NC Experts Spar Over Future Energy Plans

John D. Wilson co-wrote this blog.
What’s the future for energy in the Tarheel state? This week, the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) considered the energy plans of Duke Energy, Progress Energy and Dominion Power. Each year, North Carolina utilities are required to update their 15-year plan. An Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) explains how each utility [...]

TV Ads Challenge Investment in New Reactors

Last week, Friends of the Earth launched two television ads challenging $54.5 billion in loan guarantees the Obama Administration proposed to hand out for the construction of the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in 30 years. The 30-second television ads, “Family” and “Risk,” will run in both South Carolina and Georgia. In South [...]

Not Safe, Clean or Affordable - Vermont Votes to Close Nuclear Plant

The so-called “Nuclear Renaissance” touted by proponents hit a brick wall recently when the Vermont State Senate voted 26-4 to prevent the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant from operating past 2012. This bi-partisan blow occurred just a week after President Obama announced $8.3 billion in controversial nuclear loan guarantees for Southern Company’s proposed two new reactors [...]

Nuclear loans provide a false solution to climate change

I was on CNN yesterday responding to the nuclear loan guarantee announcement by President Obama.  We are seriously disappointed in this action and SACE released a statement warning against the risk loan guarantees will put on taxpayers.
As outlined in a blog entry from last week, we feel the administration is making a serious mistake by [...]

Obama Pushes for Risky Energy Options for What in Return?

On February 1, 2010 President Obama had his first exclusive interview with the YouTube community after his State of the Union Address. Over 11,000 questions were submitted and only 0.2% were selected. A video question from the Southern Energy Network was chosen that challenged President Obama’s controversial pledge to provide tens of billions of dollars [...]

Nuclear Socialism?

You have to love the irony of all this talk of “socialism” these days when the political party that screams the most about the “socialist agenda” is praising the French Nuclear program.
Nuclear power subsidies have been a long standing recurring issue with this so-called “mature industry,” yet the nuclear power industry and their utility supporters [...]

Pay now for what you might get later

Last Wednesday, the St. Petersburg Times recognized the “Powerful Savings” available to Florida by investing in conservation. Yet the chief obstacle to conservation remains Florida’s commitment to overinvest in nuclear power. Even if the utilities had not biased their efficiency analysis with nonsensical limitations, their assumption that unlicensed nuclear reactors would be built on schedule [...]

Will Florida choose a high-cost energy future?

August 2009 was busy in Tallahassee for Florida utilities.
With lots of attention from the media, early in the month, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Cabinet approved new nuclear reactors for Progress Energy. There are now four such nuclear reactors proposed for the state, and the expansion of Plant Vogtle involves both Gulf Power (via its [...]

SACE 100 New Nukes Response

Senator Alexander’s recently unveiled “Blueprint for 100 Nuclear Power Plants in 20 years” will neither reduce energy costs nor provide clean energy. The “Blueprint” is part of the GOP’s four-step plan to provide “low-cost clean energy” that completely ignores energy conservation and efficiency. (Even though FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghof recently stated we may not need [...]

Duke Energy dispenses with civil discourse

Unfortunately, rude remarks and ad hominem attacks are not new to public discourse.  They tend to emerge in the absence of facts, yet childish remarks and name-calling do nothing to advance the debate about our nation’s energy future.
In an April 2 edition of ClimateWire (a publication of E&E Publishing), Duke Energy Corporation spokesman Tom Williams [...]