Many North Carolinians have experienced record-high electricity bills this winter. While Duke Energy blames unusually cold temperatures for temporarily higher bills, what is not widely publicized is how high your monthly energy bill will skyrocket year-round as Duke implements its misguided plan to eliminate all fossil fuels from electricity generation.
In 2021, the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 951, which calls for Duke Energy to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions from its electricity generation sources by 2050. Duke has used the law as an excuse to prematurely retire some of the cleanest coal plants in the country, with plans to replace them with unreliable, habitat-destroying solar farms and windmills that will cost tens of billions of dollars.
Last November, the North Carolina Utilities Commission quietly signed off on Duke Energy’s Carbon Plan. The commission issued Duke a blank check in its pursuit of “net zero,” which will include closing all those coal plants that help keep North Carolina electricity costs low and reliability high.
In a June 2021 Charlotte Business Journal article, Duke Energy stated that its “performance-based ratemaking measures … (will limit customer) bill impacts to an estimated $3.50 more per month by 2030 for residential customers.”
However, in January 2024, the Public Staff, the state’s consumer advocate, estimated those residential bill impacts to be $80 more per month by 2038, not even accounting for all transmission and distribution costs, let alone other capital spending unrelated to the Carbon Plan. Hardly seems “least cost” to me.
Renewable energy grifters insist that solar and wind are cheap power sources. But that’s only because of generous federal subsidies, which can offset as much as 50% to 80% of the up-front costs for renewables. Meanwhile, your electric rates are set to skyrocket because these intermittent resources require fossil fuel backup for when it’s cloudy or dark or the wind is not blowing. So you pay twice, as a ratepayer and a taxpayer, while solar and wind developers get rich.
And what about reliability? Duke intends to retire its remaining 8,000 MW of coal-fired units by 2036 and replace that baseload generation with just 5,620 MW of new gas-fired generation by 2031 and 600 MW of advanced nuclear generation. Baseload means that, unlike wind and solar, power is available on demand, capable of running 24/7.
To make up the shortfall and meet rising demand for power, particularly for data centers and large manufacturers, Duke plans to add 10,300 MW of unreliable solar, onshore and offshore wind, and 1,100 MW of unproven battery technology (which is storage, not generation), all of which will require hundreds of miles of new transmission lines, substations and transformers to take the energy from far-flung rural areas to where the power is needed.
Duke is on a path to an entirely self-inflicted energy scarcity crisis. In executing the war on fossil fuels, Duke is prematurely retiring perfectly functional coal plants, while the effort to deploy costly renewable substitutes is failing to keep up with soaring demand for electricity.
To fix this, the legislature recently fast-tracked Senate Bill 261, which removes the interim target for achieving a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 because it is unrealistic, too costly and would pose a threat to the reliability of the electric grid. But this will not slow Duke down in its pursuit of renewables that are highly profitable for them but cause electricity rates to go up.
Previous Duke projections suggested the company would need to spend over $200 billion overbuilding its generation assets to achieve “net zero” by 2050. There is no telling how much higher that number will climb when all is said and done. Gone are the days when North Carolina’s homegrown electric utility focused exclusively on keeping the lights on; no, they know all too well that the more they build — and the more they spend building and over-building their generation and transmission system — the more they and their shareholders earn.
Voters are beginning to wake up to the con. A recent YouGov survey found that getting to “net zero” as quickly as possible does not resonate with the working class, who are more likely to say keeping consumer costs low (66%) and increasing jobs and economic growth (60%) are far more important than mitigating “climate change.”
Emissions cuts in North Carolina will have no impact on global temperatures but will have huge impacts on affordability and reliability of electricity for families and businesses. Duke ought to prioritize meeting ever-increasing demand and keeping our electricity costs as low as possible over a misguided, ruinous energy transition.
Bradford Muller is vice president of corporate communications at Charlotte Pipe and Foundry, a 124-year-old manufacturer based in Charlotte.
