Politicians of all stripes love to talk about renewable energy. When they make bland allusions to an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, they omit key aspects of our conundrum’s unsustainability: production and distribution.
Surprisingly, some Tea Party groups take a more progressive stance than President Barack Obama. Groups such as the Green Tea Coalition are advocating for decentralized power production from a consumer protection angle. In this model, communities produce their own energy from renewables such as solar panels or biomass, lessening dependence on utility companies.
The centralized energy utility model incentivizes further development of unsustainable energies and allows its managers to cheat ratepayers.
The Charlotte Observer reported in November that Michael Jacobs, chairman of the Coal Ash Management Commission, said everyone would share the $3.4 billion cost of cleaning up the Dan River coal ash spill — including Duke’s ratepayers. Jacobs was appointed to his position by Gov. Pat McCrory, a former Duke Energy boss.
The utilities recognize a necessary shift toward the community model. In a 2015 survey of over 400 industry executives, 31 percent saw distributed energy resources as the “biggest growth opportunity over the next five years.”
North Carolina utilities must adapt to the distributed model or become irrelevant in the face of a market transformation.
