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RENEWABLES: At least 15% of U.S. counties have halted new wind and solar projects through moratoriums, outright bans and construction impediments, making projects harder to build amid new clean energy targets. (USA Today)
COAL: A newly formed Michigan advocacy group wants a local government to buy a retiring Consumers Energy coal plant along Lake Michigan and keep it operating as a first step to create a municipal utility. (MLive)
BIOMASS: Two Michigan wood-fired biomass plants are set to close in the coming months as a utility seeks cheaper power options, raising questions about the future of the industry in Michigan. (Crain’s Grand Rapids Business)
OVERSIGHT:
OIL & GAS: A 2011 Ohio law keeps details about the companies bidding to frack under state parks and wildlife areas confidential. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: DTE Energy proposes a nearly $125 million plan to boost electric vehicle charging in low and moderate-income communities by providing rebates to residents and businesses. (Planet Detroit)
FINANCE: A group of Wisconsin state pension holders press a state investment board to divest from all fossil fuel-related funds. (Wisconsin Examiner)
PIPELINES:
POLITICS: A nonprofit funded by Michigan’s largest utilities contributed at least $600,000 to three fundraising accounts tied to Michigan Democrats the year before sweeping clean energy laws narrowly passed the legislature. (Detroit News, subscription)
CARBON CAPTURE: A company hopes its plan to capture carbon emissions from a fertilizer production plant to be stored underground will serve as a model for the industry. (Indianapolis Star)
SOLAR:
POLICY: A majority of Maryland voters want the state to be tougher on oil and gas companies by making them pay for climate-related infrastructure upgrades, a new poll finds. (Maryland Matters)
ALSO: New Hampshire’s lack of resources for local, county and state officials to put together successful grant applications may be why it recently missed out on funds for electric vehicle charging infrastructure. (NHPR)
GRID: Federal energy regulators approve new reforms proposed by PJM Interconnection to improve reliability by changing the grid operator’s resource adequacy risk modeling and capacity accreditation processes. (Utility Dive)
GAS:
OFFSHORE WIND: Federal ocean energy officials kick off a public comment period for the draft environmental assessment of the Beacon Wind project. (North American Wind Power)
FLOODS: Some New Jersey towns along the Passaic River experience frequent flooding, but climate resiliency projects that could alleviate the issue come with large price tags. (Gothamist)
BUILDINGS: A Massachusetts historical society’s museum receives net-zero certification after installing a solar array. (Berkshire Eagle)
CLIMATE:
AFFORDABILITY: Maine lawmakers may extend a soon-to-expire electric bill assistance program that helps low-income ratepayers make timely payments in exchange for bill forgiveness. (Portland Press Herald)
UTILITIES: Xcel Energy’s latest long-term energy plan would keep its two Minnesota nuclear plants until the early 2050s and add 3,600 MW of renewables, 600 MW of storage and two new gas plants. (Star Tribune)
OHIO: Lt. Gov. Jon Husted says any provisions linked to the state’s scandal-tainted House Bill 6 should be repealed, exposing an ongoing divide among Ohio Republicans over how much of the law should remain in place. (WCMH)
TRANSPORTATION: A Minnesota work group recommends making refineries buy credits that would fund grants to clean fuel producers, but environmental groups oppose the inclusion of ethanol among beneficiaries. (Star Tribune)
GRID:
PIPELINES: North Dakota regulators are set to vote next week on when state rules preempt local ordinances on pipeline zoning issues. (North Dakota Monitor)
SOLAR: Researchers are piloting a roadside snow fence with 6-inch-wide solar panels along a Minnesota highway. (MPR News)
HYDROGEN: Critics say utility plans to burn hydrogen for electricity at natural gas plants as a way to cut emissions would be a costly distraction from pursuing other technologies. (Canary Media)
POLITICS: Missouri Democrats grill Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft for requesting $1.2 million in public funding to defend his legal fight against environmental, social and governance driven investing. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A Minnesota company begins producing electric fire trucks that can get up to 150 miles on a charge and include new safety features for operators. (WCCO)
OIL & GAS: A power outage Thursday at a Northwest Indiana oil refinery caused significant flaring and will likely increase gas prices in the near term. (WLS)
