by Tina Casey, via CleanTechnicaOn the eve of the Democratic National Convention, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers went on CNN and made a straightforward case for the reelection of President Obama, at least in terms of energy policy. Charlotte-based Duke Energy might not yet be a household name outside of its home base in the south, but its recent $32 billion merger with Progress Energy has made it the largest electric utility in the U.S. So, when Jim Rogers talks about energy policy, it’s worth a listen.
Rogers appeared as one of the guests on Soledad O’Brien’s “Starting Points” show on Monday, and started off his part of the conversation by making a common-sense observation about the difference between running a business and running a country:
“… as a CEO, you have to balance interest of your shareholders as well as your customers. But being a President of the United States, you have to balance many stakeholders’ interest and come up with the right solution and get the balance right between the role of business and the role of government.”
This stakeholder view of public governance dovetails neatly with President Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy.
Rogers cites the Administration’s continued support for natural gas and nuclear power as positive developments for his industry. He also includes improvements in energy efficiency and energy diversity on the list, and that’s where things get interesting:
“My view is that we built power plants for 40 years and we need clarity in terms of the road forward. I believe eventually there will be regulation of carbon in this country. I think it’s critical in the long term to have the smallest emissions footprint possible when you generate electricity.”
The Road Forward for U.S. Energy
If you want to see what Rogers sees along the road forward, a look at some of Duke Energy’s initiatives over the past few years provides a pretty clear picture.
Rogers hints that an all but exclusive focus on building new centralized power plants is not necessarily the way forward, and in fact Duke Energy has been one of the early promoters of distributed solar power.
Aside from advancing its interests in conventional fuels, Duke Energy has been investing in wind farms and it has launched itself into a “sister cities” field research partnership with China on new energy technologies including solar power, smart grid technology, energy efficiency, and battery storage.
The company also recently partnered with Siemens and Ford in an electric vehicle infrastructure research project sponsored by the Department of Energy.
Carbon capture by algae is another area that Duke is exploring. Its East Bend coal-fired power plant is serving as the proving ground for a system that will feed captured carbon dioxide to algae, which can then be used for animal feed or biofuel production.
In a similarly ambitious project, Duke Energy has partnered with Google and Duke University to convert hog waste to natural gas for generating electricity.
The company’s merger with Progress Energy was also partly motivated by the bottom line benefits of getting more use out of Duke’s existing pumped storage hydroelectric resources (unlike conventional hydro dams on rivers, a pumped storage facility recycles the same water from one reservoir to another).
As for Progress itself, before its merger with Duke, the company was already making a name for itself in sustainability initiatives, including the promotion of offshore wind power.
The New Energy Road Runs Straight through Charlotte
Though an open discussion of carbon regulation and climate change is not part of the political conversation in this election cycle, when you layer all of Duke’s activities onto Rogers’s promotion of Charlotte as an international hub for energy innovation and new green jobs, you can see it’s no accident that the Democratic National Committee decided to locate the Democratic National Convention in that city.
It’s a clever way of calling attention to the success of President Obama’s energy initiatives without getting sidetracked into specious arguments. In this regard, it’s instructive to look at some comments by another guest on Soledad O’Brien’s show, U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz (R, Utah).
In contrast to Rogers, who really did talk about new changes in the U.S. energy landscape, Chaffetz said “we need a total new direction” but only offered up approval of yet another oil pipeline as an example.
Tina Casey specializes in military and corporate sustainability, advanced technology, emerging materials, biofuels, and water and wastewater issues. This piece was originally published at CleanTechnica and was reprinted with permission.
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>Carbon capture by algae
Not a good climate solution. It leaves out the sequestration part. Sure you basically reuse the carbon but it eventually ends up in the atmosphere.
Carbon capture by algae at least does two things. It uses the carbon twice, so reduces the climate effect, and compared with iffy, (ok unfeasible, way too expensive, and potentially leaky) concept of capturing and storage CO indefinitely, it does not leave the problem to future generations.
And that algae biofuel replaces oil.
No, it’s not the solution(s) I want but it’s better than a whole lot of ‘em being pushed by corporations (fracking, do nothing, whatever
I think the best solution is to be able to make either some algae or bacteria to extract the co2 directly from the atmosphere, and not a coal plant. Electric cars are picking up speed, but we also need something that helps to phase out oil quicker.
