Quick Facts:
NC-based Duke Energy is the one of the world’s largest corporate electric utilities and one of its biggest carbon polluters.
Rather than transitioning quickly to renewable energy, Duke does only enough to make it look green, while rapidly building out its fracked gas infrastructure, spewing more and more climate-wrecking methane into the atmosphere.
The corporation spends $80 million of customer money each year to influence decision-makers and public opinion. Learn how we’re pushing to end Duke influence money.
Through legal and regulatory challenges and direct appeals for cooperation, NC WARN and allies are vigorously pressing Duke to get on the right side of climate history by joining the clean energy revolution.
NC WARN has been challenging Duke Energy’s business model for years. Here are some recent examples.
In Duke Energy’s 2018 rate hike case before the NC Utilities Commission, we exposed the fact that the corporation spends upwards of $80 million a year to influence public opinion and government decision-makers. In November 2018, we joined with Friends of the Earth to petition the NC Utilities Commission to stop the practice. Learn more.
We’re running this “End the Duke Monopoly” ad online and on TV stations around the state.
In February 2018, NC WARN and more than 50 other organizations wrote a letter to Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good informing her of the latest NASA data showing the pace of climate change is accelerating. We called on her to get on the right side of climate history before it’s too late by stopping methane emissions from natural gas operations and expeditiously moving from fossil fuels to renewables paired with storage and energy-saving measures. Read the letter and see the list of signers. See the newspaper ad we ran in conjunction with the campaign.
NC Utilities Commission Chairman Ed Finley
NC WARN has urged state regulators to break their pattern of settling rate cases and mergers with Duke Energy behind closed doors. The long-running practice makes involvement by the public and intervenors almost meaningless and undercuts the public interest. The utility gets exactly what it wants, covered by a thin pretense of regulatory oversight. We called on Attorney General Josh Stein not to be drawn into backroom negotiations, and instead to stand up for the public. Learn more.
Over the years, NC WARN has reached out to Duke Energy executives many times, both publicly and privately, to seek collaboration toward progress away from fossil fuels and toward the clean energy future we all want and need. See some examples here.
We have challenged Duke Energy in the federal and state courts and with federal and state regulatory bodies. See all legal filings here. Pictured: Staff attorney Kristen Wills at the NC Supreme Court during hearing of our Solar Freedom case.
Read about other campaigns challenging Duke Energy: coal ash, Dukeasaurus and more!
Recent News
Examining The Future Of Energy In North Carolina — Charlotte Talks
NC WARN Executive Director Jim Warren was a guest on Charlotte Talks, the local talk show of NPR member station WFAE. He deftly countered Duke Energy’s corporate PR weasel-wording. It was a lively and feisty discussion that finally got the debate over North Carolina’s energy future out in the open. Listen here.
SEE ALL Duke/Kochs' Control of Government POSTSSolar 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.
SEE ALL Duke/Kochs' Control of Government POSTS
