Energy Producers Looking for A Cleaner SupplyEnergy Producers Looking for A Cleaner Supply of Power:
Duke CEO proposes fee for clean power
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NEW YORK, Mar 04, 2008 -- AP
The CEO of Duke Energy, one of the nation's biggest power producers, on Monday proposed tacking a fee on all U.S. electricity to pay for research and development into low-carbon technology.
Jim Rogers, who also serves as chairman and president of the Charlotte, N.C.- based company, said such a program could generate billions of dollars to fund much-needed research into renewable energy, nuclear power and cleaner-burning coal projects. A surcharge of three-tenths of a penny on each kilowatt-hour sold, for example, could generate $11 billion annually for such research, he said.
"Put it in a lock box and use it only for technology," he said.
Significant investment is needed, Rogers said, in part because the "government has failed us, in a sense," when it comes to funding research into cleaner power. "We have a huge ecological problem. Technology is the way to solve it," he added during a meeting with reporters in New York.
Duke, by its own admission the nation's third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, operates a number of coal plants as well as nuclear, oil- and natural gas-fired, and hydroelectric facilities.
Rogers said a nationwide surcharge system would be more fair to consumers whose electricity comes from coal than a program proposed by Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner to auction off pollution credits among electric utilities and other polluters. Customers in states that rely mainly on coal power could see their rates rise as much as 60 percent if a full pollution credit auction system were put into place, Rogers said.
About half of the power produced in the U.S. comes from coal-fired plants, according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration.
Duke earlier this year won final approval from state regulators to build an 800-megawatt coal-fired unit at a power plant in Charlotte. In November, regulators in Indiana signed off on a 630-megawatt coal gasification plant designed to remove some harmful emissions before they enter the atmosphere.
Rogers, a former deputy general counsel at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a frequent visitor to Capitol Hill, predicted legislation concerning carbon emissions is likely to pass in 2008 or 2009. Any new charges on carbon ought to be phased in, he said, to prevent a consumer backlash away from cleaner energy technology.