Duke CEO’s True Colors Exposed at Hearing: Jim Rogers is all nukes, coal and corporate muscle

[bananas]

http://www.southeastgreen.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=3667&view=article&Itemid=107

Duke CEO’s True Colors Exposed at Nuclear Hearing
Written by The Editor
Jim Rogers is all nukes, coal and corporate muscle – with puny clean energy through 2030

Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers keeps talking a good game about pursuing “a mix” of electricity technologies, but yesterday’s hearing at the NC Utilities Commission again exposed that as a public relations facade. The daylong hearing was draped with the question of whether Duke’s stockholders or customers should bear the prodigious financial risks for constructing two nuclear reactors. And Rogers insisted that although Japan’s nuclear crisis could be a “game changer,” new nuclear plants are the only option for the Carolinas. Below are a few highlights.*

* Rogers claimed under oath that Duke could not raise rates for the $459 million in predevelopment costs for nearly three years. He backed off that assertion after NC WARN attorney John Runkle read him the statute and the attorney general’s representative asked Rogers, “You didn’t mean to misstate that, did you?” Duke plans to file for a rate hike in June. Look for inclusion of predevelopment costs.

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* Rogers twice claimed that “North Carolina doesn’t have any wind ,” apparently ignorant that two 2010 national studies show the state leads the East Coast in off-shore wind power capacity. Rogers later boasted of Duke’s $1.7 billion wind investments; those are in states with competitive power markets. Here, he wants annual rate hikes for nuclear plants.

* A Duke VP testified that Duke plans to build over 7,000 megawatts in new nuclear, coal and gas generation by 2030. Under cross examination by Runkle, she admitted Duke plans only 56 MW of solar – two-tenths of 1% of generation – under 2% energy efficiency, and almost no wind power.

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[John Paul Jones]

1. I can't say I blame them for not wanting waste their efforts

wind and solar. Those technologies will be obsolete by the time they are fully developed.

[kristopher]

2. Building coal and nuclear locks in market share for Duke; of course that is...

...what they want to focus on.

Nuclear and coal are two sides of the same coin as far as they are concerned.