Activists say NC energy compromise still favors Duke Energy
House Bill 951, the Modernize Energy Bill, started out as nearly 50 pages created in backroom negotiations with statewide monopoly Duke Energy and legislators. It has now been whittled to 10, and received the support of Gov. Roy Cooper. This doesn’t mean it’s a good compromise, according to environmental activists across North Carolina.
The bill aims to have the state at carbon neutrality by 2050. It also allows Duke and other energy companies like municipal co-ops to set a standard rate increase up to 4 percent for three years at a time.
Activists say that rate increase plan hurts low-income North Carolina residents, since it’s based on projections instead of reality. Environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices has determined that one in five Duke Energy customers in North Carolina are low-income.
“This bipartisan agreement sets a clean energy course for North Carolina’s future that is better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for the pocketbooks of everyday North Carolinians,” Cooper said in a press release.
He may be wrong about the benefits for everyday North Carolinians.
More than 1.4 million people live in poverty in North Carolina. Half of all households are living on $54,000 or less. Based on the MIT living wage calculator, a two-adult, one-child household in North Carolina would need to be making more than $68,000 collectively to support themselves — meaning well over half of North Carolina is not making enough to cover all their expenses already.
Although North Carolina receives $90 million annually in federal assistance for energy bills, our households collectively owe more than $125 million to Duke Energy.
This is more math than House Bill 951 does; the revised version of the bill says it will consider how a potential new rate increase “reduces low-income energy burdens,” but does not define “low-income.”
“A lot of our state is in dire need,” says La’Meshia Whittington, deputy director of Advance Carolina. “We know that in 2019, 225,000 folks had their energy shut off from Duke Energy alone, and that was pre-pandemic. So we’re not seeing bills that prioritize how to alleviate that burden off of everyday North Carolinians.”
Activists are comparing it to a similar rate increase plan implemented in Virginia. The state estimates that Dominion Energy, who has a monopoly in the state, made $502 million in over-earned funds from 2017 to 2019.
Low-income households are likely to suffer from chronic illness. Low-income neighborhoods can be up to seven degrees hotter than others in their city. This means that the folks staring down the consequences of the climate crisis are the ones who will feel the pain from these expense hikes.
“We don’t even need it this session,” Whittington says. “This excuse that low-income folks don’t have to be actually, explicitly stated in the bill is an excuse. All you’re doing is creating profit for Duke Energy, for them to be able to pocket this and to rival the authority of the Utilities Commission.”
Cooper considers this bill a win for bipartisanship, since legislators finally agreed to the climate action goals his office created in 2019. But goals aren’t requirements. Electric companies have equal authority with the Utilities Commission to adjust their Carbon Plan, and can push back goal requirements up to two years.
Rory McIlmoil, Appalachian Voices’ senior energy analyst, says that they and other stakeholders worked on the 2019 plan with Cooper for a year, including detailed analysis of energy burden and equity.
“He even established an environmental justice committee,” McIlmoil says. “All these great things, and then all of that was thrown out the door for this bill for a non-mandated 70% carbon reduction goal. I feel like that’s important to lift up, because it’s like none of that mattered when it all came down to actually crafting the energy legislation that is going to steer our path the next decade.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 1:05 PM.
