A Virginia-based environmental group claims Florida-based NextEra Energy’s merger with Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Energy is incomplete and seeks to challenge the acquisition.
On Monday, Clean Virginia said in a press release the merger petition, as it is currently written, is incomplete and that the companies need to complete their application. It urged a Virginia state agency to force NextEra and Dominion to submit a full and completed application.
The group filed a 17-page motion to deem petition incomplete with the Virginia State Corporation Commission in which it said it found nine areas of incompleteness in the two utilities’ application that was filed July 15. The Virginia State Corporation Commission is one of the state and federal agencies that NextEra and Dominion filed their application with.
Important information, such as how the acquisition would be structured, how the deal between the two utilities would affect ratepayers and who would control Dominion’s operations, is missing from the application, Clean Virginia said.
The group said it has requested accelerated treatment of the motion, saying that “every day the threshold question of application completeness remains open is another day lost in the scarce review time that Virginia law allocates to the acquisition evaluation,” according to the release.
Clean Virginia is a nonprofit organization that prides itself on advancing “clean government and clean energy by fighting utility monopoly corruption in Virginia politics,” according to its website.
NextEra proposed a merger acquisition of Dominion for nearly $67 billion on May 18. If approved, then the merger would create one of the largest utilities in the United States and own and operate the second-largest domestic nuclear fleet, just behind Constellation Energy.
When the merger is completed, NextEra shareholders will own a majority, 74.5%, of the merged company. NextEra said the transaction is expected to be completed by the second half of 2027.