Despite anti-wind bluster from parts of the state, candidates who supported renewables came out on top in Republican primaries earlier this year.
NC CLEAN PATH 2025
In August 2017, NC WARN published North Carolina Clean Path 2025: Achieving an Economical Clean Energy Future, a plan for quickly transitioning the state’s electricity from fossil fuels to solar, battery storage and enhanced energy efficiency.
Local teams are working around the state to implement the plan. Learn more here. The articles below are either about the NC CLEAN PATH 2025 plan or about similar efforts underway in other places.
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The $3 Billion Plan to Turn Hoover Dam Into a Giant Battery — The New York Times
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
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
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
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
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
Natural Gas Drillers Are Fighting for Their Lives — Bloomberg
The natural gas industry is on a mission to prove it can keep up with the green energy industry, whose price reductions are starting to become a competitive threat to fossil fuels.
Critics contend Duke Energy’s new community solar plan more costly to customers — Charlotte Business Journal
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
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
Solar & Batteries To Power London’s First ‘Virtual Power Station’ — Clean Technica
UK Power Networks, which supplies electricity to over 8 million homes and businesses across the South East and East of England, as well as the City of London, announced its plan to create a ‘virtual power station’ last week, intending to use solar panels and a fleet of batteries at approximately 40 homes across the London Borough of Barnet.