Virginia's lieutenant governor rejects NextEra's $67 billion bid for Dominion

Virginia's lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi, said on Tuesday that NextEra Energy's proposed 67 billion dollar takeover of Dominion Energy is not in the interest of the state's ratepayers. Her report followed a listening tour. "I have concluded that the proposed takeover of Dominion Energy with NextEra is not in the best interest of Virginians," she wrote. She joins a list that already includes Governor Abigail Spanberger, Attorney General Jay Jones, at least eight state lawmakers, and Congressman Eugene Vindman.

Spanberger has said she is "deeply sceptical" and has intervened in the approval process, which gives her office the right to question the companies and to press for conditions. A spokesperson said her filing sets three priorities: lower bills, protection of jobs, and faster delivery of "affordable, reliable, local and clean power". The deal cannot close without state regulatory approval. Tuesday's report does not decide that case. It adds an elected official's formal objection to a file the governor has already entered.

The political problem is the bill, and the map behind the bill. Dominion is the utility at the centre of northern Virginia's data-centre corridor, the largest cluster of its kind in the United States. NextEra is the country's biggest utility owner, built largely on Florida Power and Light and on a national renewable fleet. A combination would put the power plants, the wires, and the data-centre load under one corporate roof, in a state where household bills have been rising and where data centres are the reason new generation is being ordered. Rob Rains, of Washington Analysis, told the Financial Times: "We're seeing a lot of pushback on these kinds of deals all over the US. That, plus the angst in Virginia over data centres, could be a potent combination."

The companies have raised their political spending since the bid. Dominion contributed 3.67 million dollars in campaign donations between 26 May and 31 August, more than triple the two previous reporting periods. The figure is legal and disclosed. It is also the number opponents cite when they argue that a larger utility would have more weight in Richmond, not less. Spanberger's filing is the formal answer to that worry: a demand that any approval carry conditions on bills and jobs, rather than a clean yes.

The objection is no longer only Virginian. A group of congressional Democrats led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has warned federal regulators that the deal could "squash competition and raise prices". Federal review and the Virginia commission are separate tracks. Either can delay a close. Hashmi's report lands on the state track, which is the one that has to say whether a Florida-based holding company may own the utility that serves the data-centre alley.

NextEra's case, in the filings so far, is scale: cheaper capital, a larger generation fleet, and the ability to build the plants Dominion's load forecast says northern Virginia will need. Opponents do not dispute the load. They dispute who captures the saving, and whether a combined company would have any in-state rival left to constrain it. Dominion is already the incumbent. A merger removes the possibility that another large utility might have entered parts of the state on its own. That is the competition point Warren's letter raises, and the bill point Hashmi's tour was built to collect.

The midterm calendar sits on top of the regulatory one. November's elections give every Virginia official a reason to be seen holding the line on electricity prices. Hashmi's sentence is written for that audience and for the commission. The number that will decide the case is not the 67 billion dollar headline. It is whether the applicants can show a bill path that is lower than the path Dominion would have filed alone, on the same data-centre forecast. Until that comparison is in the record, Tuesday's report is a political no, waiting on a regulatory one.