Chapter 397 of the 2019 Virginia Acts of Assembly requires an independent monitor to facilitate the Virginia Energy Efficiency Stakeholder Process and report annually on stakeholder objectives, recommendations, petition activity, and determinations by the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC). The process gives applicable utilities, state agencies, Commission staff, program implementers, advocates, customers, and other interested stakeholders a structured forum to discuss energy efficiency and demand-side management programs before and after petitions of the applicable utilities are filed with the State Corporation Commission.

This report is prepared for public and government review and summarizes the status and results of the stakeholder process for Appalachian Power Company (APCo), the Phase I Utility, and Dominion Energy Virginia (DEV), the Phase II Utility, for the reporting period of July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2026.

Key Highlights

The stakeholder process continues to provide a formal and inclusive forum for input into utility energy efficiency and demand-side management programs.

Stakeholders continue to prioritize alignment with Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) savings goals, affordability, costeffective savings, transparency, and clearer tracking of how stakeholder input is used.

For date consistency, recommendations that became the 2025 petition are tracked as petitioned items. New recommendations developed during this reporting year are identified separately as 2026 stakeholder recommendations.

Appalachian Power Company’s March 2026 petition includes six new energy efficiency programs and reflects a targeted expansion of its portfolio toward agricultural, commercial, industrial, residential, and small business customers, with emphasis on midstream delivery, audit-based savings, customer engagement, new construction, residential kits, HVAC and compressed air efficiency, and small business demand response.

APCo’s March 2026 petition also requests approval of marketing services to support participation and help meet energy savings targets, including a Residential Marketing Service and a corresponding non-residential/C&I marketing service.

Dominion Energy Virginia’s 2025 DSM Update (Case No. PUR-2025-00210) proposes a new portfolio of energy efficiency and demand response programs and extensions of existing low-income program bundles, continuing the company's multiyear shift toward broader bundled program platforms and demand flexibility.

DEV’s concurrent Virtual Power Plant Pilot filing (Case No. PUR-2025-00211), filed pursuant to the Community Energy Act, proposes to aggregate new and existing demand response programs through a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS), with new pilots for residential battery storage and managed EV charging, and enrollment available directly or through a third-party aggregator.

Both APCo and DEV have exceeded the original Grid Transformation and Security Act (GTSA) legislative spending goals.

Stakeholders report stronger satisfaction with the process than in the prior year, but continue to ask for more data-driven meetings, stronger subgroup activity, improved communication tools, and clearer tracking of recommendations and outcomes.

Stakeholder Objectives and Priorities

Stakeholder feedback shows that the energy efficiency stakeholder process is moving from a primary focus on program ideas and input opportunities toward a stronger focus on results, accountability, affordability, and system-level value. Stakeholders continue to value the process as an open forum for dialogue, but they increasingly want evidence that the process is improving program design, increasing participation, supporting low-income customers, managing demand growth, and helping utilities make measurable progress toward Virginia’s energy efficiency goals.

The objectives identified by stakeholders are best understood as directional priorities for the next three years. The desired outcomes describe how stakeholders would know the process is successful. In short, stakeholders want the process to focus on clearer performance expectations, stronger customer benefits, better coordination, and more transparent connections between stakeholder input and utility decisions.

2026 Program Recommendations

APCo used the 2025 RFP process to move stakeholder input from a broad list of ideas into a more structured portfolio of potential programs. APCo began with 43 stakeholder recommendations from the 2024 process, reviewed and discussed them to determine whether they should be advanced through the RFP, addressed through existing programs, consolidated with related concepts, or removed because they were outside the scope of energy efficiency or better handled through another process. APCo’s 2025 Virginia Energy Efficiency Program RFP ultimately included 13 program areas across residential, commercial and industrial, and pilot categories. For the current recommendation cycle, APCo will begin gathering recommendations for its 2028 petition.

APCo’s 2025 RFP included 13 program areas, rather than only new standalone recommendations.

