A Pro-Dominion Grassroots Group Has Financial Ties—to Dominion

CHESTER, Va.—A crowd packed a meeting room at the SpringHill Suites here in September for a public hearing on an air permit for a controversial “peaker” plant that Dominion Energy has long been lobbying to build to enhance grid reliability. 

Brent Archer, former president of Columbia Gas of Virginia, stood at the podium and told officials of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality that he strongly supported the project. 

“The dispatchable energy represented by this plant is essential for balancing demand with available supply on the electric grid in partnership with renewable energy,” Archer said, with dozens of other supporters at his back. 

He went on: “I am here today representing the Virginia Energy Reliability Alliance, or VERA. VERA is an organization that was formed to support programmatic, balanced policy that supports all forms of energy generation to meet Virginia’s growing energy needs. And I think we have a lot of supporters this evening if you could stand for a minute so we can see. Thank you.”

About a dozen people stood up around the room, most of them wearing stickers that said “I support reliable energy” and “Energy you can count on.”

What Archer didn’t say was that the Virginia Energy Reliability Alliance is funded by Dominion. 

In an interview later, Archer said he was speaking as a volunteer and saw no need “to disclose anything that had to do with whatever Dominion’s relationship with VERA may be.” He said he assumed everyone else supporting him was there as a volunteer as well. 

Several weeks later, one of Archer’s supporters wearing the stickers turned up in downtown Richmond in the lobby at 1021 E. Cary Street, an office tower populated by lobbyists and consulting firms within walking distance of the Virginia Capitol. 

He declined to say who he was or whom he worked for, but he told Inside Climate News: “I’m not at liberty to talk to the media. I work for a consulting company that works with Dominion.” 

Jeremy Slayton, a Dominion spokesperson, said in an email prior to the exchange that the utility’s involvement with the Virginia Energy Reliability Alliance “is transparently explained on the VERA website.”

Through the first half of 2025, he said, Dominion contributed $290,208 to another nonprofit called Power for Tomorrow, an advocacy group that works in favor of monopoly utility control as a means of power efficiency and reliability, which in turn supports the Virginia Energy Reliability Alliance. Power for Tomorrow has ties with Dominion dating back to May 2021, according to the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog group.

Aaron Ruby, another Dominion spokesperson, told Inside Climate News that those people at the hearing supporting Archer and wearing the stickers were not there at Dominion’s behest. “They are not paid, and their support is real,” Ruby said. “We have been transparent about VERA and their efforts to mobilize public support, including handing out stickers. … Thousands of everyday Virginians and more than 100 Virginia businesses and organizations have spoken out in support” of the proposed plant.

Dominion’s financial sponsorship of nonprofits that publicly support its projects is a practice used by utilities across the country. In Alabama, Alabama Power’s corporate offices gave space and paid millions in fees to the Hawthorn Group, a firm based in Alexandria, Virginia. Hawthorn, which describes itself as an international public affairs company, has admitted to hiring a subcontractor, Crowds on Demand, that paid actors to speak at New Orleans City Council meetings in 2017 on behalf of a natural gas plant proposed by another utility, Entergy.

The proposed peaker plant in Chesterfield County, called the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, would run when electricity demand is high, rather than round-the-clock. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 2024 found that such peaker plants produce more pollution per energy generated than the baseload plants that run regularly, and they’re more likely to be located in communities of color.

The Chesterfield plant has generated significant opposition in the majority Black community whose residents live in close proximity to the site of an old coal plant where the new natural gas facility would be built.

While Richmond-area Democrats have, for the most part, supported community members in opposing the peaker plant, Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, a Richmond Democrat, recently came out in support of the facility.  

Bolling said at a second DEQ public hearing on the air quality permit earlier this month that the project is needed, even though it could make achieving emissions reductions more difficult under the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

“I wholeheartedly support the Virginia Clean Economy Act and its stated policy goals, but as elected and appointed we also have an obligation to ensure Virginians have the energy they need in both the near term and the long term,” said Bolling, who is running an uncontested House of Delegates reelection campaign in Henrico County, a heavily Democratic suburb of the state’s capital city.

“We cannot ignore facts,” Bolling continued. “The data is clear: Without additional peaking capacity Virginia runs a real risk of not meeting demand when it matters the most.”

Prior to her testimony, Bolling’s top donor had been Dominion, which contributed $110,000 between 2023 and August 2025. The day after she spoke, Dominion gave her another $50,000. 

Bolling said her testimony and Dominion donations were unrelated. “I’ve actually voted on several bills that they don’t quite like, but that’s the beauty of being on [the Labor and Commerce Committee] and hearing all the energy conversation behind the scenes.” 

Dominion, too, said the two were unrelated. “Dominion Energy does not ask the recipients of our campaign contributions for favors,” Slayton said. “That would be unethical, if not illegal.”

Shortly after the VERA supporter at 1021 E. Cary Street declined to give his name, Del. Jason Ballard, a Pearisburg Republican, appeared in the building’s lobby with two men, one of whom had also stood with the VERA supporters back at the air permit hearing in September. They went out on the street and appeared to be recording an audio interview.

Ballard is also a recipient of a Dominion campaign contribution, receiving a $25,000 donation from the utility on the same day as the second air permit hearing earlier this month, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. The utility is Ballard’s fourth-biggest donor at $122,500, records compiled by the access project show. 

Asked about the men he had been talking with and whether their interaction had anything to do with the peaker plant in Chesterfield County, Ballard said: “Dominion’s not in my territory, you know that.”

Slayton, the Dominion spokesman, said the utility’s contributions to lawmakers had been made without any expected action in return. “We don’t exchange campaign contributions for political favors,” Slayton said. “Like most companies, we contribute to candidates from both parties who support commonsense public policy.”