Eastern forests not adapting quickly to climate change

Many Eastern tree species aren't migrating northward as climate change models say they will, says a new study led by Duke University researchers. That could be bad news for the trees' long-term survival.

The ranges of 59 percent of the 92 species analyzed appear to be contracting on both their northern and southern ends, while 16 percent seemed to move to the south. More concerning to researchers was that only 21 percent are shifting northward.

That raises the prospect of climate change stranding some species in increasingly inhospitable surroundings. "It's kind of like pulling the climate out from from under it," said ecologist James Clark of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

Models show that, as the climate warms, many tree species would lose ground on the southern end of their ranges as adults die and seeds fail to sprout. Their northern boundaries would expand as dispersed seeds find happier conditions. See some examples at this U.S. Forest Service site.

But that's not happening for many species, despite warm zones in parts of the East shifting up to 60 miles north. The researchers found no evidence that tree ranges are changing fastest where climate has changed the most. They don't believe differences in seed sizes or their ability to be dispersed account for their findings.

The study did find evidence that some species are migrating to higher elevations, as models also predict.

Clark and his colleagues, funded by the National Science Foundation, based their work on decades of data from the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis program. They compared tree distributions in more than 43,000 plots in 31 states.

Kai Zhu, a doctoral student of Clark, was lead author of the study with co-authors Christopher Woodall, a Forest Service researcher in St. Paul, Minn., and Clark. The article was published in the current issue of the journal Global Change Biology.

Huntersville teen petitions for solar White House

Thomas Greenough, 14, thinks it pretty neat that former President Jimmy Carter preached green energy decades ago, installing solar panels on the White House during the oil-embargo days of the 1970s. (Ronald Reagan later took them down.)

So when Thomas learned that President Obama's administration had failed its commitment to reinstall solar panels by last summer, he took to his computer.

"That time has come and gone," he says, "so I want to hold him to his promise."

Two weeks later, the petition Thomas posted on a White House site is slowly climbing in the online ranks. By late Tuesday afternoon, the petition had 772 signatures -- and a long hill to climb. The administration's new "We the People" initiative guarantees a written response to petitions that draw at least 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

The ninth grader at Mooresville's Pine Lake Preparatory says the exercise combines his love of science and politics. He's still hopeful the petition will earn a response.

"I'm optimistic," says Thomas, who's been featured in local news articles. "Word of mouth is very powerful."

Winter bills will be smaller, gas company says

Residential customers are likely to see smaller heating bills this winter, Charlotte-based Piedmont Natural Gas says.


Winter bills could fall up to 10 percent, compared to last year, in Piedmont's territory in the Carolinas and Tennessee. Piedmont serves about 1 million customers.

ypical residential customers are expected to pay about $4 to $10 less a month than they did last winter, reflecting falling wholesale gas prices. Since 2008, Piedmont's billing rates have dropped 20 percent to 30 percent, shaving $100 to $200 off a winter's worth of bills.


Piedmont's Share the Warmth program, which rounds up monthly bills to the nearest dollar, helps low-income residents in its territory.


Wholesale prices are dropping as U.S. shale-gas production, and supply estimates, go up. The gas is extracted through a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that blasts underground shale formations with high-pressure water and chemicals.


Fracking makes it possible to drill into gas deposits that were too expensive to tap before. It's also excited worries that the chemicals may contaminate groundwater, and that the process uses too much water.


The technique is illegal in North Carolina, which is believed to hold large deposits of shale gas southwest of Raleigh, but the N.C Department of Environment and Natural Resources is beginning a study of the issue.

Duke filed rate hearing notices late

Duke Energy was a month late in notifying customers of hearings, beginning in Charlotte on Tuesday night, on the 15 percent rate hike it's seeking.

Don Smith, a Duke customer who lives in Kannapolis, got his notice in the mail at 3 p.m. Tuesday -- four hours before the Charlotte hearing began before an overflow crowd. Smith said he and several friends would have attended if given earlier notice.

"If they had that many people show up, how many would they have had if they'd given more than two or three hours' notice?" he said later.

The rate case, filed July 1, was hardly a secret. The Observer published the list of six hearings on July 30 and ran a story on the Charlotte hearing Tuesday morning.

But the N.C. Utilities Commission told Duke to do more, publishing legal notices in local newspapers and mail notices to each customer 45 days before the hearings. That didn't happen.

Duke told the commission in late September that notices hadn't gone out as planned on Aug. 27. Mailings to customers would instead be sent out starting Sept. 28, Duke said. Ads about the hearings ran in the Observer on Sept. 22 and 26.

Staff mistakenly scheduled the notices to start 45 days before a Nov. 28 evidentiary hearing in Raleigh, not the Charlotte hearing on Tuesday, spokesman Jason Walls said this week. Walls said Duke tried to make up for the error by contacting local television stations before Tuesday's hearing. He noted that five more hearings are scheduled, none in the Charlotte area, and written comments may be sent to the commission.

