Who We Are
Duke Energy’s mission is to provide reliable, affordable and clean energy to customers. This is an ongoing challenge for our company. Our stakeholders, from investors to customers to employees, expect us to uphold our mission – and so do we. If there is nothing else you discover during your visit to Duke Energy’s environmental policy pages, it’s the promise that we plan to deliver on your expectations. But how?
It starts with developing and implementing the right policy and an eagerness to lead, even if the chosen paths ruffle a few feathers along the way. It requires an understanding of where you are, where you need to go and what it takes to get there. Jim Rogers, Duke Energy’s president and CEO, likes to say we need to be able to “see over the horizon” and make our future – instead of allowing outside events shape it.
But, as you’ll see in the pages that follow, words aren’t enough. We are already preparing for the low-emission, decarbonized economy that we have seen coming for years:
- We are building two new cleaner coal plants in North Carolina and Indiana and will retire 200 megawatts of older, less efficient coal units by 2012. An additional 800 megawatts of old coal will be retired by 2018.
- With regulatory approval, we will be the leader in capturing and permanently storing carbon dioxide from our new coal gasification plant in Indiana.
- We’ve begun the process of planning a new nuclear plant in South Carolina.
- We own nine wind farms in Wyoming, Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania, owned and operated by our commercial business unit, Duke Energy Generation Services. Duke Energy’s wind profile has grown to 986 megawatts with another 5,500 megawatts of potential projects in our development pipeline. For a summary of ll of Duke Energy's projects, please see the Wind Power Projects Fact Sheet.
- Our solar program includes both distributed generation and a large central station.
- Our save-a-watt program and rapid deployment of smart grid technology allows us to work with our customers to achieve the full potential of zero-emission energy efficiency – what we call our “fifth fuel.”
- We are working with partners in China to develop and bring an array of clean energy technologies to the U.S.
Our commitment to “doing” extends to the policy realm as well. We support a sustainable national energy policy, one that promotes both economic progress and environmental responsibility. Our customers and communities do not want to chose energy that is affordable or reliable or clean. We understand that the right answer lies in a balance. Energy and environmental policies pursued separately struggle to strike that balance. A comprehensive national energy policy can set long-term priorities, and provide rules of the road that we can follow when making investment decisions. Because these decisions are long-term, we believe the right balance must include multiple options. We support an “all of the above” approach, and a marketplace where coal, carbon capture technology, natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear, and energy efficiency remain viable alternatives in an energy policy that works.
We appreciate your interest in Duke Energy and our commitment to the environment. We welcome your comments as we move ahead.
John Stowell
Vice President, Environmental Policy
A Welcome Message from
Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers
- Duke's Current Coal-Fired Projects
- Duke Energy and Environmentalism
- Focus on Environmental Issues
- Key Environmental Challenges
Duke Energy's Jack Stultz
Discusses Edwardsport IGCC
