Nation's Largest Utility Wants Customers to Pay for Coal Ash Cleanup

Duke Energy—the nation's largest electric company—is being criticized for trying to pass along its coal ash cleanup efforts to customers in the form of rate hikes.
The Associated Press reports that this is the first time the $59 billion electricity company has sought permission to have North Carolina consumers pay part of its costs of disposing the waste, a toxic byproduct of burning coal for power.
Duke Energy Progress, a Duke subsidiary that serves parts of North Carolina, filed for a rate increase with the North Carolina Utilities Commission on June 1. If approved, its 1.3 million customers would see their electricity bills increase about 15 percent.
The rate hike would generate an extra $477 million in annual revenue for the company. Duke said the money would be used to upgrade the state's electric system and repair damage from major storms, like Hurricane Matthew.
Controversially, a $66 million slice of that revenue would recoup costs already spent on coal ash cleanup, and $129 million more will go towards future cleanups.
Coal ash has been a contentious issue ever since Duke's 39,000-ton ash spill into North Carolina's Dan River in 2014. While none of the money from the proposed rate hikes will be used for that specific accident, Duke has also been ordered to close dozens of its coal ash storage basins in the Carolinas—an effort that's expected to cost about $5.1 billion.
Many are opposed to allowing the company to recover costs from the closing of old ash ponds.
"The 15 percent rate hike is an outrageous cost increase to ask consumers to pay when they have no ability to chose another energy provider," Donna Lisenby, clean andsafe energy campaign manager for Waterkeeper Alliance said. "Working families struggling to make ends meet should not be forced to pay for Duke Energy's negligent management of leaking coal ash ponds.
"They want to pass their mistakes on to the land owner. This is not fair," Nancy Gurley, who lives near the utility's plant in Goldsboro, wrote in a comment filed with the state.
Coal ash contains a mix of arsenic, lead, mercury and other potentially toxic elements. Concerns have also arisen over the harmful chemicals leaching into groundwater through the unlined bottoms of pits. Duke denies its basins contaminate groundwater.
Charles Walker Jr., who lives near the company's Allen power plant in western North Carolina, told the AP that he has been forced to use bottled water after the chemicals showed up in his neighborhood in Belmont. He said Duke should bear the brunt of the cleanup costs, not the customers.
"In my opinion, if you're going to be negligent, if you made a mistake, you need to feel the sting. Don't just pass it on," Walker said. "If a septic company comes to my house and accidentally spills sewage all over my property, are they going to send me the bill for that?"
The company told the AP that the expense of cleaning up coal ash is part of the cost of generating electricity. Company spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said the company generates about 150 pounds of coal ash a year for each household on average.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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