For Immediate Release
October 18, 2012
Contact:
Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org
Dominion CEO Thomas Farrell challenged to publicly debate controversial $76 million energy bonus
Activists bring giant ostrich and bucket of sand to illustrate problem outside company doors in Richmond
RICHMOND — Clean energy advocates today presented Dominion Virginia Power CEO Thomas Farrell a fresh challenge over the controversial $76 million bonus his company is receiving under the state’s renewable energy law: debate us publicly at the day, time and rules of your choosing. (Read the letter.)
“At Dominion, the buck stops with Tom Farrell. Yet when Virginians travelled from across the state to Richmond to protest this $76 million rip-off, he stayed deafeningly silent,” said Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “In my view, Tom Farrell has his head stuck in the sand if he thinks Dominion deserves a renewable energy bonus for shuffling papers. But debate is a time-honored American tradition and I’m eager for it.”
Farrell’s Dominion Power faced an unprecedented week of pickets outside its Richmond office earlier this month over the $76 million customer-funded bonus that, under state law, was intended to promote the growth of new clean energy sources. Defying the spirit of the law, Dominion qualified for the bonus — averaging over $100,000 per day over two years — by providing no solar or wind power to Virginia and instead relying exclusively on old, mostly out-of-state energy facilities, including hydropower dams built up to 100 years ago.
In the face of public outcry over this rip-off, Farrell has yet to offer any public statement or explanation. To dramatize his silence and lack of responsibility, Tidwell and activists brought a bucket of sand and an eight-foot-tall “Thomas Farrell” ostrich to Dominion’s Richmond offices this morning.
“Tom Farrell spoke in 2008 about the importance of injecting ‘more candor and straight talk into the national energy debate.’ It’s time he heeded his own call,” said Scott Price, Policy Director of the Alliance for Progressive Values. “Customers deserve to hear straight from Tom Farrell how the $76 million bonus is anything other than a corporate handout when Dominion failed to bring Virginians the benefits of new solar or wind energy in exchange for it.”
While Farrell remains silent on the bonus, evidence is building that Dominion’s approach to cashing in on the profit reward clashes with Virginians’ priorities. Recent polling showed 63 percent of Virginians want utilities to meet the state’s renewable energy goals with solar or wind power, in contrast to the hydropower dams and trash- and wood-burning facilities Dominion has used thus far. Nearly 4,000 Virginians have personally petitioned Farrell, calling on Dominion to meet its clean energy commitments with 100 percent Virginia-made wind and solar.
In recent months, Dominion has refused to even talk to the state’s largest newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot, about this and other energy issues.
Activists vowed to continue to hold Thomas Farrell directly accountable until he responds to the debate challenge and tells his side of the story to customers and impacted Virginians.
“The stakes are too high to allow Tom Farrell to escape responsibility for his company’s actions,” said Tidwell. “While Tom Farrell games our laws for a corporate bonus, Virginians pay for the costs of Dominion’s fossil-fuel dominated power supply. Rising seas are flooding homes, extreme weather is wrecking businesses, and our climate is spiraling further out of control.”
Resources for journalists:
• Letter from Mike Tidwell to Thomas Farrell challenging him to a debate.
• Memo on Virginia renewable energy polling results.
• Briefing paper on the renewable energy standard law and how Dominion is receiving the $76 million bonus.
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With 90,000 members, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots, nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to fighting global warming in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Our mission is to build and mobilize a powerful grassroots movement to call for state, national and international policies that will put us on a path to climate stability. Learn more at www.chesapeakeclimate.org.
