Land seizure, secrecy, broken trust are keys to Duke’s unneeded grid expansions
A rural community in South Carolina is vigorously challenging Duke Energy’s plans to plow through residential and business properties with high voltage transmission towers, lines and a substation. The energy giant has responded by invoking eminent domain, a controversial law allowing utilities to seize the use of private property in exchange for a negotiated monetary payment.
This is the very type of situation NC WARN and allies have warned about since 2021, when our engineer discovered a small, blurry map in the back of a voluminous Duke document. It referred to plans to greatly expand Duke’s transmission system in North Carolina – supposedly in order to expand renewable energy years from now.
The major difference? The Duke corridor plowing through the middle of Green Pond, SC – if ever completed – will be 4.5 miles long. In eastern North Carolina, Duke Energy leaders apparently plan hundreds of miles of new transmission lines and towers.
For nearly three years NC WARN and allies in rural North Carolina have sought details about Duke’s plans to build those transmission corridors, which can be up to 200 feet wide, through areas that are often low-wealth and/or communities of color.
But the corporation has grown even more secretive over time even as dozens of community groups have openly demanded full transparency. We have warned that many of these are communities that forced Duke and Dominion Energy to cancel the Atlantic Coast (gas) Pipeline in 2020 after spending more than $5 billion to construct it.
Green Pond, SC residents have called on Duke to use other routes, according to the Greenville News. If completed, the high-voltage corridor would impact a church, a cemetery and a beekeeping farm, among others.
State Senator Shane Martin said in a letter to Duke Energy that the project should be constructed “on existing commercial or industrial sites and/or along existing four lane highways. This is a practical and equitable solution for the rural, farming community which I represent.”
“Duke’s effort to engage the potentially affected landowners before proceeding on this project was somewhat disingenuous given it had purchased the substation property before seeking community input,” said Martial Robichaud, resident of the Green Pond area and former member of the Spartanburg County Planning Commission.
A LOOMING NC CHALLENGE
In North Carolina, Duke Energy, a few big environmental groups and large-scale solar companies seem to downplay the concerns – and community muscle – of those living in small town areas. They generally support the utility’s risky attempt to build tens of billions worth of huge transmission lines and larger-than-ever solar fields despite the 12-15 year timeframe that totally fails the climate science test.
That high risk is amplified by the likelihood that communities will block them altogether.
The companion strategy to Duke’s land seizure scheme in North Carolina is the crushing of local solar-plus-storage. The utility forced a rule change on rooftop installers late last year that has threatened that industry’s very existence, and Duke projects almost no local solar growth within its territory for decades to come.
Choking rooftop solar is key to Duke Energy leaders who prefer to gamble billions of captive customer dollars on fracked gas and failed nuclear technologies along with a high-risk transmission and solar buildout that would take a decade or more to complete – if ever.
Instead of Duke’s high risk, climate-wrecking Pro-Carbon Plan, NC WARN and allies are pressing regulators and North Carolinians to support a sweeping shift to a Sharing Solar approach, where all customers’ power bills pay for local solar power instead of dirty power.
Sharing Solar would greatly expand solar plus battery storage on small and large rooftops, parking areas and solar fields located near towns and cities. This is the fastest, cheapest, fairest way North Carolina can phase out fossil fuels.
Duke Energy is trying to block discussion of Sharing Solar, but see our 30-second video ad depicting the basics of this state’s climate-energy challenge.
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Now in its 36th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to persuade or require Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest climate polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes.