CLEAN ENERGY: Analysts and advocates urge clean energy developers to consult with tribal nations early in the planning phase and earn their support rather than risk expensive legal challenges later in the process. (Grist)
CLIMATE: Proposals to mitigate the effects of climate change with solar geoengineering could infringe on tribal nations’ sovereignty, Indigenous advocates say. (High Country News)
SOLAR:
WIND: Oregon lawmakers call on federal agencies to address their concerns about proposed offshore wind development along the state’s southern coast. (Cannon Beach Gazette)
COAL: Utah lawmakers advance a bill aimed at keeping a coal plant running long after its scheduled retirement date, even if it means taxpayers end up purchasing the 40-year-old facility. (Salt Lake Tribune)
POLITICS: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs a bill into law aimed at allowing the state to sidestep federal regulations it deems objectionable, such as the U.S. EPA’s “good neighbor” ozone pollution reduction rule. (Deseret News)
OIL & GAS:
GRID: Unusually extreme cold grips south-central Alaska, straining natural gas supplies and leaving thousands of households without power. (Anchorage Daily News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
COMMENTARY:
Clean energy is aligned with conservative values. So says North Carolina Rep. Kyle Hall, a Republican legislator in his fifth term from a small town near Winston-Salem.
“It’s conservative to support market competition, consumer savings, property rights, and innovation,” Hall said at an event last November, when he received an award for spearheading a bill to promote rooftop solar and other clean energy measures in 2023.
The event also showcased what pollsters have known for years: Energy independence, less pollution, economic development, and other aspects of clean energy are popular with voters across the political spectrum.
Still, last year’s defeats and half-wins in North Carolina – where Republicans control both houses of the state legislature – show those factors aren’t always enough to propel policies favoring solar, wind, and electric vehicles forward. Obstacles remain in this purple state, including powerful special interests, misinformation, and individual lawmakers who have the power to make or break legislation.
“Polling consistently shows overwhelming public support statewide — in every community and across political ideologies — for more clean energy and for freer energy markets,” Carson Butts, the director of Conservatives for Clean Energy North Carolina, said in an email. But, he acknowledged, “clearly, we have more work to do.”
Advocates like Butts believe they’re making progress in winning Republicans over to their cause, and there’s evidence for that.
In 2013, for the first time in over 100 years, the North Carolina GOP assumed control of the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the General Assembly. Members of their ranks immediately sought to weaken clean energy policies, with some success. Today, state-level solar tax incentives are gone, and land-based wind turbines are scant albeit legal.
But strong bipartisan support for clean energy also started to congeal, culminating in 2021, when the legislature and a Democratic governor elected in 2016 crafted a law to zero out electricity sector carbon emissions by midcentury. It remains the only such bipartisan measure in the region.
John Szoka, who helped write that law, may be the greatest testament to the efforts of right-leaning clean energy advocates. A former legislator who took office the first year of the GOP trifecta, today he leads the Conservative Energy Network, a nationwide association of state-based groups like Conservatives for Clean Energy.
“I’m the perfect example,” Szoka said in an interview, about how conservatives can evolve through education.
“When I first ran for office, I thought solar only existed because of subsidies and a bunch of crazy stuff,” he said. “But then, I ended up being a proponent for it. I made the transition because I had people who are trusted conservatives tell me what the truth was.”
Though Republicans regained a legislative supermajority in 2022, the bipartisan emissions law faced no attacks last year. A largely symbolic measure to ban ocean-based wind turbines in state-controlled waters also never got a hearing.
“Sometimes we define success as something that didn’t happen,” said Brian Turner, a former Democratic state representative who now directs policy for Audubon North Carolina. “We didn’t get another wind moratorium,” he noted at a November energy conference. “That’s something we were able to bottle up and keep from moving.”
