Dominion Virginia Power CEO Paul Koonce has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post responding to a recent evisceration of Dominion by Virginia Sierra Club Vice Chair Ivy Main. She’d made three key charges:
- Dominion is using pre-existing hydro power or biomass projects of dubious environmental value for renewable energy credits
- Dominion is not building large-scale solar and wind projects in Virginia to deliver that energy to Virginia customers
- Dominion is insanely planning to slap a massive fee on customers who install their own solar power
Koonce’s response?
Our renewable generation includes one of the largest biomass plants in the East, taking advantage of one of Virginia’s richest renewable resources. Four more biomass projects are in various stages of construction or development. We operate several hydroelectric facilities and have announced plans for solar arrays on commercial and public buildings. Other Dominion companies operate large wind farms in Indiana and West Virginia.
That’s Koonce’s big rebuttal? That Dominion DOES rely heavily on existing hydro & questionable biomass, ISN’T currently building solar or wind in Virginia … oh, and the massive fees on renewable energy? The CEO of Dominion, which earned $1 billion in profit in the first 9 months of 2011 alone, calls them “simple matter of fairness.”
He might as well have written, “The 1% don’t have to explain themselves to people like you.”
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