Did you know Cherokee County, S.C., once produced more peaches than the entire state of Georgia? A million-gallon, peach-shaped water tower built along I-85 was my first hint while driving into Gaffney, where Duke Energy plans to build a 2,234 megawatt nuclear power plant.

The once-controversial technology seems to have few critics, winning support here even from those you might not expect.

Bryan Stone is the business manager for a hydroelectric power plant in Lockhart, about 30 miles downstream on the Broad River from where Duke hopes to build its plant. Nuclear reactors keep cool by sucking in enormous quantities of water from nearby streams or lakes, much of which could be used by Stone’s plant to generate its own electricity. It not an ideal situation, Stone acknowledges, but nuclear has too much potential to be passed up.

“There’s no perfect fuel technology that’s out there,” says Stone, who holds an electrical engineering degree from Georgia Tech University. “Even the renewables have their own environmental impacts, and I think that nuclear is a very important part of the portfolio,” he says.

Not to say hydroelectric isn’t important, he adds.

Hydroelectric produces 8 percent of the energy we consume as a nation, compared to about 20 percent from nuclear. But the carbon-free source of energy is near its capacity in the United States, while nuclear power has abundant room to grow – that is, if it can pay for itself. Nuclear plant costs range from an estimated $3 billion to $9 billion. Just as troublesome is the fact that uncertain delays in the regulatory process can take several years.

Stone says he has concerns with the potential for water flow loss, and suggested using some of the electricity from the plant to mitigate the expected loss of water. Still, he calls himself a nuclear proponent.

“You’re talking about taking a relatively small amount of fuel on a mass basis and getting a huge amount of energy out of it,” Stone says, while giving me a tour yesterday morning of the plant. “People are now starting to understand what the carbon dioxide benefits are to nuclear compared to the other fossil fuels.”

It’s interesting how energy has changed over the years in Lockhart, which once used the river to mechanically power a textile mill before the discovery of electricity. The hydroelectric dam, which uses turbines to generate up to 16 megawatts of electricity, was built in 1920 and can power several thousand homes.

The plant is carbon neutral, but only because it is able to rely on a stable backup source when water flow is down. That backup source happens to be Duke, which could cut its own emission rate with the addition of more nuclear plants such as Lee. And as Stone argues, it’s imperative for Duke to keep up with energy demand to keep costs low for consumers.

“You need to have a holistic view of the environmental aspects, and the economic benefits to the rate payers,” Stone says.

He, along with Gaffney Mayor Henry Jolly, say the risks associated with nuclear energy are a thing of the past. Jolly says he is ready to embrace it.

“We’ve deemed that nuclear energy is safe and safe for the environment, so we welcome it,” he says.

The Lee plant would use Westinghouse Electric Company’s AP 1000 reactor, a design that uses passive safety mechanisms that turn on automatically in the case of reactor core overheating without the need for human intervention. Though the reactor has been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, there is still no certified place to store the radioactive spent fuel. Duke would have to store all of its waste onsite until at least 2017, the earliest date at which a repository like Yucca Mountain will be available.

The executive director of Cherokee County’s Chamber of Commerce, Gene Moorhead, joined Jolly in welcoming the proposed plant, citing its economic potential to the region.

“Fossil fuels will still be around in our lifetime, but sometime in the future that will not be true,” he says. “Energy and effective use of energy is one of the problems facing this nation. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, and it’s also one of the safest.”

The response of area leaders and most residents who attended a public hearing on the matter last month in Gaffney is a resounding ‘yes’ to nuclear power. It’s a stark contrast to the response Wise County, Va., residents have given Richmond-based Dominion’s proposal to build a coal plant in Virginia City.

One resident and member of the coalition group Wise Energy Alliance, Carmen Cantrell, has called the local efforts against Dominion’s coal plant a “battle.” Today, she’ll show me what coal mining has done to Wise County’s mountains, and the environmental damage it has caused.

More to come.

(Photo by Phil Taylor)

Duke Energy’s coal-fired plant in southern North Carolina. The company is studying whether an addition will capture a maximum of mercury emissions. Construction is planned during the study.

Energy demand clashed with economics Tuesday morning at the North Carolina Public Utilities Commission hearing on the state’s long-term electricity demand, and the environment was caught somewhere in the middle of the debate.

I was able to catch the testimony of Duke Energy’s representative at the hearing, Richard Stevie, who manages the company’s market research and energy demand forecasts. Stevie explained to the commission how factors such as future employment, income, wages, industrial production weather and population changes all contribute to the company’s equation for determining future demand.

It gets pretty complicated, and to be honest I’m probably not qualified to evaluate every in and out of his work.

But the message was clear enough. At issue was Duke’s Integrative Resource Plan, which maps out the company’s 18-year energy forecast, and what it plans to do to meet demand.

Marilyn Lineberger, a spokeswoman for the Charlotte-based company, helped me sort it out in the afternoon, saying the company hopes to maintain a diverse energy portfolio of coal, natural gas, nuclear power and renewables. Further the company wants to roll out robust energy efficiency programs.

“North Carolina is the sixth fastest growing state in the nation,” Lineberger said, citing census data. “We’re adding 50,000 new customers each year, and in order to meet that growing customer population we are pursuing a diverse fuel mix for the future.”

Hence Duke’s work to expand its Cliffside coal facility in western North Carolina, as well as its planned nuclear facility in Cherokee County, in far northern South Carolina.. But Lineberger also pointed to a program the company just launched yesterday, which would allow customers to offset their carbon emissions through a partner group, NC GreenPower in Raleigh. The program gives customers the opportunity to neutralize 500 pounds of their own CO₂ emissions by purchasing $4 offsets each month. NC GreenPower would use that contribution to support programs such as reforestation and methane capture from landfills, both of which mitigate the effects of greenhouse gasses, according to a Duke press release issued Tuesday.

Good, but not good enough, said John Blackburn, a Duke University economics professor who specializes in energy efficiency. Blackburn testified at the morning hearing on behalf of Durham-based NC Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, a local environmental group, but he spoke with me before taking the stand.

“At the moment, nobody anywhere should be building a coal plant, given what we know about the threat of climate change and global warming,” Blackburn said, emphasizing also the danger of an investment that could plague the company down the road if carbon emissions are eventually capped as foreseen by both presidential candidates.

Duke’s CEO Jim Rogers has been a leading proponent among utility leaders for such a program to be implemented. “It affects the viability of the company to spend billions and billions of dollars on plants that are going to last 40 years when the future right now is so fluid that it’s financially very risky,” Blackburn said.

Onward to Gaffney, S.C., the site of what Duke hopes will be its fourth nuclear station. I’ve been turned away from the site grounds by a security guard once already last night, but I’m hopeful Gaffney’s mayor Henry Jolly will give me a tour today.

Stay tuned.

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.

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The butterfly effect theorizes that a change in something innocuous can have huge consequences, that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might create a tornado on the other side of the world. Read more here.