The Sierra Club and American Electric Power, the nation’s largest coal-burning utility, don’t agree on much, but there is this: Money does grow on trees. Along with other big environmental groups and such businesses as Duke Energy and El Paso Corp., they are part of a coalition that wants to use markets to protect the world’s forests and curb climate change. The coalition—called Avoided Deforestation Partners, a name that will never win a branding contest—is the brainchild of Jeff Horowitz, a 58-year-old architect and newcomer to the environmental movement who has quietly become an influential player as climate change legislation inches its way through a divided Congress. Protecting forests “is our single most important strategy, with respect to solving the climate crisis,” Horowitz says. “If we don’t tackle forestry immediately, we can’t buy enough time to get at the technological advances we need and scale them.” I met Jeff in December at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, and visited him last week at his office in a lovely, hilly neighborhood of Berkeley. A mechanism to protect forests by steering millions of dollars from the developed world to poor countries, known ... read more >>
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 As humans, we’re wired to focus on the now. I want a new gadget now. I want a slab of pie now. I’m busy now, so I don’t have time for politics. The consequences—consumer debt, a sagging waistline, a Congress beholden to special interests–all arrive later.
You can think about global warming as a now-and-later problem. Governments need to take unpopular actions now to deal with a problem that will do most of its damage later. Businesses need to look beyond the next quarter to the next quarter century. This evening in Elsinore, Denmark, top executives from such companies as Coca-Cola, Duke Energy, Goldman Sachs and Google took the long view in a fitting venue: Kronborg Castle, a 15th century castle best known as the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Sitting in a magnificent castle that’s been preserved for six centuries makes you wonder what impact the goings-on on Copenhagen this week will have on the world in 60 or even 600 years. In that context, it seems prudent to invest now to insure against a climate catastrophe, no matter how distant–even if the short-term result is a slight drag on short-term economic growth As Tracy Wolstencroft, global head of environmental ... read more >>
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Fast Fission Podcast # 18 – mp3 file Duke Energy is one of the largest power producers in the Western Hemisphere. They produce 35,000 MW of electricity in the USA, plus 4,000 in Latin America. They have virtually every type of power plant: nuclear, coal, gas, hydro, wind, and solar. They also run natural gas distribution systems in two states. Duke knows energy, and Jim Rogers, their CEO, knows Duke. When Jim Rogers speaks about energy people listen. Last week Mr. Rogers was talking energy and jobs. Jim says Duke’s  experience has shown that nuclear energy provide more jobs and higher paying jobs than wind or solar power plants. “In an operation of a nuclear plant, there [are] .64 jobs per megawatt. The wind business–and we have a very large wind business – is .3 jobs per megawatt. In the solar business – and we’re installing solar panels – it’s about .1. But the difference in the jobs is quite different, because if you’re wiping off a solar panel, it’s sort of a minimum wage type of job, [with] much higher compensation for nuclear engineers and nuclear operators. If our goal is to rebuild the middle class, nuclear plays a key role ... read more >>
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Anti-nuclear groups claim the end of a fuel test is “huge setback” for the utility  A rapid-fire exchange of press releases this week Friday, Nov 13 made short order of a claim [press release] by Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that the end of testing of MOX fuel in a Duke Power reactor is a “huge setback” to the program.
Identical letters sent Nov 10 by Tom Clements representing both two green organizations to Energy Sec. Steven Chu and NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko claimed that a decision by Duke not to reload test bundles of MOX fuel at the Catawba reactor represents a “failure to demonstrate” the safety of the fuel in a conventional light water reactor. The letter called the situation “an aborted test” and claimed that as a result the MOX fuel is unsafe for use in civilian nuclear reactors. The remainder of the letter is incendiary with claims that the MOX fuel program should not proceed as a result of the “decision” by Duke Energy. This is one of those stories that pretty much writes itself, but it is still worth walking you through the high points. It is not the first time these groups have promoted a rush to judgment about MOX fuel nor ... read more >>
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3. 12. 41.  Of all the companies in the U.S., Duke Energy is the 3rd largest emitter of CO2. Of all the companies in the world, Duke is the 12th biggest emitter. And if North Carolina-based Duke were a country, it would rank No. 41 in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of entire nations in Europe, Africa and Asia.
And yet…Jim Rogers, Duke’s longtime president, CEO and chairman, is pushing as hard as anyone in corporate America to get a climate-change bill passed by Congress. His company helped the U.S. Climate Action Partnership get going, and he was key in getting some (but not all) utility-company CEOs to support carbon regulation. “We’re very focused on legislation getting done in the U.S. this year,” Rogers says.
