On Wednesday, an energy company headed by the California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that it had developed a rechargeable battery operating on zinc and air that can store power at far less than the cost of lithium-ion batteries. … “It could change and create completely new economies using purely the power of the sun, wind and air,” Dr. Soon-Shiong…said.
Top News
All News Categories
Duke Energy Leaders Made Hurricane Florence Worse — Op-Ed from NC WARN
Op-Ed by Jim Warren. 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
Atlantic Coast Pipeline foes file their broadest legal challenge yet — Energy News Network
Citizen groups filed another lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline Thursday, this time taking direct aim at the federal certificate that undergirds all other permits for the complex interstate gas project.
Solar With Storage Surges as Gas Falls — Common Dreams
Op-Ed by Jim Warren. There’s good news – outside of North Carolina – in the increasingly desperate fight to slow the climate crisis before its own momentum makes acceleration unstoppable. Economical storage, the long-sought Holy Grail of renewable energy, is surging in the marketplace while climate-wrecking fracked “natural” gas has begun to decline. Op-Ed also featured in Raleigh News & Observer, Fayetteville Observer, and Greensboro News & Record.
Why solar power is beating coal and natural gas — News & Observer
Op-Ed by Jim Warren. There’s good news — outside of North Carolina — in the increasingly desperate fight to slow the climate crisis before its own momentum makes acceleration unstoppable.
Two Dukes, PR and Biogas from Hog Manure– Letter from NC WARN
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.
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
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
Duke Energy Profits from Execs’ Major Blunders — News Release from NC WARN
The NC Utilities Commission ordered this state’s Duke Energy Carolinas customers to pay $545 million for coal ash negligence and $347 million for the utility’s 13-year, failed effort to begin construction of twin nuclear reactors – a project now cancelled. Even more shameful is that the commission granted Duke a roughly 10 percent mark-up on the coal ash mistake by corporate execs, just as it did in the Duke Progress case earlier this year.
Duke CEO Promised Investors $16 Billion in Grid Upgrades – On Top of Multiple Rate Hikes for Gas Plants and Coal Ash — News Release from NC WARN
Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good recently promised investors they could count on “multiple rate cases” in both of the corporation’s Carolinas service areas beginning next year – to fund seemingly endless construction of fracked gas power plants and clean-up of coal ash. Separately, she promised to boost rates and profits via a $16 billion electric “grid modernization” scheme that an expert for the NC Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA) testified could, on its own, raise residential rates by up to 50 percent.