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Over the weekend I watched Earth Days, the PBS documentary by Robert Stone on the history of the environmental movement. Afterwards, I almost puked my guts out when the people PBS brought on to comment on the film included Duke Energy CEO James Rogers and “environmentalist and green business entrepreneur and consultant” Paul Hawken.
Ray Suarez led them in a discussion about how “environmentalists and industry now cooperate” (I kid you not) and the icky negativity of the 70s isn’t needed any more.
So imagine how thrilled I was this morning when Greenpeace sent me photos of their activists scaling a 400-foot stack of the Progress Energy-owned Asheville Power station today, while others secured themselves to the coal loader and conveyers preventing coal from entering the facility.
From their press release:
Greenpeace activists are protesting the destruction and pollution caused by coal at the Progress Asheville Power Station this morning. Activists have secured themselves to the coal loader and conveyers, which will prevent coal from entering the facility. Additional activists are scaling the 400 foot smoke stack to send a message to both Progress Energy and Duke Energy that communities and the climate can’t wait for a renewable energy revolution. Coal plants like the Asheville Power Station damage communities and the climate at every stage of their lifecycle: the destructive mining practices, the burning, and the storage of toxic coal ash.
Progress Energy is currently in a merger bid with Charlotte based Duke Energy, which would create the largest utility in the United States.
“This plant runs on destroyed mountains, it spews out air pollution, it causes climate change and it poisons the water and the earth. If Duke merges with Progress, the new owners have a responsibility to the people of North Carolina to move to clean energy,” said Greenpeace climate campaigner and activist Robert Gardner.
The Progress Energy owned Asheville Power Station uses the most destructive form of coal mining, mountain top removal, which is flattening mountains across Appalachia. The plant produces 1,994 pounds of sulfur dioxide, 788 pounds of nitrogen oxides, and 2,629,243 tons of carbon dioxide. Its coal ash ponds are designated ‘high hazard’ by the EPA, meaning they are likely to kill people if they spill. Like other coal plants across the country, the plant causes death and illness in the community.
“Duke Energy could be playing a leadership role in the energy sector, and CEO Jim Rogers talks a good game on the environment, but the reality is vastly different. With more than $5 billion dollars worth of new coal investment on the books, Duke is clearly committed to dirty fossil fuels that poison our communities and destroy the climate,” Mr Gardner said. “If Duke Energy wants to be considered a leader in the industry, they’re going to have to get serious about phasing out polluting plants like this one, and make some real investments in renewable energy that will protect America’s future.”
Thanks, Greenpeace activists. For putting it all on the line and blowing the lid off of James Rogers’ expensive PR campaign to greenwash Duke with the help of PBS and Ray Suarez. Why Robert Stone allowed his documentary to be used like that is anybody’s guess, but your timing was perfect.
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I am so proud of them for doing this action, and it has already opened the eyes of one local who stated he did not realize all the pollution that is down there at Progress Energy plant.
These Greenpeace folks are AWESOME!!!
Awesome is an understatement. I’m getting dizzy just looking at that photo.
Duke Energy’s vision of renewable energy: wood-fired power plants. And Duke Energy owns massive timber acreage in the mountains of North Carolina.
Thanks, Greenpeace. Much needed action.
Great that the Asheville plant is being protested, but it’s a Progress plant, not a Duke Energy (Jim Rogers )plant. The merger between Progress and Duke is on the ropes and may not take place due to anti-competitive issues. Duke may well pull out due to the coal plant liabilities that it would inherit in the deal. Duke Energy, unlike Progress and the Midwest utility that Duke merged with, runs relatively clean plants. The best chance to clean up the Asheville plant is for the Duke-Progress deal to go through.
I missed it. Have they already legalized weed in NC? Somebody’s smoking something.
Let me say this in the nicest way possible. When someone shows up here and registers to respond to one particular post, representing the point of view of those who have a vested interest in the article’s contents, it raises immediate red flags for us. Because hiring what’s known as “sock puppets” to go into comments sections and express the company’s viewpoint as if they were disinterested parties is a very lucrative business these days, and an almost universal corporate practice.
It’s also a violation of our terms of service. If you have a vested interest in the subject matter at hand and are being paid in any way by those interests, or if your company is, you need to disclose that. We don’t say that you can’t be here, but you have to let people know what the true context of your comments are. And if you outright lie about those relationships, and we know about it, we’ll let people know what the true context is.
A Greenpeace Occupy – how awesome is that! (I was not 20 miles away when the Rainbow Warrier was bombed in Auckland Harbour – they are special to me since then.)
We need them to do some mountaineering in the Four Corners facility – Public Service Company of New Mexico still won’t comply with EPA standards, too costly they say and a Republican governoress is fine with that.
I’m heartened, though; push is coming to shove. They’ve cancelled the nuclear bomb pit facility over the horizon from me in Los Alamos – yay! yay! (At least, it’s ‘postponed’ for five years.)
Bravo, Greenpeace!
We can expect to see unbiased reports on Propapaganda Broadcasting Service when?
Jane,
I have no vested interest in the subject at hand. I just happen to know a little bit about the Duke-Progress merger. Amazing to me that you would be so touchy when someone disagrees with the premise of your post, which is that Jim Rogers is to blame for the Asheville plant. I’m a big fan of event-based environmental protest, but please, do a little background research before you assume that Duke Energy and Jim Rogers are responsible for plant that another company owns.
Good to see this action in NC. Love the banners!
We’re fighting an increasingly deepening struggle up here in Alaska, trying to keep the Wishbone Hill coal mine from ripping apart a very coal-rich mountain on the outskirts of Palmer, and just acres from residential areas (and 3.8 miles directly upwind from my house!).
