Dominion CEO Punk’d!

By Brant Ran

UPDATE #2: Check out a video of the SF actions on YouTube

UPDATE: Dominion posted audio of the presentation to its website (fast forward to the 30 minute mark for the Q&A).

Just back from Bank of America’s 38th annual investors conference at the Ritz here in San Francisco.  Thomas F. Farrell, II, the esteemed notorious CEO of Dominion was presenting to analysts on the company’s financial outlook. Fortunately, we were also there to greet him too.

Mid-way through his podium presentation, however, images of this morning’s protest popped up on one of the screens behind him. Unaware that his power point had been modified, Farrell waxed on about the bright future of coal as confused murmurs began to emanate from the audience of analysts and investors.

After the presentation, a member of the audience asked if Dominion planned to phase out of “dirty coal” given the near certainty of climate change and congressional action to limit fossil fuels. To make a long, stumbling story short: “no”. Next, I stood up to ask why not.  Again, to paraphrase: “because there’s lots of coal, so we’re going to burn it.”

Great.  Good plan. Meantime, we’ll keep prodding Dominion, its investors and other industry fossils toward a future that meets the climate challenge. Notice to Wall Street: The ostrich strategy isn’t working.