What’s more, Republicans allocated at least $10 million in matching funds for an avalanche of clean energy grants headed to North Carolina thanks to federal initiatives like the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“There was significant funding allocated for clean energy related items, and that wasn’t necessarily a given,” said Cassie Gavin, policy director at the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. “Every state hasn’t done that.”
Rep. Hall also moved to raise the current cap on leasing rooftop solar from 1% of Duke Energy electricity sales to 10%, a key change for businesses and nonprofits looking to rely more renewable energy. After paring down the scope of the bill to satisfy Duke, it cleared the house with just 10 “no” votes — a milestone he called significant.
“Being able to carry it through,” Hall said in an interview, “I think was kind of a victory.”
This activity aligns with poll after poll showing that voters across the political spectrum support wind, solar, and other forms of clean energy. Last year, a trio of surveys continued that trend.
The left-leaning North Carolina League of Conservation Voters found divisions between conservative and liberal voters on fossil fuels, but strong majorities in favor of “solar energy,” “clean energy,” and “renewable energy.”
Szoka’s group found that 67% of voters support community solar — in which individuals pay in for a share of a large solar farm — including 59% of Republicans.
And Conservatives for Clean Energy found that 73% of voters, including a majority of Republicans, would be more likely to support a candidate who backed policies to encourage “wind, solar, and waste-to-energy technologies.”
Consultant Paul Shumaker conducted the latter poll, a survey of 500 North Carolina voters last spring. In terms of running election campaigns, he said during a presentation of the results, “anything over 70% is a winning issue.”
But lawmakers didn’t always heed these surveys.
Shumaker’s poll, for instance, found that more than three quarters of voters, including 72% of Republicans, favored more competition in the electricity market.
Slightly smaller majorities said they would support “current legislation that would authorize a study to examine the public benefits of restructuring options for the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in North Carolina.”
The question references House Bill 503, aimed at analyzing the pros and cons of Duke joining a competitive wholesale electricity market, among other reforms. Like similar measures introduced in 2019 and 2021, it saw no movement last year.
“With the overwhelming numbers of voters supporting competition, why can’t we even study it?” asked Kevin Martin, the director of the Carolina Utility Customers Association, after the presentation.
“That’s a question for lawmakers,” Shumaker answered. He then relayed an adage he said came from the late historian David McCullough: “Special interests drive the narrative.”
Duke has a long public record of opposing the market reform study and did not respond to a request for comment for this story. But it wasn’t the only special interest that influenced policy last year.
The state budget prohibited an effort by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, to reduce pollution from the state’s transportation sector. Called the Advanced Clean Truck Rule, it would have required manufacturers to sell increasing percentages of electric heavy-duty vehicles.
The provision originated in the House and endured when the Senate passed its version of the state spending plan. Still, Hall said he fought to remove it in conference — to no avail.
“That sent a signal to electric vehicle companies across the country that you’re not welcome in North Carolina,” Hall said.
The source of the provision, Hall believes, was the North Carolina Chamber, the business lobby that represents a host of companies including truck makers Daimler Truck and Volvo Group. “They wanted that in the budget,” he said, “and like Duke Energy, they wield a lot of power.”
The Chamber celebrated the budget language on its website in September. “Government mandates and intervention into the market would stifle… innovation and investment, as well as increase costs in new trucks, on which nearly all of our members rely,” it said.
The lesson, said Hall, is that companies with a vested interest in clean energy policy — in this case manufacturers and fleet managers who want their companies to go electric — need to do a better job of educating both lawmakers and the trade groups they belong to.
“Groups like Duke and the [electric] co-ops are doing it,” Hall said. “This side of the energy sector needs to do it as well.”
Still, the clean energy economy remains nascent compared to the entrenched business interests that benefit, at least in the short term, from the status quo. That was certainly true last year, when the well-organized building lobby faced off against the more diffuse energy efficiency industry.
State standards for insulation thickness, window quality, and other energy-saving building features in new single-family homes have remained virtually unchanged for over a decade.
