WARD LENZ: The day the irony died

In the Duke Energy news release, the utility shares its customer for the wind project is Verizon Communications, a company that has a goal of becoming net-zero emissions by 2035. Verizon is all in on renewables with its Senior Vice President James Gowen stating “through investments in clean energy solutions – like this agreement with Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions – Verizon is doing its part to green the U.S. energy grid.”

As someone involved in the early days of wind energy in Iowa, I couldn’t be more pleased to see the success that has ensued over the past 25 years resulting in home grown energy that keeps the power, investments, and jobs in local communities. Like North Carolina, Iowa is not home to active coal mines or fracking wells, so before wind power virtually every energy dollar left the state to enrich others.

As of 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 58% of Iowa’s electricity generation comes from wind power. And that diversity in electricity generation equates directly to reliability. Notably, during the most recent winter storm Elliott, Iowa got much colder than North Carolina, but did not experience rolling blackouts like Duke Energy here in the Carolinas.

While I’m extremely happy for the people of Iowa to reap the success, jobs, investments, and grid stability from renewable energy, now’s the time for us to lean heavily into cleaning up our grid in North Carolina to help some of our largest employers meet their clean energy goals and to use this as a tool to recruit new companies to our state.

In fact, we’ve already seen several companies in North Carolina invest heavily in renewables, like Amazon with the wind farm in Elizabeth City, and SAS with large on-site solar installations. But these companies and many others are asking for more.

Part of the challenge is the authority granted to Duke Energy by the state, which allows for monopoly control of generation, distribution, and sales of electricity. Duke has been reluctant to open the market for third parties to invest more in renewables, limiting the ability of companies like the ones mentioned earlier to reach their clean energy goals.

Unlike the traditional private sector where you have consumer choice to shop around, the utility market is very different. If you are unhappy with the service or product provided by the utility, you’re stuck.

For that reason, many advocates, myself included, are asking for more consumer choice along with programs that allow companies and individuals to purchase and install clean energy if they so choose.

For some time now, Duke Energy has offered limited and expensive customer programs in North Carolina that can take years to complete (compared to months in some other states) and haven’t seen a high rate of utilization given the appeal to a very narrow set of customers. And it looks like the new customer programs proposed by Duke recently have the same limitations.

The largest companies in North Carolina from Bank of America to Google are asking for more clean energy solutions. So why not support them in their endeavor to reduce their emissions footprint?

This is a great opportunity to bring those same jobs and investments we’re seeing in states like Iowa right here to our own backyard.