Dominion's emissions raise outcry

VIRGINIA - Shareholders and demonstrators will ask Dominion Resources Inc. at their shareholders meeting to make its power plants cleaner and consider the risks of ignoring environmental concerns.

Sierra Club demonstrators will be there when shareholders arrive, said Joshua Low, a club organizer.

Inside the center, company management will face a shareholder coalition that wants Dominion Resources to report on its plans and risks related to expected regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions, thought to be a major contributor to global warming.

The Sierra Club will ask Dominion Resources to invest in clean energy sources rather than nuclear and coal-burning power plants, Low said.

The club also supports a resolution by Ceres, a group of leading U.S. institutional investors and environmental groups, asking management to report on Dominion Resources' greenhouse-gas related risks.

The resolution requests Dominion Resources to report by Sept. 1 on how the company is responding to rising regulatory, competitive and public pressure to significantly reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions from the company's power plants.

In its proxy statement, the company opposes the resolution on the grounds that it already reports on environmental matters including greenhouse-gas emissions. The company noted that it announced in November plans to spend $500 million on additional emission controls on top of $2 billion invested since the 1990s in clean-air improvements.

However, Shelley Alpern of Trillium Asset Management said that without cooperation from the electric power sector, the emissions reductions needed to avert a climate catastrophe will be impossible to achieve. Dominion lags behind its peers in the industry in dealing with greenhouse emissions, she said.