had no part in the bidding process. Dominion had said, in previous written filings, that there was an independent monitor overseeing its bids for the gas structure planned at the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center. 

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which is fighting the fossil-fuel project now under review by regulators at the State Corporation Commission, noted the wording change last week and said Dominion should answer why and how an outside monitor was not used—and why there was any confusion in its filings.

The Division of Consumer Counsel, which is focused on keeping rates affordable, requested in April that Dominion provide documents, including a report from any independent monitor related to the bidding process. In previous written filings with the state, Dominion said that an independent monitor had reviewed the bids “though it did not prepare a formal report.” 

Last week, the utility responded in writing to the attorney general’s office that there was an “unbiased review” of the bids “conducted by the company,” consistent with “company practice.” It said, “an independent monitor was not involved in the bid evaluation process.”

SELC senior attorney Grayson Holmes said the discrepancy was surprising given the need for state regulators to review Dominion’s plans. “You want to make sure it’s done well,” said Holmes, referring to the regulatory filing. “You want to make sure everything is done in a way that the public can trust that their money’s being spent well.” 

Dominion’s correction comes as the state is experiencing a rush for proposed data centers and utilities are contending that they will need both fossil-fuel and renewable energy plants to meet customers’ needs. It is not unusual for written submissions to be adjusted during a regulatory review but the lack of an independent monitor has raised interest from several advocacy groups. 

Asked about the corrected answer via email, Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton did not offer clarification. He said, “We are reviewing the respondents’ testimony and will file our rebuttal in early September.” A hearing on the application is scheduled for Sept. 23. Dominion, based in Richmond, is a provider for four million customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. 

The absence of an independent monitor has come to light years after Dominion found itself caught up in an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, into a bid process in 2019 related to a plan then for a $500 million gas plant in Chesterfield County. 

According to a release by that office about its prosecution, three employees of Siemens  conspired with Theodore Fasca, then director of generation system planning at Dominion Energy, to receive trade secrets that General Electric Company and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had revealed to the utility during a bid process. 

Siemens then submitted a bid that undercut the other two companies, according to the release. Dominion was not charged with wrongdoing. In 2024, Siemens pleaded to charges related to stealing confidential competitor information and agreed to pay $104 million to resolve the investigation. The Dominion employee pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to prison time, according to the release.

Dominion is currently facing a regulatory review of a new application for a “peaker” combustion turbine power plant, which like the 2019 proposed plant, aims to improve grid resiliency. Dominion says the peaker plant is needed to meet high-consumption strains on the electric grid. 

Along with the data center development in Virginia, extreme weather is raising consumer demand for heating and cooling units. The utility has said it needs the proposed gas plant, estimated to cost $1.47 billion to build, to provide electricity at times, specifically during early mornings and evenings, when renewables powered by sun and wind likely will not suffice. 

Environmental groups have protested the gas plant because it will rely on fossil fuels that emit pollutants, and they want Dominion to develop alternatives, including battery storage and management strategies to balance the use of renewables.

Ratepayer advocates have also said the plant could become a stranded asset under Virginia’s decarbonization law, the Virginia Clean Economy Act. The VCEA requires carbon-emitting plants to be retired by 2045, unless there is a proven threat to grid reliability.

In March, when it submitted its application to Virginia regulators, Dominion said it conducted a request for proposals, or a bid process, to evaluate the best technology for meeting peak strain on the grid. 

The bid process led to the utility to decide to build its own four General Electric combustion turbines at the former coal-fired Chesterfield Power Station instead of buying electricity or technologies from a total of 10 other third-party resources, according to company filings.

By building the turbine infrastructure, Dominion has the right to recover a 9.7 percent profit margin through customer rates, according to its application.

The attorney general’s office asked for more information about the bid process in April. 

In July–before Dominion provided the documentation–a consultant who was evaluating Dominion’s plan noted the independent oversight, citing it as reason to support the utility. Scott Norwood, an energy consultant hired by the attorney general’s office, wrote that Dominion’s self-build option was “the optimal choice” since it “appears to have been based on a reasonably conducted Request for Proposals” that came with “oversight from an Independent Monitor.”

Asked to respond to revelations that Dominion did not have an independent monitor, the attorney general’s office declined to comment. 

Dominion has already ordered the turbines it plans to use for the gas plant proposal, at a cost that hasn’t become public yet. Holmes of the SELC said the utility is proceeding, without regulatory approval as of yet, and “essentially saying: Trust us, everything’s on the up and up.” 

“They may be perfectly right. I’m not saying they’re not,” Holmes continued. But he noted the prior scandal and said that “there’s a lot of potential concern” with how the current bid has proceeded.

Greg Abbott, a consultant who is a former deputy director of the State Corporation Commission, said an independent monitor review would have bolstered confidence in Dominion’s plans and management. 

Virginia law forbids the construction of new carbon emitting plants, unless certain requirements are met. Dominion was required to meet specific energy efficiency savings targets and the state regulator found in 2024 that Dominion fell short. An independent monitor report that addressed Dominion’s plan would have allayed some concerns, Abbott said. He added that Dominion’s bid process this year was an opportunity for the utility to show it had examined all other possibilities before arriving at the fossil fuel generation technology. 

Without the independent monitor, Dominion can set its own energy parameters–as it did in the current bid–for future capacity. Advanced Energy United, a national trade association representing the advanced energy industry, criticized Dominion for following a bid process that barred renewable energy sources  and “effectively biasing the outcome towards fossil generation.”

“They can put their thumb on the scale when they’re the ones running it,” Abbott said about Dominion’s process. “That’s why an independent analysis would be better.”

Abbott acknowledged, however, that answers often change during the regulatory approval process. And Dominion may have had one division within the company conduct the bid process, and then another division conduct a review of the bid process, which is “not truly independent, but it allows them to say, ‘Hey, our first response really wasn’t incorrect. We did do one,’” he said.

The change in answers by Dominion is part of a reputational issue, Abbott said. 

“They’re also really good at giving you an answer where they don’t actually say something, but you will infer something from it,” Abbott said. “You really got to tie them down.”