Tag Archives: duke energy

#FeelGoodFriday: footage from the clean energy revolution

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Apple just released a beautiful new video of the solar array it recently built in Maiden, North Carolina.

This project is the largest end-user-owned photovoltaic solar array in the country. It will be powering Apple’s internet data center in North Carolina, which stores all of your contacts, photos, text messages, and really anything else on Apple’s iCloud.

Prior to the construction of this solar array, Apple was powering its North Carolina data center with dirty coal-fired power supplied by the energy utility Duke Energy. I was surprised that a progressive company like Apple would power itself with energy that causes pollution and global warming. Continue reading →

NC Senators force ALEC bill through committee without even counting votes

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ALEC Heartland-1

The ALEC repeal of NC’s renewable energy law was written by fossil fuel funded climate change deniers at the Heartland Institute.

Bitter from a lack of support for his attacks on clean energy incentives, North Carolina Representative Mike Hager is promising some new, dirty tricks to revive the effort. His colleagues in the NC Senate appear to be helping, today advancing the Senate version of Rep. Hager’s bill through committee without counting the votes.

The bill was clearly a contentious one with a close “voice vote” — it’s impossible from listening to tell whether the Yeas (anti clean energy votes) or Nays (pro clean energy votes) were actually louder. Yet the Senate Finance committee co-chairman Bill Rabon talked over Senators requesting a hand vote and quickly adjourned the meeting. The Raleigh News & Observer writes:

Opponents of the bill loudly voted “No!” to show their frustration at the Republican chairman’s decision not to count individual votes. In what was clearly a razor-thin margin, both sides said they would have won if votes had been counted.

A video of the hearing is available: watch the last minute for the rushed conclusion and clear frustration among dissenting Senators. Continue reading →

How will history remember Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers: climate champion or criminal?

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Jim Rogers has a choice between clean and dirty energy.

Jim Rogers has a choice between clean and dirty energy.

“We must move at ‘China speed’ to combat global warming.”

That’s what Jim Rogers, CEO of the largest utility in the country and one of the world’s biggest carbon polluters, Duke Energy, said once upon a time. Now Rogers, who has agreed to retire at the end of 2013, has seven months left to prove he meant it, and determine how history will judge his climate legacy: as a leader who helped start a clean energy revolution, or a polluter who told a nice story about global warming, but never acted to stop it.

That’s why Greenpeace and NC WARN, one of our allies in North Carolina, published an ad today in the Charlotte Observer challenging Rogers to stop talking and start acting, by directing his company to invest in solar energy, wind energy, and energy efficiency throughout the Duke Energy service territory. Continue reading →

BREAKING: North Carolina legislators reject ALEC’s fossil fuel funded attack on clean energy

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Today, those employed by North Carolina’s clean energy industries and anyone concerned about global climate change can celebrate the apparent downfall of an attack on renewable energy incentives.

NC Representative Mike Hager, a former engineer for coal-burning utility giant Duke Energy and a member of the fossil fuel-promoting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) watched members of the NC House utilities committee vote down his bill to freeze incentives for clean energy 18-3. While the bill technically isn’t dead yet, it will be tough for Rep. Hager to recover this fumble.

The incentive targeted by Rep. Hager is North Carolina’s renewable portfolio standard, or RPS. The NC RPS requires utilities to generate increasing amounts of electricity from cleaner sources of energy like wind and solar (ideally–the law is far from perfect but has been an important policy in helping North Carolina’s rapid growth of wind and solar energy projects). Continue reading →

Cisco, Google tie for first in latest Greenpeace ranking of IT sector climate leadership

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Can the same people who brought us search engines, Internet-powered smart phones, and the cloud also help us save the planet from climate change?

At Greenpeace, we think so, which is why we’ve been pushing the technology sector to provide the energy solutions that can help address climate change as a part of our Cool IT campaign since 2009. Continue reading →

Facebook and Google like, +1 clean energy in data center expansions

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The race to be the cleanest and greenest in our virtual world is definitely on. Facebook announced today that it is building another data center, a big one, this time in the windy state of Iowa, which currently leads the nation in electricity generated from wind with an eye-popping 25 percent! Continue reading →

Google pressures largest US utility company to put renewable energy on the menu

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Thanks to some pressure from Google, the largest utility company in the U.S., Duke Energy, now plans to offer renewable energy to its major customers.  This will allow Google, who also announced plans today to double the size of one if its largest data centers, an option to power its cloud with clean energy. Continue reading →

You may have paid your taxes, but nation’s largest utility company Duke Energy doesn’t have to

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It’s the day after tax day, and while many of us may be cringing at the big checks we just wrote the IRS or celebrating our refunds, Duke Energy isn’t paying federal income taxes for the fifth year in a row. After its merger with Progress Energy, North Carolina based Duke Energy is the nation’s largest utility company and raked in more than $1 billion in profits last year.

Duke is using the deferral process to avoid paying taxes, which should have been $627 million. Instead it actually received a rebate of $46 million. Interesting timing since Duke Energy is also planning customer rate hikes to pay for investments in coal and nuclear energy.  Continue reading →

Southeasterners can thank Duke Energy when global warming gives them twice as many thunderstorms

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A new study suggests that global warming could increase thunderstorms in the Southeast

A new study from NASA suggests that global warming could increase the number of violent, damaging thunderstorms that strike the U.S., particularly in the Southeast, which could see a 100 % increase in the number of days with thunderstorms. Continue reading →

The Solar Revolution is Happening, with or without Duke Energy

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© Tim Shaffer / Greenpeace

Last week, the largest producer of power in the United States took a radical step to acknowledge a basic fact: the solar energy revolution has finally reached the United States, and it cannot be stopped. Continue reading →