Dominion Energy: Environmental Compensation Goals Met By Having A Town Hall

Meeting 5/11

Total compensation for Chair, President and CEO Robert Blue for 2021 was reported as $8,161,083. There are all sorts of things to raise issue with regarding the compensation package. Over 10 percent of shareholders voted against the plan last year for the stated reason: “More than 50 percent of awards are time-based. TSR metric threshold set below median.” It appears, although disclosure makes it difficult to easily ascertain, that both facts remain true for the 2021 grants, though the company has announced it will make changes in 2022. In addition, there are red flags that suggest that the company is overly generous with executives, including the fact that the company matched the CEO’s 401K above? IRS limits.

However, what I want to point out here is the ultimate absurdity of the company’s use of environmental metrics. The company reports, “Based on the achievement of the safety, diversity and inclusion, environmental, and additional operating and stewardship goals, as applicable, the CTD Committee approved 97% payout scores” for CEOs and other NEOs. A closer reading finds that the company did not meet its safety goals. An even closer look shows that there were two environmental goals. One of which was: “environmental sustainability whereby 95% of leaders and employees participated in a town hall focused on sustainability initiatives and the importance of such initiatives.” Pause and reread that sentence again  -- simply attending a town hall met the goals.

The second goal environmental goal was “tracking and root cause analysis of the company’s reportable environmental events.” There is no disclosure here on number of reportable environmental events and root cause analysis findings. In our Net Zero Report, Dominion Energy received an F score on its progress towards net zero emissions. Dominion states in 2022 they will be adding “ a new goal tied to increasing the company’s zero carbon generation capacity over time.”

As You Sow is currently working on a report identifying best practices with regards to using environmental figures in pay. Attending meetings will not be among them.