Southern Utilities Change Course! « It’s Getting Hot In Here

I’m on vacation this week, but these stories about Southern Utility companies doing good things were too exciting for me to pass up. Progress Energy may still be proposing new nuclear plants in Florida, but it has put it’s plans to build a new nuclear reactor in North Carolina on hold and is instead pursuing energy efficiency! Progress announced plans (although they were not very detailed) to reduce energy usage by 2000 MW (the power of one huge or a couple small power plants)! Duke Energy, the other giant utility in NC, also recently announced plans to pursue 1700 MW of energy efficiency, but is still pursusing the construction of an 800 MW coal plant (although only half of amount they were originally pursuing) and new nuclear reactors in South Carolina. Both Duke and Progress are supporting a Renewable energy Portfolio Standard in NC, but only if the bill includes provisions that make it easier to recover costs for new power plants, even if the plants are not completed. Additionally, the federal utility, Tennessee Valley Authority, just announced the final version of their strategic plan, which now moves away from building new plants and instead invests in energy efficiency and conservation. All of these announcements came after hundreds of citizens including lots of youth voiced their concerns to these utilities about the courses that they were taking and encouraged investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy! These utilities are far from perfect (all still have many coal and nuclear plants), but they at least seem to be moving in a better direction thanks to LOTS of public pressure! Let’s keep the pressure growing!

About Liz

While at the University of North Carolina, Liz led one of the first successful campus renewable energy campaigns in the southeast and won the Morris K. Udall scholarship in both 2002 & 2003. She organized the first Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference April 2-4, 2004, to engage other Southern schools beyond UNC in energy and climate work. In the summer of 2004 she became a co-founding member of Energy Action Coalition, which she has been actively involved with since then. She co-chaired the Energy Action Coalition Steering Committee for 2 years and is Executive Director of the Southern Energy Network, which works with students in the Southeast on clean energy and climate initiatives as part of Energy Action Coalition's Campus Climate Challenge. In late fall 2005, she attended the UN Climate Negotiations in Montreal and helped start www.itsgettinghotinhere.org . In 2008, she joined the board of the Highlander Research and Education Center (www.highlandercenter.org).

1 Response to “Southern Utilities Change Course!”

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1 R Margolis Jun 1st, 2007 at 12:54 pm

Another factor may be the delays in China’s nuclear program. They have ordered four AP-1000 units and the US utilities would probably like to see how the first one or two turn out before building any. Due to its controversial nature, nuclear will likely be used once efficiency and renewables have been tried first.

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It’s Getting Hot In Here