The RFP is organized into:

• 4 residential programs on a 5-year cycle;
• 6 commercial and industrial programs on a 5-year cycle; and
• 3 pilot programs on a 3-year cycle.

The pilot areas—Agricultural, Compressed Air with Audit, and C&I Midstream—are based upon stakeholder input that helped to identify new or targeted opportunities for testing and refinement.

For the 2026 recommendation cycle, Dominion received 16 program recommendations through the stakeholder process. The recommendations generally fell into five categories:

Residential access and targeting: DIY home assessments and data-enabled outreach.

Income and age qualifying program enhancements: air conditioning replacement, manufactured home measures, and incentive design issues.

Non-residential efficiency: custom projects, prescriptive measures, refrigeration optimization, business engagement, and virtual strategic energy management.

Demand response and load flexibility: thermal energy storage and customer-sited demand reduction concepts.

Electric vehicle flexibility: behavioral load shifting, managed charging, and vehicle-to-everything capability.

Dominion’s review shows that several recommendations are moving forward or already addressed through existing programs, while others remain under evaluation or continued assessment. Of the 16 recommendations:

• 3 recommendations were accepted for further action or inclusion in an upcoming RFP.
• 4 recommendations remain under ongoing evaluation.
• 5 recommendations will continue to be assessed.
• 3 recommendations are already included in Dominion’s current portfolio or DSM portfolio.
• 2 recommendations are under consideration in the 2025 DSM filing.

SCC-Referred DSM Recommendations Follow-Up(*5)

In addition to the 2026 program recommendations, the stakeholder process continued work on cross-cutting issues referred through prior SCC proceedings. These included Dominion Energy Virginia’s continued consideration of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), which had been identified in a prior Final Order recommendation (PUR-2024-00222) related to leveraging AMI functionality, including geo-targeting, in demand-response programs. The stakeholder process also included work related to the Virginia Jurisdiction-Specific Test (JST), which will affect how future energy efficiency and demand-side management programs are screened for cost-effectiveness. Dominion developed a decision log to support the JST discussions by tracking questions, assumptions, decision points, and follow-up items. Together, these activities show that the stakeholder process is being used not only to generate program ideas, but also to address technical, data, and evaluation issues that may shape future program design, cost-effectiveness review, and performance accountability.

Status of Recommendations, Petitions, and Investment

From 2019 through 2025, the stakeholder process contributed to the development, review, or tracking of 104 energy efficiency program recommendations, petitions, program enhancements, and related offerings across APCo and Dominion Energy Virginia. At the time of this report, 58 programs are approved and active, 12 have ended or expired, 1 was denied, 14 are awaiting SCC review, and 16 are under review for potential inclusion in the 2026 petition filing cycle. These figures show that the stakeholder process has produced a substantial pipeline of programs and program improvements, while also making clear that not all recommendations are at the same stage. Some are operating programs, some have completed their approved period, some are before the SCC, and others remain under utility review before any petition is filed.

Program Performance and Progress Toward Energy Savings

The Virginia Energy Efficiency Stakeholder Feedback Process has been successful in its original goal of energy efficiency investment by Virginia’s investor-owned utilities. Both APCo and Dominion Energy continue to exceed the initial Grid Transformation and Security Act legislative spending goals.

During 2025, both utilities continued to enroll customers and report verified savings. The cumulative totals provide a high-level measure of program scale, while VCEA compliance should continue to be assessed using verified net savings and the applicable SCC targets.

Stakeholders have increasingly asked that the stakeholder process be connected to measurable progress toward Virginia’s energy efficiency goals. In response, this report includes VCEA target and performance information to help frame future stakeholder discussions, although reporting of this data is not required for the Independent Monitor report.

The available data show that APCo has met or is anticipated to exceed its VCEA savings targets for the years reviewed. Dominion Energy Virginia has not met, or is not anticipated to meet, its VCEA savings targets during the same period. This difference underscores the need for the 2026 stakeholder process to focus more directly on program performance, customer participation, implementation barriers, cost-effectiveness, and opportunities to increase verified energy savings.

