The N.C. Utilities Commission has approved Duke Energy’s $4.9 billion purchase of Piedmont Natural Gas, clearing the way for the deal to close early next week. The commission ruled Thursday “the known and potential benefits of the merger are sufficient to offset the potential costs and risks.”
Methane, Fracked Gas & Climate
Methane (the main component in natural gas) is 100 times as bad for the climate as carbon dioxide over the short term. Less CO2 is emitted by natural gas than by coal when burned. But significant leakage of methane before burning makes gas a disaster for the climate, as revealed even more by recent science. Yet utilities and the gas industry are still feverishly promoting fracked gas.
NC WARN is working hard to connect the dots between climate change, methane leakage and the fracking boom that is driven by demand from the electric power industry.
Learn more about our methane work here.
Watch a 3-minute video by Cornell University’s Dr. Robert Howarth describing why natural gas is a disastrous strategy for the climate. More videos, PowerPoints and documentation here.
“Everything You Need to Know About Methane”, a primer by Earthjustice.
Jump to a Subcategory
All News Categories
Three-year Heat Wave Continues Unabated — Note to Journalists from NC WARN
Hottest Year: Duke Energy’s Role — Commentary by NC WARN
Cornell experts and others say that reducing methane leakage and venting throughout the US natural gas industry is the quickest – and only – way to slow global warming in time. As Dr. Robert Howarth emphasizes, “The climate responds very quickly to methane”, a super-potent heat-trapping gas. So curbing methane is all-important.
Natural gas vs coal: It’s all in the leak rate — The News & Observer
Op-ed by William Schlesinger. Leakage of natural gas, which is predominately methane, has another drawback. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that exerts about 86 times the global warming potential in the atmosphere compared with CO2 during the first 20 years after emission. Leakage from oil and gas fields makes a significant contribution to the annual emissions of methane to the atmosphere.
Jim Warren: First, renewables; later, nuclear retirement — The News & Observer
Yo-Yo Duke Energy Gas Case Goes Back to Appeals Court — News Release from NC WARN and The Climate Times
How to fight the power company — Scalawag
In 2015, Duke Energy’s state-sanctioned monopoly in North Carolina faced a pair of very different challenges from two vastly different communities. In western North Carolina, thousands of people – mostly White, middle-class, with little organizing experience–turned out in droves to attack Duke Energy’s plans for their beloved mountains. Two hundred miles away in Greensboro, a Piedmont church – serving a mostly Black, low-income community with a history of activism and advocacy stretching back decades – simply put solar panels on its roof.
NC WARN Pushes for Investigation of EPA in Methane Scandal — News Release from NC WARN
Duke Asheville Plant Foe Says Plan Would be Disaster for the Climate — WCQS
Appeal denied, NC WARN tries again — News & Observer
The N.C. Utilities Commission said two advocacy groups missed a filing deadline and therefore blew their chance to appeal a state permit issued to Duke Energy to build a power plant in Asheville. But the two nonprofits – including NC WARN in Durham – say they plan to appeal the Utilities Commission ruling.