The state’s Building Code Council sought to change that, tying updated standards to a 2021 international model code. The move was expected to add an average of $5,000 to the cost of a new house but generate a positive cash flow immediately by lowering energy bills.
The math was generated by an independent government lab and confirmed anecdotally by green builders, who supported the code updates. But the powerful North Carolina Home Builders Association refused to accept it. A major campaign donor and presence in the legislature, the builders lobby instead claimed the average cost would exceed $20,000.
With the state in dire need of affordable housing, the builders’ reasoning was potent – convincing several Democrats and every single Republican to vote for a measure to reject the update and freeze the 2009-era codes in place until 2031.
“We do have an affordable housing crisis,” said Hall, a realtor by trade who’s observed soaring home prices even in his small town of King. And if the builders had less “burdensome regulations,” he said, they could build homes more cost-effectively. “I think that was a compelling argument.”
Special interests aren’t the only ones with sway in Raleigh. Sen. Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican and former Duke Energy North Carolina president, is widely viewed as the arbiter of clean energy policy for the Senate.
A lead negotiator for the 2021 decarbonization law, his positions frequently align with Duke’s. But he also asserts himself on bills that don’t directly concern the utility, and his influence extends beyond his chamber.
For four years in a row, he was thought to be the sticking point for government building efficiency legislation — a measure with no organized opposition and few detractors in the House. The 2023 Conservatives for Clean Energy poll found the measure had 79% support, including 68% of Republicans. Last year, the measure was reintroduced in the House with bipartisan support, but never got a hearing.
Newton’s key imprint from 2023 was his bill to promote nuclear, a carbon-free but non-renewable power source. The measure is more message than substance, but one key provision removes a requirement that Duke pursue more cost-effective measures like energy efficiency and renewables before trying to build a new nuclear plant.
“We support energy efficiency as the most affordable energy resource, and so we remain concerned about the changes to the [Certificate of Convenience and Public Necessity] section,” said Gavin of the Sustainable Energy Association.
When the bill first cleared the House, it included language sought by Hall to increase the solar leasing cap. That provision was rejected by Newton and other senators in the conference committee between the two chambers. “The Senate just stood their ground,” Hall said, “and flat out said ‘no.’”
Though his solar leasing bill is still eligible this year, Hall lamented its failure to become law in 2023. “That’s probably the most disappointing thing from the session,” he said.
Dan Crawford, director of governmental relations with the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, said the situation was indicative of the dynamic on energy policy at the General Assembly.
In the House, “you have conservatives that are trying to lead and do something positive,” he said. “But then you have the Paul Wall in the Senate.”
Newton didn’t respond to a request for a comment for this story.
Along with Hall, many observers point to Rep. Larry Strickland, a Johnston County Republican in his fourth term, as an emerging leader on energy in the House.
But they also note the absence of Szoka, who left in 2022, and former Republican representative Chuck McGrady, who now sits on the state’s Board of Transportation.
“Those are two really big losses,” Crawford said.
Szoka says one reason Republicans don’t always seem to follow the will of the majority of voters traces back to conservative grassroots circles.
Of the GOP voters his group polled who self-identified as “more conservative” on energy than their party as a whole, a whopping 64% said there was either no reason to be concerned about climate change or that more research was needed.
“So, that raises a question,” Szoka said. “How do you get elected? What’s going on in Republican grassroots organizations? Where do they get their information from?”
While outlets like Fox News have largely abandoned outright climate denial, misinformation persists about climate science, renewable energy sources, and energy policy. Throughout much of last year, for example, conservative media amplified false claims that offshore wind development was killing whales along the Atlantic Coast, an analysis by the liberal group Media Matters found.
Former president Donald Trump also trumpets such falsehoods, deepening distrust of the clean energy transition among Republican voters. And numerous studies have shown social media algorithms tend to push some users toward conspiracy theories and other misinformation.
At the same time, activists fighting solar, wind, and transmission projects, sometimes backed by fossil fuel interests, sow untruths in otherwise receptive or neutral rural communities.
