As the climate change looms, NC is losing ground on renewable energy

Climate change is becoming a story of two accelerations: First, global warming is happening faster than expected and second, renewable energy is coming into wider use faster than imagined.

The first acceleration should be adding speed to the second. In some states it is, but not in North Carolina.

A combination of generous federal and state tax credits and state requirements that utilities use some renewable energy led to North Carolina being ranked second in the nation, behind only California, for installed solar power. But skepticism about renewable energy in the General Assembly and Duke Energy’s slowness in opening its grid to outside electricity producers are hindering the state’s expansion of solar energy and inhibiting the rise of wind energy.

The state solar tax credit was allowed to expire in 2015 and, despite having a strong wind resource, the state has only one large wind farm. Meanwhile, Duke Energy is investing heavily in natural gas-fueled power plants.

Last month, the state Department of Environmental Quality — responding to a 2018 executive order from Gov. Roy Cooper — issued a plan to get North Carolina back to the forefront of reducing carbon emissions while keeping the state’s electricity rates at their relatively low levels. The “North Carolina Clean Energy Plan” offers an excellent overview of the state’s previous accomplishments in promoting clean energy and sets ambitious goals for accomplishing the report’s subtitle: “Transitioning to a 21st Century Electricity System.”

Among the plan’s top goals: In the next decade, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generators by 70 percent compared to 2005 levels and speed up “clean energy development, innovation and deployment.” But the report acknowledges that “many states are surpassing” North Carolina in promoting clean energy.

North Carolina had hoped to push renewable energy past obstacles created by utilities and byzantine state utility regulations by passing the Competitive Solutions for NC Act (better known as HB 589) in 2017. The law was supposed to make it easier for independent solar power producers to sell electricity through Duke Energy’s grid, but solar power companies say regulatory red tape and foot-dragging by the utility have blunted the law.

John Szoka, a Cumberland County Republican and the chief sponsor of HB 589, said, “Some parts of the bill are being executed slower than I would have liked.”

There are technical reasons why it is still too hard to sell solar power or start wind farms in North Carolina, but beyond the specifics is a broader problem. Duke Energy is a monopoly based on a model that’s fading. It generates electricity, mostly from fossil fuels, and sends it over its grid to customers who have little choice over how their electricity is produced or from whom they can buy it. Meanwhile that model is being challenged by energy generated by technology rather than fuel.

“We’re trying to fit all this new stuff into the old system,” said Richard Harkrader, founder of Carolina Solar Energy in Durham.

So long as big utilities are wedded to a 20th-century model of power generation and distribution, the emergence of renewable energy as a main rather than an alternative energy source will be stymied. At some point government, industry and consumers are going to have to crack utilities’ hold on power generation, distribution and price and let the sun shine in and the wind blow through.