Duke Energy - The Susan Collins Of Utilities - Bleats Green While Generating 2% From Renewables

[hatrack]

Duke Energy, the nation’s largest investor-owned electric utility, claims to be a climate and environmental leader, but a closer look reveals a dirty energy portfolio and consistent efforts to preserve a fossil fuel-based future. While the utility’s CEO, Lynn Good, writes in Duke's 2018 Sustainability Report, “Duke Energy has been leading the charge to a cleaner energy future while helping our communities thrive,” a newly published report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) tells a much different story.

By examining Duke’s current electric generating portfolio, the company’s actions, and key regulatory findings, EWG paints a picture of a utility that has been extremely slow to transition to renewable energy resources and that actively fights against customers’ ability to generate their own carbon-free electricity.

According to Duke’s 2018 Annual Report, of all of the electricity delivered to its 7.7 million customers, only 2 percent was generated from renewable resources.
Meanwhile, a total of 65 percent of Duke’s electricity was generated from fossil fuel-fired power plants: 31 percent from coal and and 34 percent from natural gas and fuel oil. The other 33 percent came from nuclear plants.

EDIT

Duke Energy has also consistently fought the spread of rooftop solar installations in its service territories. In most states, this has involved lobbying to cancel or weaken net metering programs and to increase fixed monthly charges on electric bills, both ways to cripple the economics of distributed solar. Net metering programs essentially allow customers to sell excess solar power back to the utility for credit on their electric bills, providing owners of rooftop, backyard, or community solar arrays a way to benefit from all of the value that their solar energy provides.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/01/environmental-working-group-report-duke-energy-renewables

[NNadir]

1. If we are honest though...

...we need to concede that they produce roughly the same amount of electricity from so called "renewable energy" as the planet as a whole, 2%, and that they produce less electricity from fossil fuels than the planet as a whole, 65%.

Both these figures are in "percent talk."

Of course, everyone is working to replace Duke's nuclear plants (25 g CO2/kwh) with gas plants (550 g CO2/kwh).

I'm sure though that they'll put "renewable" lipstick on their gas pig as they shut their nuclear plants, a very, very, very, very popular approach fully endorsed by all the people on the planet who are more interested in solar and wind power than the carbon dioxide releases they are supposed to prevent, even though all the bleating about renewables over half a century has never, not once, lead to decreases in the use of fossil fuels.

Never, not once.

It's fine to look at the big bad corporate guys and remark how they aren't living up to our standards, more difficult to look in the mirror and not like what we see when applying our own standards to ourselves.

Duke could spend a trillion dollars on so called "renewable energy" and do nothing to address climate change. The planet has spent twice that in the last ten years with the same result.