Sweeping New Approach for NC Electricity System

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NC WARN

Building People Power

Challenging Duke Energy’s Business Model

creating energy justice by ending the Duke monopoly in NC

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. Bizarrely, Duke even sees gas as part of the path to decarbonization! Learn more here about how the Utilities Commission failed to keep gas out of the NC Carbon Plan.

  • Duke’s business model is: build power plants, raise rates, control government and distort public debate. Not just in NC, but everywhere it operates monopoly utilities. That’s why we helped launch the 6-state Duke Energy Accountability Coalition.

  • The corporation spends $80 million of customer money each year to influence decision-makers and public opinion. One result: legislation like HB951 that helps no-one but Duke. Learn more and tell your state legislators to vote NO on HB951.

  • 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.

NC WARN is honored to be a co-founding member of Energy Justice NC: End the Duke Monopoly, a diverse new coalition of local, state and national groups that has launched a vigorous statewide campaign to end Duke Energy’s monopoly control of North Carolina’s energy markets and public officials.

We’re running this “End the Duke Monopoly” ad online and on TV stations around the state.

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.

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!

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