“That stuff is still prevalent in a lot of rural areas, because there are people who actively work against clean energy, and they perpetuate misinformation,” Szoka said. Debunking it — a key mission of his organization — takes time and patience, he said, but it can work. “You’ve got to convince them,” he said, “and separate fact from fiction.”
Even so, with districts increasingly gerrymandered for partisan advantage, Republican candidates who support clean energy may never campaign on it: it doesn’t necessarily help them win a primary, and it rarely distinguishes them from their Democratic opponents.
“Most people don’t talk about it enough,” Szoka said, especially considering clean energy’s importance to unaffiliated voters – now the largest cohort in the state’s electorate. “And in some of these tight races, conservatives should talk about it more and the race wouldn’t be quite as tight.”
Still, advancing the clean energy transition may not be a simple matter of translating popular polling issues into policy. As politics becomes more nationalized and more polarized, with top Republicans deriding wind and solar, there’s some evidence that voters could be following suit.
Conservatives for Clean Energy has conducted polling for eight years. In 2015, nearly 87% of voters were more likely to vote for candidates who supported wind and solar. But that figure has seen a steady, if slight, decline ever since, and last year reached a new low of 73%.
The fossil fuel industry has also likely benefited from the centuries-old term “natural gas,” which despite its coinage describes a fuel that contributes substantial heat-warming pollutants to the atmosphere.
While most voters in the Conservative Energy Network poll believe we should put “less emphasis” on developing coal and oil, most said production of natural gas should stay “about the same.” Similarly, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters poll found that 68% of all voters, including 55% of “left-leaning voters,” had a favorable view of natural gas.
Hall, who doesn’t advocate a full transition to “things like solar and wind,” believes the key is focusing on not just economics, but independence.
“If you ask people, ‘do you want to be energy independent, or do you want to rely on China and Russia for your energy,’ everybody’s going to vote for America first,” Hall said. “When I speak to constituents, their number one concern is that when they flip the switch that the light turns on — and if you could do it cheaper, cleaner, and made right here in America, that’s what they care about.”
Some way or another, clean energy advocates on the right are going to have to figure out what works. For all the intrigue in this year’s elections, legislative district lines leave little doubt that Republicans will retain control of the General Assembly. And left-leaning advocates say they’re not the best messengers in that case.
“There is an important role for Conservatives for Clean Energy to be that validator on the economy and clean energy,” Crawford said.
WIND: Dominion Energy receives the final two federal approvals for its $9.8 billion 176-turbine offshore wind farm near Virginia, opening the way for the utility to begin construction in May. (Virginia Business)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
EMISSIONS:
GRID: The Texas Supreme Court hears arguments over state regulators’ decision to raise energy prices to their maximum allowable levels to incentivize power production during the 2021 winter storm. (KUT)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR: An energy company announces it’s obtained financing to move forward with a 600 MW solar farm in Texas. (Solar Industry)
UTILITIES:
COAL:
COMMENTARY:
Correction: Oil companies will pay $7.4 million to settle a pipeline spill on Sac and Fox Nation land in Oklahoma. Yesterday’s edition of Southeast News included the wrong amount.
PIPELINES: Iowa lawmakers consider a bill that would give them power to block attempts by developers to secure eminent domain for a carbon pipeline. (Des Moines Register)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID:
OVERSIGHT: Documents show that Ohio regulators accepted utility companies’ claims of trade secrets to protect information about coal plant operations, even though the data was publicly available in some cases. (Checks & Balances Project)
BIOGAS: Environmental and farming groups say a 28-mile, $13.9 million renewable natural gas pipeline planned to serve four large dairies would lead to further consolidation in the agriculture sector. (Star Tribune)
EFFICIENCY: Energy efficiency has had a big year in Michigan as a new state law requires all utilities to offer energy-saving programs, federal rebates help offset residential investments, and Detroit starts measuring use in large buildings. (Planet Detroit)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Steel highway guardrails are not designed to withstand the force of electric vehicles, which are typically heavier than gasoline-powered cars, according to crash test data. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
CLIMATE:
HYDROGEN:
UTILITIES:
WIND: Dominion Energy receives the final two federal approvals for its $9.8 billion 176-turbine offshore wind farm near Virginia, opening the way for the utility to begin construction in May. (Virginia Business)
AFFORDABILITY: Vermont communities with low energy burdens also have the highest clean energy technology adoption rates, suggesting lower-income households aren’t getting the help they need. (Bennington Banner)
OIL & GAS:
COMMENTARY: A public policy professor says the demise of NuScale’s proposed small modular reactor project in Idaho shows the technology is too expensive and unproven and should be abandoned. (Utility Dive)
Member towns in New Hampshire’s year-old Community Power Coalition are reaping the benefits of banding together to buy electricity on their own.
