Expanding fossil fuels and suppressing climate solutions is lousy legacy
In an interview in his final days as Governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper repeated the pretense that North Carolina is transitioning to clean energy.
Cooper said he regrets that Duke Energy leaders are planning to add “a little more gas” than “necessary” to burn for power generation, and he boasted of the solar that might be added (many years from now).
As NC WARN has explained many times to reporters, the comparison is smoke and mirrors. Duke’s latest [pro] carbon plan proposes (pg. 37) nearly 9 gigawatts of new gas-fired generation capacity by 2033, the equivalent of some 10 Shearon Harris nuclear plants. Most of those gas units would generate power around 75 percent of the time.
By contrast, Duke plans roughly 9 GW of new solar field capacity by 2033. But solar generates power around 20 percent of the time. Thus, the actual electricity to be generated from new gas dwarfs the amount from new solar.
And Duke is expanding the gas-fired generation right now, while limiting additions of large solar for years to come and deeply hampering rooftop/parking lot solar-plus-storage – the fastest, cheapest, fairest tool we have to phase out fossil fuels.
In fact, Duke Energy in the Carolinas is planning the largest gas buildout of any utility in the nation – a head-on collision with the demands of climate scientists.
Cooper wants to be our US senator, and he can be lauded for many things. But holding Duke Energy accountable isn’t among them.
This type of greenwashing is similar to that cited in Carrboro’s new lawsuit against Duke Energy for its 50-year conspiracy to deceive everyone about the corporation’s role in causing and responding to the global climate crisis.
Scientists are demanding the phase out of fossil fuels right now, not some scheme to claim “carbon neutrality” decades down the line, which is nothing but a losing strategy. Politicians and others must stop enabling Duke Energy to pretend North Carolina is on the right track toward helping avert runaway climate crisis.
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Now in its 37th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to persuade or require Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest climate polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes.