Jim Warren

Two Dukes, PR and Biogas from Hog Manure– Letter from NC WARN

July 30, 2018

Letter to Dr. Vincent E. Price, President Duke University, and Lynn Good, President & CEO Duke Energy: Amid prodigious PR by the two Dukes since the spring about creating biogas from hog waste, there apparently has been little or no technology breakthrough in several years.

Popular Duke Energy solar rebates already tapped out — Charlotte Business Journal

July 26, 2018

Duke Energy Corp.’s rooftop solar rebate program has proven so popular that the money available for residential and commercial rebates this year is already tapped out two weeks after the program launched.

A Pig Issue — Video on Hog Waste

July 26, 2018

This 18-minute video from Farm Sanctuary describes the practice of spraying hog waste on farmland in eastern North Carolina and shows how communities there are fighting back.

The $3 Billion Plan to Turn Hoover Dam Into a Giant Battery — The New York Times

July 24, 2018

Hoover Dam helped transform the American West, harnessing the force of the Colorado River — along with millions of cubic feet of concrete and tens of millions of pounds of steel — to power millions of homes and businesses. It was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century. Now it is the focus of a distinctly 21st-century challenge: turning the dam into a vast reservoir of excess electricity, fed by the solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future.

We are cooking up the Earth for long-range problems — News & Record

July 20, 2018

Op-ed by Beth McKee-Huger. The Earth is “cooking with gas.” Remember that ad? Large amounts of methane leak from fracking and gas lines. Since methane is 100 times more powerful as a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide, that heats up the Earth.

Reverse Power Flow: How Solar+Batteries Shift Electric Grid Decision Making from Utilities to Consumers – ILSR

July 17, 2018

For 100 years, most decisions about the U.S. electric grid have been made at the top by electric utilities, public regulators, and grid operators. That era has ended.

Solar-with-Storage Projects Surge as Fracked Gas Falls — News Release from NC WARN

July 12, 2018

There’s a ton of good news in the fight to slow the global climate crisis – outside of North Carolina. A key question remains: Will this state finally get out from under Duke Energy’s climate-wrecking, fracked gas obsession and clean-power sabotage in its monopoly-captured territories?

Chatham County Moves Toward Solar — Alert from NC WARN

July 11, 2018

We’re happy to report that Chatham County commissioners just made a move toward solarizing county-owned facilities based on a recommendation by local residents working together as Chatham Clean Path.

See coverage in Chatham County Line
See coverage in Chatham Record

Critics contend Duke Energy’s new community solar plan more costly to customers — Charlotte Business Journal

July 5, 2018

Solar advocates who objected to Duke Energy Corp.’s initial proposal for a new community solar program don’t like the revised program much better and are calling on regulators to require more changes or reject it. “The revised plan is a significantly worse program than the initial program,” says the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, contending the new proposal would be much more costly to customers than the original version.

Duke’s Community Solar Program was Designed to Fail, Would Gouge Customers, Should be Ditched — News Release From NC WARN

June 26, 2018

Duke Energy’s proposed “community solar” proposal would cause participating customers to lose 51 percent of their investment and would take five years to implement. The program is clearly designed to fail and is further proof that the Charlotte-based corporation prefers to stifle and delay – not advance – clean energy.
See coverage in Charlotte Business Journal