As of Feb. 1, residential and small commercial customers in the coalition’s 16 active member communities will pay a base electricity rate of 8.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, a 26% reduction from their already-competitive rate of 10.9 cents per kWh.
Another 29 communities are planning to enjoy the lower rate after they launch their own programs this spring, effectively making the statewide coalition the second-largest electrical supplier in the state.
“The community power program has been a great success,” said Jackson Kaspari, resilience manager for the city of Dover and a member of the coalition’s board of directors. Since Dover launched its program last October, for example, residential and commercial customers have saved an estimated $500,000, he said.
The new rate, which will be in effect through July 31, is lower than the default residential rate offered by every other electric utility in the state: 24% below Unitil, 20% below the New Hampshire Electric Co-op, 17% below Liberty, and 2% below Eversource.
The estimated savings for customers in all member communities for the next six-month rate period is around $3.2 million, said Brian Callnan, the coalition’s first chief executive officer, and formerly the vice president of power resources and access at the New Hampshire Electric Co-op.
New Hampshire’s community power law, signed into law in 2019, authorizes municipalities to procure their own power, instead of buying it through their local distribution company. The distribution companies continue to deliver the electricity and handle billing.
The coalition uses the collective buying power of all of their residents and businesses to secure competitive rates in the wholesale market. Their ability to be flexible in the timing of energy procurements enables them to find value, Callnan said.
“We don’t have to purchase power at a given time period,” he said. In contrast, “the investor-owned utilities don’t have that flexibility” in their regulated procurement process.
The coalition’s base rate — called the Granite Basic — includes 24.3% renewable content, the minimum required under the state’s renewable portfolio standard. But customers may choose to pay slightly higher rates for greater proportions of renewable power.
Opting up to the highest level — the Clean 100, with 100% renewable power — would still only raise the average residential customer’s bill an estimated $29 a month over the basic rate, while eliminating more than two tons of carbon emissions per year, according to John Tabor, chair councilor of the Portsmouth Energy Advisory Committee.
“Portsmouth Community Power customers could reduce their carbon footprint from electricity the same as if they converted their homes to solar panels, at a fraction of the cost,” Tabor said in a statement released at the time of the new rate announcement.
Currently, about 90% of customers have chosen to stay with the Granite Basic product, Callnan said.
The revenue from electricity sales cover the nonprofit coalition’s operating costs, with the balance going into reserves. Every member community is allocated their portion of the collected reserves in the nonprofit. Member communities will also have an opportunity to create a reserve fund on their own to pursue other energy-related projects in their towns, such as improving building efficiency or developing solar projects.
The coalition could potentially partner with a community hosting a solar project and take up some of that power, he said.
“Pretty much all the communities have ideas for projects or are working on projects,” Callnan said. “To me, that’s the exciting part of this — we can really make an impact on how a community uses energy. There are no renewable projects under development from within our communities right now, but we could see that happen in 2025.”
Dover’s energy commission is considering a multi-phased program to improve energy efficiency in their municipal buildings, Kaspari said. They have also evaluated some sites for building solar, such as at the city’s wastewater treatment facility, he said.
“Being a member of the coalition has given us new perspectives on a lot of things and opened the door for information sharing with other municipalities,” Kaspari said. “That’s one of the most powerful aspects of the coalition at this time — leaders in the energy sector talking to each other from across the state.”
