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Duke Energy

Duke Energy – Bad Headlines and the Public Good

Duke Energy – Bad Headlines and the Public Good

written by The Vote Solar Initiative

It’s been a bad news kind of week for Duke Energy. First, several major investors in the utility – which is the largest electric power holding company in the United States – urged fellow shareholders to fire four Duke directors over the company’s coal ash spill in early February. A letter filed Tuesday by one of those investors stated that the directors “have failed to fulfill their obligations of risk oversight as members of a committee overseeing health, safety, and environmental compliance at the company.” This call for accountability comes two months after 39,000 tons of coal ash and 24 million gallons of contaminated water leaked from a storage pond at Duke Energy’s shuttered Eden power plant in North Carolina. (We’d be remiss to let this post go without reminding folks that, in contrast, when there’s a huge solar spill, it’s just called a ‘nice day’). The coal ash spill has brought about legislative hearings, a federal criminal investigation, and involvement by the EPA – and the very slow process of cleaning up the toxic sludge is expected to incur massive costs, with the question remaining: who will pay?

Duke Energy is taking heat in Florida as well, where ratepayers face a $3.2 Billion (with a ‘B’) bill for two ill-fated nuclear power plants: the soon-to-be decommissioned Crystal River Plant and the proposed-then-canceled Levy County plant. In the words of one impassioned local columnist, “Customers who are captives of monopoly utilities never should bear the multibillion-dollar cost of screw-ups by their power company.”

Companies like Duke Energy are given that special monopoly to serve the public good – and it’s safe to say this week’s headlines do not have it living up to its end of the bargain.

The public Duke Energy serves DOES want more control over their energy supply and electricity bills with solar power. Yet the utility has been stating publicly that it wants to weaken North Carolina’s net metering program for rooftop solar. We’re using Duke as the example here, but it’s hardly acting alone among American utilities. If energy customers in Florida, North Carolina or anywhere else in the U.S. want to take energy matters into their own hands by investing in clean, local solar power, utilities should be serving that demand – not standing in the way.

It’s worth highlighting that it’s not all bad news out of our utilities. Duke Energy has made its own significant investments in solar power. In fact, North Carolina ranks among our nation’s leaders in solar, although that solar is almost entirely in the hands of the utility via large-scale solar projects, including a recently-announced 300MW RFP. Duke’s neighbors at Georgia Power also just issued an RFP for a whopping 495 MW of PV below the cost of their fossil and nuke alternatives.

Utilities are increasingly seeing the value of this non-polluting (vs. coal), easily deployed (vs. nuclear) and increasingly cost-competitive (vs. all) resource — which is great! We just ask that they not do it at the expense of individual consumers choice and solar rights. Utilities know solar is a good deal; their customers should be able to get in on that deal too.



April 18, 2014 0 comment
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Duke Energy Addresses Blueprints for Greater Distributed Generation

written by Walter Wang

Advanced meters are the most visible component of recent smart grid deployments, dominating much public and media attention. However, industry members recognize even greater opportunities and imperatives for modernizing distribution infrastructure and operations further up the line. Distribution automation (DA) is a hot topic in the utility industry, encompassing

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February 7, 2013 0 comment
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Green IP Litigation Is A Black Cloud Over Wind Turbine Makers

written by Walter Wang

In addition to the high legal fees and exposure to potentially hefty damages payouts that accompany allegations of intellectual property infringement, such lawsuits can also be dark clouds over defendants, hampering their ability to do business.

A salient example of this in cleantech is the news that

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December 12, 2011 0 comment
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Duke’s Order to Blow Away Cloud Hanging Over Mitsubishi’s 2.4 MW Turbine?

written by Walter Wang

I’ve written extensively about the patent infringement and antitrust litigation between wind power rivals GE and Mitsubishi (see, e.g., previous posts here and here).

While that legal battle spans multiple venues, encompasses several different patents, and includes

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November 4, 2011 0 comment
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Top Ten Cleantech Highlights of Duke Energy

written by Walter Wang

Duke Energy is a large energy company with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Duke Energy has assets in the United States as well as Canada and Latin America. This energy company has been providing businesses and residents with gas and electric services that are reliable, clean, as well as

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October 14, 2011 0 comment
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Duke Energy Announces Wind Farm for Willacy County in Texas

written by Walter Wang

Duke Energy has announced its intention to build a large-scale wind farm in Willacy County.

When the 200-megawatt facility comes online, it will generate enough electricity to power roughly 60,000 homes.

Duke Energy’s Los Vientos I wind power project,

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August 16, 2011 0 comment
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Top Ten Highlights of Cleantech in North Carolina

written by Walter Wang

In August of 2007, North Carolina because the first Southeastern state in the United States to adopt the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard. In this, all investor- owned North Carolinian utilities are mandated to meet a minimum of 12.5 percent of their energy requirements via renewable

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August 9, 2011 0 comment
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The Duke-Progress Merger: Duel of the Smart Grids

written by

The industry has been abuzz this past week over the announced acquisition (ahem – merger) of Progress Energy by Duke Energy. The combined entity will become the largest electric utility in the U.S. by revenue and generation capacity if approved by the various regulatory bodies, which is no sure thing. Like most mergers, the promised benefits, for shareholders and

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January 24, 2011 0 comment
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Carbon Capture and Storage Gains a Growing Foothold

written by Yale Environment 360

The drive to extract and store CO2 from coal-fired power plants is gaining momentum, with the Obama administration backing the technology and the world’s first capture and sequestration project now operating in the U.S. Two questions loom: Will carbon capture and storage be affordable? And will it be safe?

On a placid bend of the Ohio River in West Virginia sit two coal-fired power plants. The Philip Sporn Plant boasts four boilers from the 1950s, surrounded by mountains of coal and a series of man-made lakes to contain the toxic residue of its coal-burning.

A faint haze emanates from its main smokestack, the only visible sign of the thousands of tons of acid-rain-forming sulfur dioxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and climate-warming carbon dioxide it emits each day, a consequence of the plant’s complete lack of pollution-control technologies. The 1,100 megawatts of electricity it produces will never benefit from such controls, as they are too expensive to install on the multiple small boilers, according to the plant’s owner, American Electric Power.

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February 18, 2010 1 comment
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Duke Energy Resolves Clean Air Act Violations

written by Environmental News Network

The US EPA and Duke Energy have reached a settlement in another New Source Review enforcement action.

Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power companies in the nation, will spend approximately $85 million to significantly reduce harmful air pollution at an Indiana power plant and pay a $1.75 million civil penalty, under a settlement to resolve violations of federal clean air laws, the Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today. The settlement also requires Duke to spend $6.25 million on environmental mitigation projects.

The agreement, filed in federal court in Indianapolis, resolves violations of the Clean Air Act’s new source review requirements found at the company’s Gallagher coal-fired power plant in New Albany, Ind., located directly across the Ohio River from Louisville, Ky.

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December 23, 2009 0 comment
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Coal’s Loss is Renewable Energy’s Gain

written by Keith Pund

Last week the EPA proposed that carbon dioxide be considered one of six greenhouse gases which endanger the public health and welfare of US citizens. Well, it’s about time! The EPA is now seeking public comment on the proposed ruling, which consists of two parts: that the six greenhouse gases contribute to a litany of climate-related problems, and that motor vehicle emissions send four of those gases into the atmosphere.  What could this mean for CO2-intensive energy sources, and what are some implications for clean energy?

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April 23, 2009 1 comment
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