Dominion Virginia’s improbable integrated resource plan

Dominion Energy’s latest long-term energy resource plan for Virginia is replete with questionable assumptions and highly uncertain projections for the 15 years (from 2024 through 2038) that the plan covers. Nothing illustrates this better than the utility’s incandescent estimates for energy demand growth from data centers in its service territory—an average increase of roughly 11% a year for 15 years. But there are many other shortcomings in the company’s 2023 integrated resource plan (IRP), which is now pending before the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC). Among these shortcomings:

• An extremely high capacity price forecast for the PJM power market, which covers Dominion’s Virginia service area, that skews the analysis in favor of keeping the company’s old, polluting fossil fuel plants online;
• Unlikely assumptions regarding future generation from both its old coal and newer gas assets;
• Projections that hydrogen will be a viable, cost-effective replacement for gas, without any hard cost and supply data; and
• A refusal to even examine additional energy efficiency measures, which have been shown repeatedly to be the least-cost supply option in many cases.

IEEFA believes state regulators would be well-advised to have the utility address and revise these shortcomings before endorsing the utility’s plan