Facing a massive projected increase in electricity demand, Duke Energy on Wednesday proposed what advocates called a “tripling down” of new gas plants and scuttling a 2030 deadline to significantly curb its carbon pollution.
An update of a proposal submitted last summer, the bid comes after the company warned in November that major new economic development projects would drive electricity sales “well above” its “historical experience.”
The amended plans show the company expects a 12% increase in demand by 2038, driven largely by more than two dozen economic development projects in both Carolinas that had made “commitments sufficient to justify inclusion” in the new load forecast.
To meet the increased demand in the near term while preparing for decarbonization mandates in the long term, Duke wants to build two more large, “hydrogen-capable” gas plants than it proposed in August. Some hydrogen fuel could theoretically be zero-emitting but is not yet commercially available, and critics call the technology speculative.
The company also proposes an additional smaller, single-cycle gas plant. In all, Duke recommends nearly 9 gigawatts of new gas before 2035, almost three times what it anticipated in its first blueprint to cut carbon pollution, approved at the end of 2022.
“This plan is tripling down on the coal-to-gas transition, saddling customers with risky investments in new polluting power plants and failing to deliver the clean energy future called for in state law,” said Will Scott, Southeast Climate & Clean Energy Director for the Environmental Defense Fund, in a prepared statement.
On the bright side for renewables, the company does recommend a smidge more solar and battery storage. And most significantly, it proposes 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 — about two-thirds the size of the Kitty Hawk Wind energy area, the project off the Outer Banks that’s furthest along in development.
“Obviously, this is fantastic news, that we’re seeing offshore wind in the Carbon Plan,” said Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition. But she flagged what appeared to be a lengthy and probably unnecessary study period in the new Duke filings.
“What all of the developers need is certainty and a path to market,” she said. “I think we need to make sure that we don’t get caught in a loop of trying to gather information, and bringing that back to the Utilities Commission, and then gathering more information.”
Duke also left its summer plans for retiring its coal plants largely unchanged, even moving up the timeline for closing one of its largest, the Roxboro 4 unit in Person County, to 2029.
“It’s nice to see that large, dirty capacity go away quicker,” said Justin Somelofske, regulatory counsel for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. But, he added, “the bad news is… they’re doing that to use the transmission assets to interconnect new gas.”
And though regulators had ordered Duke to file with its latest proposal “a portfolio that meets the 70% reduction by 2030,” as mandated by law, the utility doesn’t really do so. Instead, it appears to suggest in just one chart on one page that resources planned by 2035 could be built five years earlier.
“We were very happy with the [Utilities] Commission order requiring Duke to do that,” said Somelofske of the 2030 blueprint. “But it feels like Duke was checking a box, instead of making an earnest effort to find a viable path to achieve 70% by 2030.”
A Duke spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment before this story was published. But the company’s filing makes clear it prefers a pathway to cutting its pollution 70% by 2035, if not 2037. That plan, it writes, is the “most reasonable, least cost, and least risk portfolio for planning purposes.”
As they have in the past, advocates say they’ll scrutinize Duke’s load projections as part of the Carbon Plan process this year. But the irony isn’t lost on them that much of the new demand is being driven by electric vehicle battery plants and other projects heralded as part of the clean energy transition. And some companies likely chose the state in part because of its commitment to decarbonizing the electricity sector.
“We don’t want to see Duke take a fundamentalist position to meet the challenge” of new demand, Somelofske said, “by doing what they’re comfortable with, and then potentially threatening future economic development.”
No matter what, the latest Duke filing is far from the last word on the subject. The state’s Utilities Commission has until the end of the year to greenlight or amend the Carbon Plan, and it has scheduled public and expert hearings through the spring and summer.
“We’re hopeful the Utilities Commission will require Duke to pursue a path that controls costs for customers,” Scott said, “while meeting North Carolina’s 2030 carbon emission reduction goal on time.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to provide more context on Duke Energy’s proposed power plant investments.
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