North Carolina House Republican lawmakers and Duke Energy’s representatives spent months in closed-door meetings hammering out an energy bill that somehow emerged, politically speaking, without any energy. Despite efforts to build up suspense about House Bill 951, the measure landed with a thud last week.
Duke's 15-Year Plan
Duke Energy’s Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) are the 15-year plans the corporation must submit to the NC Utilities Commission every 2 years. From 2013 to 2015, NC WARN published A Responsible Energy Future for North Carolina, a clean alternative to Duke’s IRPs. In 2017, engineer Bill Powers analyzed the state’s electricity generation and proposed a cleaner path. Learn more about Bill’s NC Clean Path 2025 report. In 2021, Bill reviewed Duke’s IRPs, finding cost distortions and misleading reports of how much power is available — all serving to advance Duke’s case for building new gas at a time when climate change demands rapid decarbonization and when solar paired with storage is beating gas on both economics and reliability. Learn more and tell the Commission to reject Duke’s 2020 IRP.
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As climate emergency grows more urgent, Duke Energy seeks to supersize CO2 pollution — NC Policy Watch
AG calls on NC regulators to reject Duke Energy long-term plant construction plans — Charlotte Business Journal
Solar March Madness: US 20, Duke Energy 6 — NC WARN
Climate watchdogs challenge Duke Energy’s polluting 15-year plan — Facing South
Watchdog accuses Duke energy of misleading state regulators — WXII
Duke Energy Faces Challenges to its Push for New Natural Gas Plants — GreentechMedia
Duke Energy’s plan to build gigawatts of new natural gas generators to supply its grid over the next 15 years has already drawn fire from clean energy advocates, who say it violates the utility’s long-range decarbonization goals and could leave customers paying for power plants that can’t economically compete with cleaner alternatives.
Add 16 GW solar, 10 GW storage in North Carolina, says alternative resource plan — pv magazine
Duke Energy’s “flawed modeling assumptions” for its 2020 North Carolina resource plan favor new natural gas capacity over new renewables and storage, and the utility’s resource scenarios are “not least-cost,” says a regulatory filing from the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association and the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association.
Legal Challenge: Duke Energy Plans Would Supersize Climate Pollution, Waste Billions on Unused Power Plants — News Release
NC WARN and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed a legal challenge to Duke Energy’s plan to build scores of gas-fired power plants in the Carolinas even though huge amounts of excess generation already sit unused even during the worst winter weather.
See coverage by WXII