Forcing its climate agenda
- Duke admits that rate increases are necessary for the company to pay for renewable technologies & retiring existing coal plants.
- Duke declared its intention to be net-zero by 2050, and net-zero methane emissions by 2030 in pursuit of ESG’s extreme environmental objectives.
- Duke plans to spend $145 billion over the next decade to fund energy infrastructure and net-zero transition.
- In 2021, Duke Energy directly tied executive pay to progress on climate initiatives by including climate-specific performance metrics as a way to help determine top executives’ annual pay.
- In 2019, Duke unveiled plans to build 760 new public charging stations at a cost of $76 million that Duke intended to recover the cost of by charging its customers.
Putting politics ahead of its customers
- In 2022, Duke sponsored a “youth pride carnival” that included a “king and queen drag show” in honor of Pride month.
- Since 2020, Duke committed more than $8 million to social justice and race equity organizations.
- Duke Energy is actively prioritizing the hiring of people of color, according to its annual “Impact Report.”
- In July 2020, Duke Energy caved to the woke mob, canceling an $8 billion Appalachian Trial pipeline project environmentalists strongly opposed.
- In 2019, Duke ranked near the bottom of big electric utilities for residential customer satisfaction.
Forcing their customers to foot the bill
- Duke Energy has consistently and significantly raised consumer rates while dramatically boosting senior executives’ pay.
- In North Carolina, effective June 1st, 2023, Duke raised rates on some residential customers by 4.8%.
- Duke Energy further warned customers to expect more rate hikes in the near future. In North Carolina, customers could see their bills increase by 18.7% by late 2025.
- In Ohio, ratepayers were hit on June 1, 2023, with a 58% increase in the generation fee portion of their bill.
Duke Energy is not a good corporate citizen
- Duke Energy illegally dumped millions of gallons of coal ash into North Carolina’s Dan River in violation of the Clean Water Act.
- In 2022, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled against Duke Energy, saying the company could not make customers pay $212 million to clean up coal ash in the state.
- In 2020, Duke reached a settlement with North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality for the clean-up of nearly 80 million tons of coal ash at six of its facilities.
- Duke has been accused of self-dealing by using its status as a government-granted monopoly to crowd out competition from the EV charging market and simply passing along the $76 million investment cost to ratepayers.