My best sequestration design relies on extremely cost-efficient algae growing in the desert, in closed-up systems with no water evaporation. Sell the biodiesel. Bury the algae cell husks by the gigaton in big mountains, as if they were mountains of coal, and cap these mountains to prevent bacterial breakdown for 2500 years or so.
Rogers was in favor of the climate bill effort that finally passed the House and then got lost in the weeds of the Senate trying to do their own bill… But only after making sure that emission reductions were at a level that Duke Energy would make anyway with more efficient huge coal plants in Indiana and North Carolina already being built, new gas plants since the baseline dates, and proposed new nukes.
Rogers no doubt still wants to have a top place at the table.
This is all about profiting from these rules and bills. Duke’s new coal plants, replacing old smaller ones, would overall increase their emissions. One of them near Charlotte (Cliffside).
Duke Energy (dba Duke Power in NC/SC) tried to institute a scheme to profit from customer energy efficiency by which they would have profited from our compact fluorescent light bulbs something on the order of $18 each… This was stopped.
Rogers is just more savvy than the kind of utility execs who sound like dinosaurs, and most of their green sounding exercises are on the profit making deregulated side of the biz, while the captive customers are stuck with lots of coal and nukes (the most profitable).
However, in the great word cloud that is this election, it is a very good thing to have Rogers out there endorsing Obama, to counter the false narratives of the GOP.
And that’s no small thing.
A nice little pome gleaned from the web. Thank you Kurt Henry, where ever you are,
But what’s this creature, never born–
Like griffon, gorgon, unicorn?
A thing of myth, upon my soul,
A thin mirage he called “CLEAN COAL.”
How odd he could so blithely sing
Of cancer on the Fairy’s Wing!
(Thanks to Kurt Henry)
This is why Obama is persuing all of the above…
Climate Portals shared a link.
6 hours ago
Cheching….
Saudis Could Run Out Of Oil To Sell In 18 Years: Report
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca
It seems almost like a report from bizarro world, but a new research note from Citibank says Saudi Arabia risks becoming an oil importer within 20 years. The report, obtained by Bloomberg News and the Daily Telegraph, says the kingdom’s mushrooming energy use means it risks becoming an oil import by…
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-04/saudi-arabia-may-become-oil-importer-by-2030-citigroup-says
For what it’s worth.
That might help exlain why Saudi Arabia recently announced that they will spend $109 billion to develop solar energy in their country.
That includes 25 GW of solar thermal
, and about 45 GW of solar altogether.
Any supplier of electricity who is not a science denier can see that building coal or other high pollution/low efficiency power plants is not a prudent investment for the next 40 years. Even if Romney were to win, no one with a time horizon of 40 years is going to touch coal. Overall, the GOP aversion to clean energy is stunningly stupid.
The absolute priority of a US energy CEO is profit maximisation, otherwise he will be replaced. The absolute priority for human survival is a radical reduction in human energy use, through efficiency and reduction in over-consumption. And what energy is used absolutely must come from non-carbon sources and as rapidly as humanly possible. These two are about as stark antitheses as one could imagine.
Perhaps he suspects that coal will soon be banned. Or should be. And like the tobacco companies, the wise CEO will seek accomodation.
By conciliation his industry may be allowed to wind down rather than shut down suddently – as it should.
Like Malcreado I wonder about carbon capture via algae. The uses mentioned here, animal feed and biofuel, would do nothing to reduce coal generators’ carbon emissions.
However, I understand that the process could also produce carbon pellets that could be sequestered.
On another note, electricity generators will certainly survive into a post-carbon world and it sounds like Duke is positioning itself to make the transition. In contrast, oil/gas companies have nowhere to go in a post-carbon world other than biofuels. BP already owns 10% of world biofuel production, but others like ExxonMobil seem to be operating on a Mad Max worldview – dominate the dwindling supplies, then go down with them.
Blogged here – http://bit.ly/OOSx0S
Ah ha! I wondered why it was held in Charlotte. And Mr Rogers can see the writing on the subway walls about carbon regulation, ME
Simon and Garfunkel’s “A Poem on the Underground Wall” was “a single worded poem comprised of four letters”,… and rather beautifully illustrated as well. There are days when I think of that tune as a prescient message from the subterranean sixties. And there are other times when I can play with the grand kids, forgetting about it for awhile.