Administrative Watch: Duke Seeks Rate Hike — and Permission to Halt its Last Nuke

Duke Energy filed a pair of requests with the NC Utilities Commission on Friday: 1) a major rate hike request; and 2) permission to halt construction on its Lee nuclear plant in South Carolina.

In the first request, Duke wants to hike rates for its customers in the central and western parts of North Carolina by 13.9% overall, including by an average of 16.7% annually for its residential customers. Duke asserts that the request is primarily to pay for a ten-year “modernization” plan for its transmission grid and generation mix (including natural gas as well as renewables). (There is already a separate rate hike request pending for Duke’s customers in eastern North Carolina.)

Public interest advocates object to the size of Duke’s requests and have signaled challenges on multiple grounds, including calls to separate out any costs for fixing the coal ash problems. Citizen advocates have said that Duke stockholders should be responsible for bearing the costs of poor Duke planning and decision-making over a period of years regarding handling of coal ash.

Duke’s request to halt work on its last proposed new nuclear plant in the Carolinas was received more positively by clean energy advocates. Southern Alliance for Clean Energy director Stephen Smith said, “This is absolutely the right decision. The issues in South Carolina should make new nuclear reactors radioactive, particularly Westinghouse new nuclear reactors. It is a bad deal for consumers and it’s a bad risk for utilities and utility shareholders.”

That doesn’t mean that citizen advocates are happy about Duke’s requests to charge its customers in North and South Carolina with more than half a billion dollars in the “development” costs for its dropped nuclear construction plans. Jim Warren, director of NC WARN (one of the groups challenging the rate hikes), said, “We’re glad that Duke is cutting the losses it must share with the public. Duke Energy executives invested 12 years and over a half-billion public dollars — at the Lee project alone — hoping to build nuclear plants. Sadly, it validates the long-running concerns that the nuclear ‘renaissance’ would waste precious time and resources that should have gone toward proven measures that would slow the climate crisis.”

Up next: August 28 deadline to speak out in support of Clean Water Rule >>