NC WARN, a North Carolina climate justice watchdog, and Friends of the Earth, a leading environmental organization, began legal action today to ban the pervasive influence spending by Duke Energy in a case with national ramifications for climate change, electricity rates and corporate control over government and civic leaders.
See coverage in Facing South
Duke's 15-Year Plan
Duke Energy’s Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) are the planning documents the corporation must submit to the NC Utilities Commission. From 2013 to 2015, NC WARN published A Responsible Energy Future for North Carolina, which presented a realistic, clean alternative to Duke Energy’s IRPs. In 2017, we ramped up our arguments by asking engineer Bill Powers to analyze the state’s electricity generation and propose a cleaner path. Learn more about Bill’s NC Clean Path 2025 report. We will continue to argue at the Utilities Commission against Duke’s IRPs, which call for continued burning of climate-killing fossil fuels into the foreseeable future.
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NC WARN Launches Statewide TV & Online Ad: It’s Time to End the Duke Energy Monopoly — News Release from NC WARN
NC WARN today began running a hard-hitting TV and online ad in all major media markets across North Carolina. The goal is to counter Duke executives’ pervasive deception by going straight to people across the political spectrum.
Duke Plans More Climate Destruction, Rate Hikes, Puny Renewables — News Release from NC WARN
Today NC WARN attorneys filed a motion calling for the NC Utilities Commission to hold an open, evidentiary process to allow careful scrutiny of Duke’s 15-year plan and alternatives to it.
A More Just Hurricane Florence Recovery Effort in North Carolina — OP-ED
Op-ed by Connie Leeper and Jodi Lasseter. Now that the winds and rains of Hurricane Florence have gone, North Carolinians are mobilizing a relief and recovery process for the eastern part of the state… Without an intentional focus on equity and access, this kind of giving often misses the people who are most in need of assistance and who have been leading the work to build community resilience long before this storm hit.
Duke Energy Leaders Made Hurricane Florence Worse — Op-Ed from NC WARN
The latest in a string of monster storms of recent years, Hurricane Florence punctuates the fact that the cost of climate pollution is accelerating. Duke Energy executives bear much of the blame for Hurricane Florence’s devastation.
Read Duke’s deceptive rebuttal
And NC WARN’s response to it
Duke Energy reaches compromise on grid modernization — Greensboro News & Record
The utility that serves the Triad, Charlotte, Durham and much of North Carolina’s western area struck the $2.5 billion proposed deal with several environmental groups and the Commercial Group, a coalition of major retailers, including Walmart and Food Lion. *Please see paragraph in bold*
Local Solar & Batteries Can Rapidly Replace Fossil Fuel Electricity, Save 10s of Billions, Create 1000s of Jobs across North Carolina, Says Energy Engineer — News Release from NC WARN
Recent leaps in battery technology, combined with falling solar power prices and energy-saving advances, mean North Carolina can replace all fossil fuels used for electricity by 2030, and half by 2025… That’s according to a comprehensive new report called NORTH CAROLINA CLEAN PATH 2025: Achieving an Economical Clean Energy Future. NC WARN commissioned the report by veteran energy engineer Bill Powers of San Diego.
Pull the Plug on Duke’s Nuclear Boondoggle — NC WARN News Release
Today NC WARN called for state regulators to disallow any further spending by Duke Energy on two proposed reactors now that its 13-year odyssey is off the rails following the recent collapse of the Toshiba-Westinghouse nuclear division.
Duke Energy Executives Count on Climate-Wrecking Fracked Gas & Captive Regulators – but Little Solar or Wind – for Years to Come — News Release from NC WARN
If the NC Utilities Commission approves Duke Energy’s latest 15-year Integrated Resource Plan, it risks bankrupting North Carolina’s economy through costly overbuilding of high-risk power plants. And the utility will continue fouling our air and water while escalating the global climate crisis as one of the world’s largest carbon polluters.
Exposing Duke Energy’s Fiction: Actual Growth Rate is Three Times Lower than Estimates Used to Argue for New Plants over the Years — News Release from NC WARN
NC WARN has long maintained that Duke Energy wildly exaggerates projections of electricity demand so it can keep building unneeded power plants and raising customer rates – and that state regulators should scrutinize the estimates instead of accepting Duke execs at their word year after year.