I hope this report gives you some meaningful insight into the working assumptions and driving principles of our company. We view sustainability and corporate responsibility as relatively new names for the long-term perspective that guides and informs everything we do at Dominion. That includes the goals we set, the commitments we make and the actions we take.

Our corporate family tree includes more than 200 different businesses reaching back to the early days of the American Republic. Officials at one of Dominion’s oldest ancestor companies signed a 999-year lease for water rights on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Canal in Richmond. Talk about sustainability!

A century later, another corporate ancestor erected poles and wires to light the streets — a revolutionary step with far-reaching consequences. Not long after that, Richmond became the first city in the nation to have an operating electric streetcar system.

Dominion’s business roots run deep, and our connections to community life are longstanding. We take pride in creating shareholder value, delivering superior customer service, enhancing community life and protecting natural resources.

Like a marathon runner, we are in business for the long haul. An energy company is not an incidental business. It does not market products or services that appeal to disposable income. It sells a social and commercial necessity. That unadorned fact made reliability a Dominion obsession long ago, and it remains so today.

When the power goes out or the gas stops flowing, nothing good happens. Leaving aside the economic consequences, the disruptions to home life and the community are significant. Consider just the effects upon those places — hospitals and nursing homes, for example — where conditions make energy requisite to life.

In other words, immediacy accompanies our work. It informs our sense of duty. We even tried to capture our core purpose in Dominion’s corporate logo: A burst of energy coming from a human hand in the middle of the Dominion "D" — our trading symbol on the New York Stock Exchange. This symbol reinforces the vital interaction that exists between people and energy. But that relationship only begins to describe the full extent of how we approach the job.

Straight talk about all aspects of making, moving and selling energy has never been more urgent. Energy suppliers throughout the world face unprecedented public desire for change. Accelerated economic growth, which raises the demand for energy, lives side-by-side with heightened scrutiny, even skepticism, about the way utilities produce power and the effects upon the environment.

Dominion harbors a bias for things that work. For us, real-world experience is the single best source of wisdom.

Thomas F. Farrell II
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

We have a practical mindset when it comes to promoting the welfare of the communities that depend on us.

On the other hand, experience also tells us that ingenuity and innovation open paths to better ways of getting things done. On that score, we must be progressive and think years, even decades, into the future.

Understand there is much at stake in how we produce energy today. Generations of customers and investors have paid for the facilities now in place. We have to make the best of those, and we will.

But society’s aspirations must be our aspirations. In the same way Dominion has historically responded to the hopes, dreams and concerns of its customers, we are committed to reconciling environmental protection with rising energy needs.

That challenge will keep us actively involved in the communities we serve. The complexity of the issues to be addressed requires a broad understanding of the choices we face together.

Dominion and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 200 years. We expect to be in business for at least that many more, providing energy reliably, safely, efficiently and responsibly.

Can a company do its work, fulfill its obligations, and reward its investors at the same time it enriches and serves society? We think so. It is what we plan to do.