Duke Energy’s Lake Wylie Hydro Station, straddling York County, South Carolina and Mecklenburg, North Carolina, generates 60 megawatts of power, enough to power almost 10,000 homes. North Carolina passed an energy mandate last year requiring utilities like Duke to have 12.5 percent of its energy come from renewable sources and energy efficiency by 2021.

By Phil Taylor

This week I’m on a five-day road trip through North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia to report on some of the newest developments in the region’s energy future. Along the way I am visiting three newly proposed power plants—two coal, one nuclear and each bringing with them their own unique challenges and controversies.

Big things are happening in places like Cliffside, N.C., where Charlotte-based Duke Energy is proposing a massive addition to one of its coal-fired facilities. But many in the state feel the company, which is public, is moving too fast on a project that will lock the North Carolina into a deeper dependency on carbon-emitting coal. Duke took their battle to the Dobbs Building in Raleigh Monday at a hearing before the state’s utility commission.

Further south, most of the residents of a small town called Gaffney, S.C., are ecstatic that Duke has decided to pursue a new nuclear power plant on the banks of the Broad River. I am visiting with Gaffney Mayor Henry Jolly to see what the plant could bring to the people of this tiny community, and whether it is worth the environmental risk of stockpiling radioactive waste.

Finally, I’ll visit the mountains of Wise County in southwestern Virginia, where Dominion Generation is deciding whether to begin construction on a new coal plant of its own. This plan has drawn fierce opposition from area residents, who have watched many of their mountaintops scraped away by a highly-controversial process called mountain-top coal mining, which fuels many of the region’s power plants—including the Cliffside facility.

This we know for sure: All three regions are growing in population. But only some say the area needs more energy, while others urge the importance of conserving more of the energy they have already.

Regardless, each case in all three states hints at a wider, international dilemma: how will we satisfy tomorrow’s energy demand, and at what environmental cost?

Read more about what North Carolina ratepayers and conservationists had to say about Duke’s expansion at Monday night’s hearing.

11:30 p.m., Monday, June 30, 2008

Mark Marcoplos, a “green builder” from Orange County, N.C., challenged each of the commissioners of the North Carolina Utilities Commission to call his bet at the end of a public hearing tonight in Raleigh to discuss how much energy the state would need in the future.

What’s the bet? He’s guaranteeing he can raise their energy efficiency. Marcoplos guaranteed all five of the commissioners in attendance (seven total members sit on the board) that he could retrofit their homes to make them 5 percent more energy efficient, and he offered to do it for free.

The commissioners seemed unconvinced, but most of the roughly 100 people who attended the three-hour hearing downtown had Marcoplos’ back. Each of the 30 or so who testified argued that the growing state can get all the energy it needs through tighter conservation and efficiency, and that the last thing North Carolina needs is more coal-fired or nuclear power plants. Already, North Carolina’s five nuclear reactors make the state the sixth biggest nuclear generating state.

A battle is being waged in North Carolina over whether the state’s biggest utility, Charlotte-based Duke Energy, should be allowed to add 800-megawatts of capacity to its Cliffside coal-fired power plant, near the border with South Carolina on the county line splitting Cleveland and Rutherford. The $1.8 billion project is needed to keep up with energy demand as more people build bigger homes within its 24,000 square-mile service area in the Carolinas, the company said. Duke argued the new unit would generate twice the amount of electricity as the current plant and would enable the company to eventually retire its older, dirtier units.

In February 2007, the state’s Utilities Commission determined the plant would be the most cost-effective way for Duke to maintain a steady supply of electricity while keeping their rates affordable. Ground was broken in January, one day after the state’s Division of Air Quality awarded the plant an air permit.

But those who attended Monday’s hearing said Duke’s reasons for building the plant were based on flawed assumptions about how much energy the state really needs.

“Extensive conservation would eliminate the need for more coal,” said Jim Sander, a documentary film professor from Efland, N.C. Sander suggested Duke and Raleigh-based Progress Energy, the state’s second largest provider, should invest in incentives for customers to save energy, rather than ratcheting up its own production. “I think you’d be heroes,” he said. “I’d like to see you take the lead.”

Others took more dramatic approaches to state their case. Consider Lynice Williams, who spoke on behalf of North Carolina Fair Share, a group in Raleigh working to ensure people of lower incomes gain political and economic influence.

Williams presented the three lawyers for Duke and Progress Energy, along with each commissioner, a piece of burnt toast to symbolize the warning of NASA scientist James Hansen to Congress last week. Hansen told a House committee on energy and climate, “We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path,” meaning away from the burning of such fossil fuels as coal and petroleum.

Lawrence Somers, who was representing Duke Energy Carolinas, a subsidiary of the company, declined to comment to me about the evening’s proceedings. But representatives from the utilities and its challenger, Durham-based North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, will get their chance to state their case Tuesday at a legal hearing before the commission.

I’ll be reporting from the hearing before setting off for Gaffney, S.C., where Duke is proposing to build a new nuclear power plant. I’m hoping to catch up with representatives from Duke on Tuesday afternoon to hear more about their long term environmental goals. After passing through the company’s home base of Charlotte, I’ll be checking out one of Duke’s largest renewable energy hydroelectric dams at Lake Wylie.

Look for the coming story to find out how they did it.