Commission signs off on Duke's green-energy costs

Duke Energy's residential customers in North Carolina will pay 20 cents more a month to pay for the utility's foray into solar power.

The N.C. Utilities Commission approved the increase Tuesday to let Duke recoup its 2010 costs under the state's renewable-energy law. The law makes utilities produce increasing amounts of electricity from renewable sources and energy efficiency, starting last year with solar power.

The initial solar target was tiny -- 0.02 percent of Duke's total retail sales for the previous year, rising ten-fold by 2018. The law lets utilities recover their costs of complying with the law, and that's what Tuesday's order did. Those costs will add 47 cents a month to residential bills, beginning Sept. 1 (up from the current 27 cents). Commercial customers will pay $2.36 a month, industries $26.07.

The way Duke went about satisfying the solar mandate didn't sit well with some critics, who have said Duke's dependence on one huge solar farm and utility-owned rooftop arrays did little to help local solar companies grow.

Duke installed the rooftop systems at 25 businesses and homes, and bought power and renewable-energy certificates, or RECs, from SunEdison's big solar farm in Davidson County. It also bought RECs, which each represent 1 megawatt-hour of clean energy, from in-state and out-of-state solar generators. Duke accumulated so much solar power, in fact, that it will satisfy the full solar mandate law to 2018.

The N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, which represents renewable-energy companies, objected. As costs fall, it argued, utilities could likely meet the state mandate more cheaply by buying solar power from others than by generating it themselves, as Duke has done in part.

The commission disagreed, noting that it had already approved the Duke-owned rooftop program. It's not appropriate, the order added, for the commission to address future projects now.

Duke's new-nuclear spending limited

The N.C. Utilities Commission today endorsed Duke Energy's decision to spend up to another $120 million to develop its Lee nuclear plant site near Gaffney, S.C.


The commission's order reflects an argument, accepted by Duke, that limits the scope of its spending on the $11 billion plant, which is scheduled to open in about 2021. It's similar to an order from South Carolina's utility commission in June.


Duke initially sought the commission's endorsement of spending $229 million on Lee between January 2010 and the end of 2013. Including earlier spending, that would have put its total investment for engineering, designs and site development at $455 million.


The commission's Public Staff, which represents consumers, argued it would be overly ambitious for Duke to spend that amount given the uncertainties around new nuclear plants - among them shaky financing, reactor design problems and the nuclear calamity in Japan. Duke agreed to a $120 million spending cap over a shorter period, January 2011 through June 2012.


The commission approved that cap -- or, in the cautious language of the order, Duke's decision to spend that much. At some future point, the commission will be asked to approve the "prudence and reasonableness" of Duke's investment --and how much will be passed to customers.

Dead fish found near McGuire plant

Nearly 300 dead striped bass have been found since Friday in Lake Norman near the McGuire nuclear plant, Duke Energy reported today. The fish kill follows the 7,000 stripers that died on the lake last summer, and is the fourth die-off since 2004.

Power plants are no stranger to dead fish. Cooling water intakes kill millions of small fish a year, and the Environmental Protection Agency is considering new rules to reduce the toll.

Duke and other utilities also have to worry about the cooling water they return, heated, to the rivers or lakes from which they pumped it. Discharge water that's too hot can hurt fish and other aquatic life. McGuire's discharge, which goes into a canal connected to the lake, is limited to 99 degrees this time of year.

Which takes us to the dead stripers on Norman. Hot weather limits oxygen at some depths of southern reservoirs, especially in a middle zone that acts as a barrier to fish trapped on the cooler bottom.

But in order to moderate the temperature of its discharge water, McGuire pumped water from a low intake about 80 feet deep for five days in July, Duke told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today. The plant's cooling water normally goes through intakes closer to the surface.

Duke had also pumped from the lower intake before last summer's fish kill.

Pumping from such depths takes oxygen from the bottom, biologists say, hastening its natural depletion. Some fish trapped there can't survive. Duke told the NRC that staff members monitored fish around the intake by video camera and took temperature and oxygen readings while pumping the low-level water.

Despite that, dead fish were found Friday near Cowan's Ford dam, near McGuire, four days after the pumping stopped on July 25, McGuire spokeswoman Valerie Patterson said. The current count is 290 dead fish, she said.

House overrides veto on rules reform

The N.C. House voted today to override Gov. Bev Perdue's veto of legislation that sharply limits environmental rulemaking. The N.C. Senate had overridden the veto on July 13, so the measure is now law.

