Landmark legislation passed last October set North Carolina on a course to try and achieve significantly less carbon dioxide emissions in the next few years. Duke Energy is suggesting a plan for their operations to reach those goals – but some groups are advocating for more steps and different strategies to be taken.

House Bill 951 directs the North Carolina Utilities Commission to oversee reductions of carbon emissions from public utility companies, cutting them by 70 percent by the year 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

Ashley Ward, who is a senior policy associate at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy, told 97.9 The Hill the law itself has the chance to set an example for other states in the region.

“This is historic, in the respect that this was a bipartisan agreement between our general assembly and our governor to reduce power sector emissions,” said Ward. “It’s the first state in the southeast to do such a thing. It’s also really awesome because the outcome of this plan is going to impact everybody. Not just in the state of North Carolina, but outside [and] beyond.”

Duke Energy submitted its own plan to try and achieve the goals in May. The proposal says the utilities giant would fully retire coal plants in North Carolina by the end of 2035 and improve a mix of renewable energy resources into Duke’s use of fossil fuels.

But there are climate advocacy groups who point to some aspects of Duke Energy’s plan as unproven, inefficient and not cost-effective to those who pay for the energy.

Ward said part of the proposal to the state Utilities Commission in May includes Duke Energy relying on small-scale nuclear and hydrogen technologies for alternative energy sources. But she says since those methods are still early in their development and not widely available like other renewable energy, they could present a challenge to North Carolinians.

“[That’s] not to say that those things are not going to turn out to be wonderful ways we can address our energy needs,” said Ward. “But right now, they’re not where they need to be, and we have wind and solar that are commercially available. There’s quite a few who feel like investing in solar and wind would be a much more reasonable approach to get to our goals of 70 percent reduction by 2030.”

The Duke Energy coal plant in Roxboro, N.C. As part of its proposal to meet North Carolina’s carbon emissions goals, the utility company said it aims to retire all coal plants in the state by 2035. (Photo via D.W. Evans Electric Inc.)

Some of Duke Energy’s plan appears to actually fall short of those reduction goals. In three out of the four submitted paths forward in the company’s Carbon Plan, the 70 percent reduction mark wouldn’t be reached until 2032 or 2034. That was a sticking point for eight local governments in North Carolina, who penned a letter to the state Utilities Commission in August. The towns of Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Boone, and Matthews, as well as the cities of Raleigh, Greensboro and Durham, and Chatham County all signed onto recommendations for more action.

“Given that local governments are constrained by the available energy generation mix at the utility level,” the letter reads, “a Carbon Plan that allows Duke to push the compliance date by multiple years would seriously reduce the likelihood of local governments meeting their climate targets, many of which include milestones similar to the state’s 70% reduction by 2030 goal.”

Some climate advocacy groups felt so strongly, they formed a coalition and hired a consulting agency to submit an alternative plan to the state Utilities Commission. Synapse Energy Economics shared a proposal in July that used the same resource planning model as Duke Energy but ended up with very different results. Among them are significantly more reliance on solar power, imported wind power and battery storage compared to the construction of more infrastructure to burn natural gas.

Those options align more with the goals of groups like NC WARN, a nonprofit whose mission is to tackle climate change. Policy Coordinator Sally Robertson spoke with 97.9 The Hill after her organization and others issued a failing report card for Duke Energy’s plan. One of the reasons why? Robertson said it went against one of the top goals NC WARN has.

“Maximize renewable energy: as much solar, wind and energy storage as you can do, as much energy efficiency, so energy saving measures,” she said. “Stop with the fossil fuels already.”

Robertson said because Duke Energy’s proposal includes the expansion of natural gas use, there could be similarly harmful elements to the energy transition to the current carbon emissions.

“Methane is a much worse climate pollutant than carbon dioxide,” she said. “It’s about 100 times more potent over the first 10 years in the atmosphere. It’s methane [coming from natural gas], not carbon dioxide, and it’s not on Duke’s system: it’s leaking where it’s being drilled, from pipelines, from compressors and storage tanks. It’s not Duke’s responsibility, so they don’t have to count it.”

Additionally, while Duke Energy presented its plan as keeping costs low to residents, the alternative proposals by Synapse would save ratepayers between $700 million and $2.4 billion.

Ward said that especially when it comes to building more pipelines and framework for natural gas, the costs don’t match up with the timeline of North Carolina’s law requiring change.

“Most infrastructure in the energy industry takes about 40 to 60 years to get to its return on investment,” said Ward. “So, the concern here is that there’d be a lot of investment in this capital-intensive infrastructure, which would be mostly borne by ratepayers, for them to not to realize the benefit of that – because by 2050, we have to be carbon neutral.”

According to a North Carolina Public Staff web page, Duke Energy will share a rebuttal testimony on Friday. The state Utilities Commission says it will begin an expert witness hearing on the corporation’s plan on Tuesday, September 13.

 

Photo via Duke Energy.


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