Duke vs. North Carolina: More Than Just Basketball

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Wednesday, Feb 12th in NCAA men’s basketball, the Duke Blue Devils take on the North Carolina Tar Heels on UNC’s own turf. While either basketball team is a great choice, there’s a totally separate battle happening between Duke Energy and the people of North Carolina when it comes to energy choice. Duke CEO Lynn Good is speaking out publicly against rooftop solar and net metering. Recently, she met with local reporters and attacked net metering to defend Duke’s monopoly.

For those who are new to net metering, it’s a policy in place in 43 states that gives rooftop solar customers full retail credit for the excess energy they deliver back to the grid. Utilities like Duke turn around and sell this exported energy at the full retail rate to the neighbors, even though they paid nothing to generate, transmit, or distribute that cleaner power. Duke wants to rollback net metering to stifle rooftop solar and protect its monopoly.

In other words: Duke vs. North Carolina is more than just basketball.

Duke Energy v. North Carolina

Duke’s following an anti-rooftop solar playbook developed by their trade association, Edison Electric Institute (EEI). Other utilities that adhere to this playbook have even resorted to dirty tactics to preserve their monopolies. For example, an entire web of dark money surfaced last year after Arizona Public Service lied repeatedly about funding phony grassroots organizations and ads attacking their own customers.

In the game of consumer choice and alternatives to the monopoly, the people of North Carolina are bringing their best defense against the incumbent.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.