SCC Smart to Approve Dominion Bill-Lowering Efficiency Plan

Virginia's State Corporation Commission exercised sound judgement today, to deliver on its mission to ensure the lowest possible rates for everyday Virginians: under Dominion's just-approved energy efficiency proposal, many new sectors of the Virginia economy will see lower energy costs, through the bill lowering (and pollution lowering) benefits of commonsense efficiency upgrades.

Dominion already offers excellent efficiency programs for homeowners and small businesses, making lighting, insulation, HVAC, and insulation upgrades more affordable and accessible. (In fact, if you're a Dominion customer and want to lower your bill and your carbon footprint, you should take advantage of those programs right now, right here). 

But now, with this latest SCC approval of Dominion's next investments in making our grid cleaner and cheaper, entire new segments will now have access to these bill-lowering programs. Those newly covered segments include lighting in large commercial buildings; energy-intensive data centers and server rooms; small businesses; health care facilities; hotels; and low-income homes.

Given high bills (that just went up by at least $17 per month for the next three years to pay for expensive fossil fuels) and high rates (higher than every state in the south except South Carolina and Texas, according to the federal data), we still have a long way to go to make Virginia energy affordable and competitive. Indeed, energy efficiency is inexplicably the only resource that the SCC places arbitrary, and quite low, investment limits.  Those efficiency limits are so low, in fact, that only 3% of Dominion customers utilized the utility's bill-savings efficiency programs in 2020.

But the SCC's approval is a good move, in the right direction. Now, Dominion has a new means of investing in their own customers' energy savings and carbon reductions. That triple-win is a win for all of us.