Duke Energy making clean energy progress, CEO tells shareholders

During its annual meeting Wednesday, Duke Energy told shareholders the company made rapid progress during 2021 on its multi-year transition to clean energy sources.

Duke Chair, President and CEO Lynn Good told investors the company has met or surpassed several milestones.

“Our more than 27,000 teammates rallied behind our mission to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” she said. “Our promise is to continue this momentum. Our five-year enterprise capital plan includes $63 billion of investment, and 80 percent is directed to our clean energy transition.”

A notable benchmark included the surpassing 10,000MWs of owned, operated, or purchased renewables on the company’s system, putting the company on track to reach 16,000 MWs of renewables by 2025 and 24,000 MWs by 2030.

Good said the company has also filed for Subsequent License Renewal of its Oconee Nuclear Station – the company’s largest nuclear plant – and plans to file requests for its remaining units to maintain that source of carbon-free energy for another 20 years. Additionally, the company will deliver a Carbon Plan to the North Carolina Utilities Commission later this month to map out several paths to achieve a 70 percent carbon reduction.

The company is also preparing to oversee the largest planned retirement of coal in the industry, having already retired almost 1,000 MWs of coal between the Carolinas and Indiana for a total of 7,500 MWs retired since 2010.

“Already in 2022, we’ve taken aggressive action, expanding our net-zero emissions goal to include Scope 2 and certain Scope 3 emissions. We also announced we’re targeting energy from coal to represent less than 5% of our total generation by 2030, and a full exit by 2035,” she said. “We look forward to continued progress on our goals across our jurisdictions – retiring coal units, adding renewables and battery storage, investing in the grid, advocating for new zero-emission technologies, and collaborating with state and federal policymakers, regulators and stakeholders to meet the unique needs of each state.”