Duke Energy : Charting a path forward

By Stephen De May
Duke Energy's North Carolina President

Six years ago, we announced the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project to bring cleaner, affordable, reliable energy for eastern North Carolina and drive economic development and create thousands of jobs across our state. Since then, thousands of businesses, organizations and individuals across North Carolina and our neighboring states have supported this important infrastructure project - and we cannot thank them enough.

While we're disappointed that the ACP will not move forward, we must not lose sight of the progress we've made together to build a cleaner energy future. In fact, we must build on our successes and continue to collaborate to build a shared vision to meet the energy needs of our state.

Moving forward, we'll continue to focus on cleaner energy for our customers, including renewables, battery storage and grid projects that will deliver benefits for customers and create jobs at a time when policymakers at all levels are looking for ways to rebuild our economy in 2020 and beyond.

We're currently participating in the state's Clean Energy Plan, a collaborative process to develop a path forward for achieving ambitious clean energy goals and lowering carbon emissions. We've already reduced carbon emissions by 39% from 2005 and remain on track to cut carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2030.

We also have an ambitious clean energy goal of reaching net-zero emissions from electricity generation by 2050 and our decision on ACP does not change it.

We're proud to work with our state's leaders, policymakers, customers and all stakeholders to chart a path forward that builds a cleaner energy future for generations to come and protects the reliability and affordability of electric power that helps make North Carolina a strong economic engine.

We must do this together, and we welcome the opportunity.