Reported or Anticipated Savings as a Percentage of VCEA Target

Values above 100% indicate that the utility met or exceed the annual VCEA savings target. Values below 100% indicate a gap between target and reported or anticipated achievement.

The MWh savings shown in the chart (Figure ES-2) demonstrate that Virginia’s energy efficiency programs are producing substantial and growing energy reductions across both utilities. From 2022 through 2025, APCo’s reported savings increased from 219,036 MWh to 456,900 MWh, while Dominion Energy Virginia’s reported savings increased from 839,243 MWh to 1,275,955 MWh. Combined, the two utilities’ annual savings more than doubled over this period, growing from approximately 1.06 million MWh in 2022 to approximately 1.73 million MWh in 2025. While APCo exceeded its VCEA targets and Dominion did not meet its targets, the scale of savings across both utilities is significant for Virginia and shows that energy efficiency programs are reducing customer energy use, contributing to statewide conservation, and providing a strong foundation for continued performance improvement.

Stakeholder Feedback about the Process

Survey results improved across the comparable measures from the prior year. The response rate increased from 6.5 percent to 14.7 percent, and respondent satisfaction with the opportunity to provide direct input increased from 58.6 percent to 78.9 percent. Agreement that utilities are willing to consider stakeholder input also increased, from 61.6 percent to 75.0 percent, while agreement that the process will lead to better energy efficiency conservation in Virginia increased from 57.7 percent to 75.7 percent. These results suggest improved confidence in the stakeholder process. However, only 43.2 percent of respondents agreed that the process improves the implementation of energy efficiency programs, indicating that implementation barriers, program performance, and follow-through should be a priority focus for the next reporting period.

2026 Legislative Update

The 2025 General Assembly enacted several measures that may influence future utility energy efficiency programs and stakeholder discussions. While none of the legislation modified the statutory stakeholder process established under § 56-585.1, several bills expand or extend initiatives serving low-income, elderly, and disabled customers, establish new utility pilot program requirements, and direct state agencies to evaluate barriers to participation in energy efficiency programs. Notably, legislation requires utilities to propose new pilot programs focused on energy efficiency, solar energy, energy generation, and energy storage for eligible customers, establishes new participation goals for households using delivered fuels, extends utility-funded weatherization and energy assistance programs, and creates a statewide task force to evaluate barriers to participation in energy efficiency programs. These activities are likely to become important topics for future stakeholder discussions and utility filings.

Recommendations and Next Steps

Stakeholder feedback indicates that the next stage of improvement is less about adding more opportunities to comment and more about making those stakeholder input opportunities available earlier, more focused, better documented, and more visibly connected to decisions and program outcomes.

Overall, the Virginia Energy Efficiency Stakeholder Process continues to demonstrate meaningful value as a durable, inclusive, and increasingly results-oriented forum for advancing energy efficiency in the Commonwealth. Since 2019, the process has expanded participation, supported development and refinement of utility program ideas, contributed to RFPs and SCC filings, provided a forum for complex issues such as cost-effectiveness, AMI, demand response, program bundling, and customer access, and helped make program development more transparent. Stakeholder feedback indicates that participants generally value the opportunity to provide input and believe the process can contribute to stronger energy efficiency outcomes. The next stage is best understood as a continuous improvement opportunity: preserving the openness, collaboration, and credibility that have been built while strengthening documentation, recommendation tracking, subgroup follow-through, performance discussion, and the connection between stakeholder input, utility decisions, customer value, and measurable program results.
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(*5) As of the August 2025 Final Order in Case No. PUR-2024-00222, the three other recommendations referred to the stakeholder group remain in varying stages of resolution: cost-effectiveness testing (Rec. 12) was largely addressed through a separate SCC rulemaking establishing a single statewide test effective 2029; dual-fuel customers (Rec. 24) was substantially overtaken by passage of the SAVE Act; and Long-Term Plan and program consolidation (Rec. 25) was carried forward with the SCC directing Dominion to file a detailed implementation plan in its December 2025 DSM update (Case No. PUR-2025-00210, Phase XIV).