Robert Blue sometimes gets to work by kayak. The James River carries him toward downtown Richmond, where he runs Dominion Energy. There is a catch worthy of a utility planner: the rapids make the return trip another proposition, so he arranges a ride home. Even an appealing commute needs supporting infrastructure.
The anecdote is a good introduction to an executive whose job involves finding the practical arrangements beneath attractive ideas. More offshore wind. More electricity for data centers. Cleaner generation. Affordable bills. Each sounds reasonable on its own. Blue has to run a company that delivers them together, with an existing system operating while the next one is built.
His preparation came through an unusual sequence: government and foreign affairs, law, a governor’s policy office, then a succession of jobs inside a utility. He reached the chief executive’s office in October 2020. Six years later, the demands on that office extend from turbines in the Atlantic to a proposed corporate combination that would change his own job.
A policy education, followed by the wires
Blue earned his undergraduate degree with honors at the University of Virginia in 1989. Yale Law School followed in 1994, with a stint as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law and Policy Review during his final academic year. He later returned to UVA for an MBA at Darden, graduating in 2008.
Those qualifications cover several languages spoken around an infrastructure project: public policy, legal argument and finance. His early work supplied opportunities to use them. Before joining Dominion, he practiced at Hogan & Hartson and served as counselor and director of policy for Virginia Governor Mark Warner.
Dominion hired him in 2005. He became an officer in 2007 and moved through public affairs, communications, regulation and legal responsibilities before taking operational leadership roles. He eventually led the Power Delivery Group and became co-chief operating officer. The progression matters because a utility’s promises are tested well beyond the room where they are negotiated.
Blue’s institutional connections also reach outside the company. His Richmond Federal Reserve board service places him alongside regional business leaders; his industry work includes the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. Community commitments include Communities in Schools of Virginia. These are different vantage points on the places Dominion serves, where electric service belongs to the daily economy rather than a distant corporate abstraction.
The company he made smaller
One of Blue’s consequential decisions involved selling businesses. In September 2023, Dominion agreed to sell three natural gas utilities to Enbridge in transactions valued at approximately $14 billion, including assumed debt. The last of those sales was announced as closed in October 2024.
The departing operations included gas utilities based in Ohio, Utah and North Carolina. They were functioning businesses with customers and employees, rather than entries that could simply be erased from a presentation. At the final closing, Blue emphasized employee protections negotiated before the sales were announced and the work of securing approvals across five states.
Dominion’s subsequent annual report described approximately $21 billion of debt reduction from the completed business review actions. Those actions also included selling a 50 percent noncontrolling interest in Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind to Stonepeak. The result was a more concentrated utility company with a stronger balance sheet for the building program ahead.
It is an unglamorous form of preparation. A new generating project makes a better photograph than a financing structure. Yet borrowing capacity affects what can be built, and financing costs eventually enter the argument over customer bills. In Blue’s tenure, the disposal of assets and the construction of new ones belong to the same story.
A turbine is only the beginning
On March 23, 2026, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind delivered electricity to the regional grid for the first time. The first turbine supplied approximately 14.7 megawatts. The full project calls for 176 turbines and about 2.6 gigawatts of capacity, with construction and commissioning extending into early 2027.
The distance between those numbers is the remaining job. First power demonstrates that equipment offshore can send electricity through the cables and into the network. It does not mean every turbine is installed, every test completed or the full planned output available. A construction milestone is satisfying precisely because so many less visible tasks must precede it.
The project’s schedule tells part of that story. Monopile installation was completed in October 2025. The first commercial turbine was installed in January 2026 using Charybdis, the American-built installation vessel developed for work of this kind. Before electricity could arrive ashore, foundations, ships and transmission connections all had to arrive in the right order.
Politics supplied another complication. A federal stop-work order interrupted construction in late 2025. Dominion challenged the order, and a judge allowed work to resume in January. The pause added costs. For a chief executive trained in law and public policy, the episode brought familiar disciplines directly onto the construction schedule.
In a 2022 speech in Cleveland, Blue argued for “policies based on science and physics not faith.” It is a compact expression of his public position. Equipment has measurable capabilities. A project also needs durable permission to proceed. Optimism alone supplies neither.
The impatient customer
Then there are the customers who would like all of this to happen sooner. Asked in a 2025 interview what major technology companies tell him, Blue gave their instruction in two words: “Go faster.”
He described requests for large new electricity delivery points that could take four to seven years, depending on the scale of the load and overall demand. The figures were an explanation of circumstances, rather than a universal waiting time. They nevertheless reveal the awkward meeting between a fast-moving technology business and a network accumulated over generations.
Blue also pointed out that electricity demand follows people using digital services. The computing facility is where that demand becomes a large request for power. Behind it are ordinary acts, repeated at scale: relying on software, storing information and asking machines to do more work.
For the executive receiving the request, speed has consequences beyond the newest customer. Existing customers still need dependable service. New equipment has to fit the system. Investment has to be financed. A rapid connection can be celebrated in one room while its costs are questioned in another.
“We start with reliability for a reason.”
Robert Blue · 2025 interview
Blue’s approach includes a mix of generation technologies. In his 2023 discussion of Dominion’s plans, he described natural gas as support for renewable generation when sunshine and wind are unavailable, alongside batteries and an existing nuclear fleet. He also discussed exploring smaller nuclear reactors. Those were different tools for different operating conditions, each carrying its own requirements.
His public commitment to cleaner power has also appeared in conversations outside the usual investor setting. At the University of North Carolina Clean Tech Summit, he discussed the obstacles to the transition and Dominion’s net-zero ambitions; a subsequent SunCast conversation examined that work. The recurring difficulty is maintaining service throughout the change. Customers experience the power system in the present tense.
A bigger company, a longer argument
In May 2026, another announcement widened the frame. Dominion and NextEra Energy signed an agreement to combine in an all-stock transaction. Under the proposed arrangement, NextEra’s John Ketchum would lead the combined company, while Blue would become president and CEO of regulated utilities and join its board.
The announcement proposed dual headquarters in Richmond and Juno Beach, Florida, and $2.25 billion in bill credits for Dominion customers over two years after closing. Blue argued that the combination would help finance and deliver generation, transmission and grid investment. These are commitments and expectations attached to a pending transaction, with completion still required.
Consumer and clean-energy advocates have asked regulators to examine the deal carefully. Their concerns include affordability, transparency and whether households could carry additional costs or risks. The company’s case for scale therefore faces a public test: what would customers receive, and what protections would last after the immediate credits?
That scrutiny belongs in Blue’s story. A utility executive can make a convincing argument to investors and still owe another explanation to the people paying monthly bills. His background in government gives him experience of that second audience. It does not remove the need to answer it.
A Virginia life, with a return journey
There is a less corporate version of Blue visible around the edges. His first job was cutting brush for his father’s surveying crew. He follows UVA sports, particularly men’s basketball. In 2026, he described returning to the debate world as a judge at the national school tournament, decades after competing himself.
These details give him a life beyond the succession of titles. They also put a person back into a story easily swallowed by gigawatts and transactions. The former debate student now explains decisions to customers, regulators and investors. The occasional paddler still needs someone to collect him at the other end.
At Dominion, the return journey is the enduring obligation. An announcement must come back as delivered power. A financing decision must support equipment that works. A promise about affordability must encounter the bill. Blue’s task is to carry those connections through, long after the microphone has been switched off.