The goal of the backers of Wishbone Hill is to get it put in so close to a town and its suburbs, partially so they can then say – “If we can do it there, why not anywhere?” The coal beds further up the Matanuska River Valley from this proposal are very “clean” and rich in veins of the best coking coal on the planet.
We’re about six weeks into a warning period regarding lack of licensing for the Wishbone Hill project, and are looking toward a decision by the Feds on the (state of Alaska) licensing issue.
I’m secretary of the board of Friends of Mat-Su, the lead coordinating agency in the coal fight.
We’re in this for the long haul, and intend to win.
Just reread the post and didn’t find any assertion that Duke and Rodgers werre responible for the Asheville plant. The premise of the post was that Propaganda Broadcasting Service ran a commercial for Duke Energy, spouting industries pieties, followed by Greenpeace crane danglers “blowing the lid” off the industry BS. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the energy industry does not have a stellar repuation for truthiness.
To say that Duke Energy runs relatively cleaner plants than Progress and Cinergy is damning with faint praise. Duke Energy is committed to expanding coal and nuclear plants and not very interested in the prospects of wind and distributed solar. The major energy efficiency program that Duke Energy has pursued over the past thirty years is energy conservation, through financing insulation and high-efficiency home HVAC systems and free energy use analysis for customers. This has eliminated the need for one nuclear plant so far.
Duke Energy’s relatively cleaner operations means that it will be the beneficiary of the cap-and-trade legislation that it promotes, selling its credits to less clean operations. (But only if the amount of pollutants is constrained sufficiently to create a strong market, an unlikely event given the number of dirty operators.)
The merger between Duke and Progress is troubling because Progress Energy is already committed to moving and installing the non-damaged Three-Mile Island reactor as an expansion of its Sherron Harris Nuclear Station. Duke would inherit this contract in any merger. Even if you allow for nuclear energy, this decision is stupid compared to construction of a third-generation nuclear reactor.
Duke Energy also seeks to construct additional coal-fired generating plants, such as the Cliffside Plant proposed near Charlotte.
Your point about the Asheville plant operating cleaner will only be true if Duke Energy makes the necessary investments in upgrading the stack technology.
But the fundamental issue remains. Coal is a very destructive technology to generate electricity that is being used because of the short payback periods that investors expect on business investments. Moving to non-fuel renewables has a longer payback period but the return on investment over twenty to thirty years is likely to be greater because there is more likely returns on technology investments there than in coal and the economies of scale in producing alternative energy generating equipment has not plateaued as is the case with coal and other fuels.
Greenpeace also sent out an email announcement aimed at collecting signatures:
https://secure3.convio.net/gpeace/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1023&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr004=5695kq3uk4.app334a
A long URL.
I appreciate the broader context and agree with all your points. My first post was incorrect in stating that it is coal plant liabilities that are likely to kill the merger. As you correctly point out, it is the nuclear liabilities at Progress that are the issue. If the merger goes through, my hope is that Duke will upgrade the plant in Asheville. Given the history of the companies, I suspect that there is a greater chance of Duke doing that than Progress. The problem is that the Progress CEO will be in charge of the combined company, so all bets are off if the merger goes through. However, Duke is getting cold feet and there is a less than 50% chance that it will. In that case, Asheville will be stuck with Progress, and the likelihood that the plant will be upgraded or replaced is even lower.
Great to see Greenpeace back in the news! Congrats to the climbing team and support for pulling off a great action against Duke Energy.
I don’t know what Paul Hawken had to say about climate catastrophe. Is he hoping to make a buck off of ocean acidification? Visionary ideas are useless when the vampires of capitalism and neoliberalism stalk the nations power centers, hope Paul finally realizes that.
OMG!
Jane,
Thank you and Greenpeace for bringing this! From a Carolina family, this is a joyful event! Duke Energy rules in the Carolinas and if you have ever looked at the Nuke plant map you will understand why. They have lied to their customers in both states for decades and will do anything and I MEAN anything to make a buck. They don’t care if they are killing children.
I heard an environmentalist on PRN say that the DC environmental groups had decided they could work better within the system and so they have sold out the environment and become insiders and that is probably who Petroleum Broadcast Station is talking about. There still are some really great environmental groups out there. Thanks Greenpeace.
Duke Power, Inc., is the fucking prince of darkness.
THanks, Jane for bringing this issue into the light of day.
Go Greenpeace!
I am so proud of Greenpeace.
I live on a meager Soc.Sec. and depend on subsidized housing for the elderly/disabled, and some food stamps, for the necessities of life.
But I have Greenpeace take a small allowance out of my bank account monthly. I gotta trust somebody to do what I can’t in person. But last Fall my debit card expired when I wasn’t paying attention, so Greenpeace did not get its allowance.
So I received a phone call, late on a Saturday night, from a Greenpeace volunteer, to investigate. It was the most beautiful call I have ever had outside of family and close friends. I think I cried for 2 days. They are a fabulous bunch of real people doing real things for real problems.
That is not strictly true, and you know it.
Don’t piss me off. We have to spend a lot of time sweeping professional operatives out of here in order to keep the conversation honest, and if you really were a regular here, you’d know that. So if you want to lie about what you do and who you work for (believe me, it’s very obvious from the back end, it doesn’t require a lot of guess work) you might want to think twice about throwing out nasty accusations about people being “touchy” to cover it up.
Blah blah blah, I’m one of you, lookie here I bleed green, save the whales, tofu for all…yes, we’re familiar with the rap sheet.
The relationship between Duke Energy and Progressive is abundantly clear in the post above, which is about a banner dropped by Greenpeace, which unquestionably says “Duke Energy” on it. So if you’ve got a beef with their messaging you might think about trolling their site. Most don’t have the zero tolerance policy we do for people with unacknowledged financial ties.