Massive Florida-based power company NextEra Energy announced today its plan to acquire Virginia’s Dominion Energy, citing the growth of A.I. data centers as the impetus for the move. In response, Public Citizen Energy Program director Tyson Slocum issued the following statement: “This absurd proposal to merge two massive, well-capitalized utilities should be dead on arrival for state and federal regulators. Household customers have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing two behemoths, NextEra and Dominion, to merge. “The claim that the tie-up is needed to address data center demand is a false narrative; the merger will do nothing to increase generating capacity, let alone desperately-needed renewable generating capacity. These mega-utilities are merely using rising concern about data centers as an excuse to concentrate political and economic power of two giant utilities to maximize financial returns to shareholders. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state regulators should reject this outlandish, unnecessary merger as completely contrary to the public interest.“