Promoting Solar Power

NC WARN not only opposes the burning of fossil fuels by Duke Energy but has promoted clean energy in numerous ways for many years. Our ongoing NC Clean Path 2025 campaign is a strategy to get the state’s electricity supply off fossil fuels by 2030 and halfway there by 2025. Our Common Dreams op-ed reports the good news that solar and energy storage are surging even as fracked gas economics are declining. But Duke Energy seems to have missed the memo. The giant corporation is planning a huge expansion of fracked gas infrastructure and only 14% renewables by 2035 (less than the current national average of 19.8%).

Read more solar news and check out our past and present solar and energy storage projects below.

Installing solar on an affordable housing quadruplex in Durham.

Solar for everybody!

NC Clean Path 2025: Join one of our Action Teams now operating around the state.

Solar and Storage Quick Facts: Information on how you can benefit from solar power and energy storage.

Solar for schools

We are serving as technical advisors to the NC Solar Schools Initiative, a group of local government officials that is urging Duke Energy to make solar+storage systems available to NC schools. Read more.

Solar for faith communities

Solar Freedom: We put solar on the roof of Faith Community Church in Greensboro in 2015 to challenge Duke’s monopoly and test the state’s ban on “third-party sales” of solar energy. We finally lost at the NC Supreme Court, but drew major attention to the issue for three years.
Faith in Solar: Learn how faith communities have worked together to fulfill their Earth Care purpose by going solar.

Solar for homeowners & small business

Solarize: From 2014 to 2016, NC WARN helped 200 homeowners go solar.
Sharing Solar: In a spinoff from Solarize, we funded solar projects that helped low- to moderate-income people benefit from solar power.
Solar donations: We donated solar systems to 3 Triangle-area nonprofits in 2012.
Net metering: Retail net metering is working great to help expand rooftop solar. But HB589 (see below) instructed Duke to submit revised net metering rules and now they’re trying to force through a complicated plan that would make solar less economical. Read more about our Save NC Solar campaign to save net metering.

Solar obstacles at the NC legislature and beyond

Policy Roadblocks: Impediments to implementation of NC Clean Path 2025.
HB589: What’s really going on with 2017’s “Competitive Energy for NC” law?
Duke/Kochs Hate Solar: Delving deeper into how electric utilities and the Koch brothers work across the country to limit the growth of solar.