Rainforest Action Network asks Dominion CEO Tough Questions

This dates back to September 15, 2008, the same day that RAN activists also staged a protest at the site of the planned Wise County coal burning plant in southwestern VA (where one quarter of the county has already been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining). It's no longer new, but it's good, and matches exactly my view that the CEOs of the big utilities should be confronted and held personally responsible for the actions of their firms. Especially when -- as with Thomas F. Farrell II -- they hold all the power in the firm (he is chairman of the board, president, AND CEO!).

Watch and enjoy

Dominion's Farrell II Defends Electricity

Thomas F. Farrell II -- the chairman, president, and CEO of Dominion Resouces -- has given another one of his peculiar speeches touting outdated 19th Century technology (burning coal) as the answer to America's energy future in the 21st Century. In a Dec. 3 keynote address to the 2008 PowerGen Conference in Orlando, Florida, titled Realistic View of National Energy Challenge is Needed, Farrell II painted those who are calling for a rapid shift to a low-carbon economy as enemies of electricity:

End our dependency on foreign oil in 10 years?

One hundred percent clean energy within 10 years?

Failing an extraordinary and unexpected breakthrough in technology, these are impossible goals. These proposals seriously harm the debate because they distract people from the reality of where we find ourselves.

We are going to have to defend electricity by dispelling such illusions, not by flinching when we are confronted by them.

The need to defend electricity comes up several times. Worse, in a 3,500 word speech that was ostensibly about a realistic view of the nation's energy challenge, Farrell II managed to avoid saying the word wind even once. His single mention of solar (which is rapidly emerging as a cost-competitive challenge to coal), was in a joke about a "Midwestern utility colleague" who said his customers would be happy to have "90 percent of their electricity produced by solar power… and the other 10 percent could be beamed in from the moon."

He also made no mention of global warming and only once mentioned climate change in a passing reference to "rising public interest" in the phenomenon.

But Dominion customers and shareholders who worry that Farrell II is either deliberately blowing smoke or woefully ill-informed (or both) can put their hearts at ease:

I live on this planet. My family lives on this planet. We all worry about the environment.

Well, at least we have that in common.