Neither the commission nor its Public Staff, which represents customer interests, have filed a response to Duke's mea culpa.

"It's something that we don't like, but it does happen occasionally," said Tony Wike, the Public Staff's chief counsel. "We had no idea that the notices would arrive so late that a customer could not plan to be there. We would not like to see it happen again."

Toxic pollution program before legislative panel

North Carolina's air quality director was scheduled to appear before a legislative panel this morning to defend an anti-pollution program that legislators tried to gut last summer.

The Republican-led General Assembly was in an anti-regulatory mood this year. Late in the session, a House committee approved a broadly-worded amendment that environmental advocates said would effectively kill what is known as the Air Toxics Program.

The 21-year-old program limits emissions of 97 toxic pollutants that can cause cancer, birth defects and respiratory ailments by making new or expanding industries prove their emissions won't harm people outside the plant's boundaries.

Duke Energy and other industries say the program duplicates federal standards that also set emission limits for major industries. The state program adds little or no additional protection, they say, while costing industries time and money.

The House committee amendment, which has not been enacted by the full legislature, exempted industries that fall under federal standards or use "unadulterated fossil fuels," such as the coal that Duke burns.

"Politicians who reduce or repeal limits on toxic air pollution knowingly increase the risk for all North Carolina residents of cancer and other serious, even deadly, health problems," said Derb Carter of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Sheila Holman, director of the N.C. Division of Air Quality, was to report to the legislature's Environmental Review Commission in Raleigh this morning.

North Carolina industries released more than 34 million pounds of toxic substances, and nearly 1.5 million pounds of carcinogens, into the air last year, federal reports show.

Duke's Rogers on clean energy

Duke Energy is greener than critics give it credit for, CEO Jim Rogers insists after this week's merger hearings before the N.C. Utilities Commission.

The three-day hearing began with a line of speakers blasting Duke, in seeking a merger with Progress Energy, for growing too big and powerful at the expense of its customers. Many implored the company to move away from new nuclear plants and toward sun and wind power.

Duke's already there with wind, Rogers says. The company's unregulated side has built 10 wind farms from Kansas to Pennsylvania since 2007, announcing its fifth in Texas alone this week. The deals are in other states where winds are more reliable and renewable-energy mandates are stiffer, although Duke this week called for bids for North Carolina wind power.

"We're not doing it here, but we're doing it, that's the important thing," Rogers says. "If you put it in the context of not just the state but the nation, we're overachieving."

Not so in North Carolina. Duke's latest planning forecast predicts that renewable energy will shave only 2 percent off summer peak demand by 2030.

Duke ranked 10th-largest among U.S. utilities last year for the amount of solar power it has installed in the Carolinas. It has already satisfied the solar requirements of North Carolina's green-energy law -- 0.2 percent of its total power generation -- through 2017.

But Rogers, at this week's hearing, wouldn't commit to going beyond that tiny mandate. He says Duke is caught between calls for clean energy, which is more expensive to produce, and demands to control costs.

"I was actually signaling that I'm prepared to do more," he says, "but I'm still aware that the Public Staff (the commission arm that represents customers) wants me to control costs for customers."

Rogers said he thinks solar power holds more promise, globally, than wind. Solar installation costs have dropped by about half since 2007, and Rogers expects costs will fall further. We'll learn over the next few years whether Duke finds bargains that are impossible to resist.

Duke seeks N.C. wind energy

Duke Energy today issued its first request for proposals to buy wind energy, including electricity produced in North Carolina, for its Carolinas system. The wind power would help Duke satisfy North Carolina's clean-energy standard.

Duke announced the RFP on the same day clean-energy advocates testified before the N.C. Utilities Commission on its merger with Progress Energy, although Duke says the timing is coincidental. Advocates have urged the commission to steer the new Duke away from nuclear and fossil-fueled power and toward renewables and energy efficiency.

Duke company had signaled a shift toward wind energy earlier this month, in a 20-year planning forecast for the Carolinas. Part of the reason was uncertainty over federal regulation of biomass, the organic fuel that's expected to provide much of the state's renewable energy.

But the increased emphasis on wind was also driven by plans for the state's first wind farms. Iberdrola Renewables plans to build a 300-megawatt wind project in the state's northeastern corner. A second company is working on an 80-megawatt wind farm in coastal Beaufort County.

Duke spokesman Jason Walls said the company has talked with Iberdrola and others, but he wouldn't speculate whether a deal is likely.

Paul Quinlan, managing director of the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, called the timing of Duke's announcement unfortunate. Duke plans to sign contracts in the first quarter of 2012. But Iberdrola has to start construction, presumably only after reaching agreements to sell its power, by the end of this year to qualify for federal payments in lieu of tax credits.

Today's announcement solicits proposals only through Oct. 14 and is open to facilities of 50 to 300 megawatts. Apart from wind generation itself, Duke says it will consider bids for renewable energy certificates, the tradeable commodities that represent units of clean energy, from N.C. wind farms.