Listen to the podcast:
Indeed, Duke is “operating today as if climate legislation has already passed,” Rogers says. The company is investing in nuclear power, cleaner coal, wind, smart grid technology, efficiency and solar energy. Rogers says: We’re in the most transformative period in the history of the power industry, Our mission is to decarbonize our entire fleet.
I sat down with Rogers last weekend after he spoke ... read more >>
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 Want solar on your rooftop, but can’t afford to buy the panels yourself? If you’re a Duke Energy customer, you can sign up with your utility to install their solar panels on your rooftop.
Duke Energy announced the selected sites of the first phase of its 10 megawatt, $50 million distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) program in North Carolina. The initial four sites are Duke commercial and industrial customers with systems ranging in size from 500 kilowatts to 1.6 megawatts. This is a popular solar program - Duke Energy has stopped accepting applications from non-residential customers. However, the residential solar program remains open for applications. Duke has pledged to include up to 10% of the program for smaller residential systems (see pdf of Duke legal filing). We encourage Duke Energy customers to consider participating in this program, it is a great way to help cut global warming pollution and rely on clean, local energy resources.
 Another option for solar energy is to contact one of the many solar companies that will install their solar panels on your rooftop. I was recently at a Congressional briefing and hear from FLS Energy’s Michael Shore who talked ... read more >>
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Duke Energy, UNC plan wind turbines on the coast: Duke Energy and UNC Chapel Hill said today they have signed a contract to place one to three wind turbines in Pamlico Sound, possibly paving the way for utility-scale wind farms on the N.C. coast. The demonstration project, reported in The Observer last month, may be the first wind turbines placed in water in the United States. Duke will pay for the turbines and their installation, a cost spokesman Tim Pettit said will likely run into the tens of millions of dollars. UNC will do research on their performance, ecological impacts and other aspects. The project will also help gauge community reaction to the large towers...
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Yesterday, during a panel on Assuring Access to Clean and Competitive Energy in the Council on Competitiveness‘ National Energy Summit, Arch Coal President and ACCCE Vice President Steven Leer made a strong appeal for government policy to put a price on carbon. I think a price on carbon is necessary.
Sigh … As with most of the coal industry’s truthiness-laden engagement in energy discussions, including ACCCE’s often shady practices (and misdirection targeted at the Senate), Leer’s direct statement that “a price on carbon is necessary” was sandwiched with qualifiers and misdirections. I think a price on carbon is necessary but it has to be kept in a framework that doesn’t destroy the economy.
While there are certainly “frameworks” that “could destroy the economy”, such as an overnight introduction of a $20 per gallon tax on gasoline and a $500 per ton tax on carbon emissions, noone seriously engaged in the policy discussion is suggesting anything even an order of magnitude smaller than these sorts of targets. Leer’s comments, throughout, build on and spread the false frame that tackling climate change risks destroying the economy when, clearly if one actually has ... read more >>
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Here comes a new carbon finance market, this one with Chinese characteristics. In the latest sign that China takes the threat of global warming seriously, Chinese business executives with close ties to the government have launched a voluntary market in Beijing to buy and sell carbon credits. Just don’t call it cap-and-trade, which is the regulatory approach embodied in the climate legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. The “cap” part of cap-and-trade remains anathema in China. As a developing country where billions of people earn less than $3,000 a year, China simply won’t accept mandatory limits on its emissions of greenhouse gases.  David Yarnold, Environmental Defense Fund But the Chinese have enlisted western partners to build a market that will, as they put it, “limit and incentivize.” The theory is that a voluntary market in carbon credits will limit emissions by providing financial incentives to Chinese companies to develop renewable energy, promote energy efficiency and, above all, find environmentally-friendly ways to burn coal. Some of that money would come from outside China and would would come from within. This could lay the groundwork for a mandatory market ... read more >>
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“Green jobs” may be a trendy phrase, but its underlying principles are as old as the Constitution itself.
No doubt Glenn Beck will call now call Jim Rogers a socialist — and some readers may call him schizophrenic or worse. But the coal-plant-building, climate-bill-endorsing, coal-front-group-quitting CEO of Duke Energy agrees with me that in the future the only jobs left will be green: There is no such thing as a “green” job. Or at least there shouldn’t be. It has become fashionable to say “green jobs” will lead us out of the recession. Green jobs put people to work, achieve long-term cost savings and ease demand on limited resources. They provide a “paycheck with a purpose.” Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of the book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” has often said we’ll know the green revolution has succeeded when we no longer need the word “green” as a descriptor. Terms like “green buildings” and “green energy” will be redundant as high performance and sustainability become our new “business as usual.” Friedman is right. Reducing waste, improving productivity and boosting efficiency are all traits of the green movement, but they are also hallmarks of ...
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