The bill was styled as a way to create jobs by limiting the proliferation of rules that its Republican backers say stifle business. It followed a series of regulatory-reform hearings held around the state this spring.

The law prohibits state environmental agencies, in most cases, from enacting rules that are stronger than federal standards. It orders agencies to ferret out "burdensome" regulations and conduct cost-benefit analyses of new rules, identifying alternatives for those with a fiscal impact of $500,000 or more a year.

Administrative law judges, not state agencies, will have final say on appeals of agency fines or orders. Judges have previously submitted only recommended decisions.

Environmental advocates predict the new restrictions will quickly come back to haunt the state. Among rules likely to be entangled, they say, are standards for the now-banned drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.

"Effective now," said Sam Pearsall of the Environmental Defense Fund, "it's going to be a mess."

Sierra Club's $50M windfall to boost NC wind power

Today's $50 million commitment by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's philanthropy to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign will be used in North Carolina to promote offshore wind, a spokeswoman says.

The Sierra campaign aims to "end the coal era" and usher in cleaner technology. The billionaire Bloomberg appeared for today's announcement outside a coal-fired power plant in Alexandria, Va.

In North Carolina, an unspecified increase in Sierra staffers will develop "new, innovative strategies to hasten deployment of offshore wind," said spokeswoman Jenna Garland.

Environmental advocates despise coal power for its pollution, vast releases of carbon dioxide and the damage caused by mountaintop-removal mining in the Appalachians. Sierra claims credit for derailing plans for more than 150 new coal plants, although it didn't stop Duke Energy from building two new plants in North Carolina and Indiana.

Duke and Progress Energy plan to shut down many of their older coal-fired plants in the Carolinas as environmental standards stiffen.

Bloomberg's money will expand Sierra's anti-coal campaign from 15 to 45 states and double the number of staff members assigned to 200 people.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group that includes neither Duke nor Progress, quickly pounced. ACCCE said the Sierra plan would raise electric rates and kill jobs.

“Rather than demonize an important national strategic resource, Mayor Bloomberg should be using his millions to push for a balanced energy policy that utilizes all our domestic sources of energy including coal,” the group said.

Carolinas rank 10th, 11th for power plant pollution

North Carolina ranks 10th-highest and South Carolina 11th in a ranking of states with the most toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants, the Natural Resources Defense Council said today.

The advocacy group based its rankings on the Environmental Protection Agency's 2009 Toxics Release Inventory, to which industries report their chemical releases to the air, water and land. Physicians for Social Responsibility shared in the report's release.

Power plants are the single largest industrial source of toxic air pollution in 28 states, including the Carolinas, NRDC said. N.C. utilities released 14.9 million pounds of toxic air emissions, 49 percent of the total for the state. South Carolina's emitted 11.4 million pounds, or 43 percent.

NRDC decried efforts in the U.S. House last week to delay proposed EPA limits on mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants. EPA estimates the new limits, proposed in March, would save up to 17,000 lives and prevent 120,000 asthma episodes a year by 2015.

Duke Energy plans to retire many of its smaller, older coal-fired units by 2015 to avoid the expense of installing new air pollution controls. Duke and Raleigh's Progress Energy say "scrubbers" installed at their larger N.C. plants to catch sulfur dioxide, which forms lung-damaging fine particles, also capture up to 90 percent of the mercury the plants release.

Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida led the NRDC's "Toxic 20" list.

Fort Bragg to test fuel cells

Sprawling, camo-intensive Fort Bragg will become one of eight U.S. military installations to test fuel cells as backup power, the Department of Energy said today.

Home to more than 50,000 active-duty soldiers (and endangered species including the red-cockaded woodpecker), Bragg is earning a name for energy innovation. Solar photovoltaic panels and solar hot water systems have been added to construction and renovation projects. Micro-hydro power, geothermal heat pumps, biodiesel production and energy meters to fine-tune efficiency are planned.

DOE's fuel cell tests will see how the technology, which generates electricity by chemical reaction, works in the real world. Department-funded research with 3M, DuPont, BASF and other companies has cut costs up to 80 percent since 2002, the government says. Many of the innovations that came out of that research will be tested at the military bases.

Compared with diesel generators, the usual source of backup power, fuel cells use no petroleum, are quieter and need less maintenance. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will collect data from the $6.6 million project for two years, passing its findings to fuel cell developers and potential commercial and government adopters.

Fort Hood in Texas, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base in Colorado, the Marine Corp's Air Ground Combat Center 29 Palms in California and the Ohio National Guard will also test the cells.