Six Western North Carolina members of the General Assembly have called for a public hearing on Duke Energy’s Integrated Resource Plan.
Those six members include Sen. Terry Van Duyn; Rep. Susan Fisher; Rep. John Ager; Rep. Brian Turner from Buncombe County; and Rep. Joe Sam Queen, from Haywood, Jackson, and Swain counties; and Ray Russell, from Watauga and Ashe counties. The plan outlines the energy company’s fifteen-year forecast on energy planning and is claimed to be totally inadequate to meet the scientific consensus to reduce greenhouse gases in North Carolina.
The members state that the IRP is also not in alignment with Gov. Cooper’s Ex. Order 80 on the state’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The plan will not support the city and county’s objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and by 100% by 2042, both in municipal operations and community wide.
The letter also calls for the commission to hold an Evidentiary Hearing in Raleigh on the IRP, where expert testimony is presented to the Commission on the wisdom of the monopoly’s planning. It continues by stating that the IRP will ensure that Duke continues to build out its centralized natural gas generation, a certain nail in the coffin of accelerating global heating, and a death sentence to future generation of North Carolina residents, while guaranteeing Duke Energy and Duke Energy Progress and its shareholders a profit.
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