Partnership of Duke Energy with Carbon Cycle Energy for renewable energy in North Carolina

Political incentives such as mandatory compliances are one of the strongest catalyzers for transition, and this is also true for renewable energy. Even if the environmental benefits are obvious, it must be said that the economic return of renewable energy, especially in the short term, is not as interesting as with fossil fuels considering their higher energy potential. Fortunately, as the population concerns for the environment and its sustainability has led to greater interest in this field by the public sector, big corporations are becoming increasingly green in order to ease their social recognition and satisfy political mandatory compliances. A good example is the Renewable Energy and Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS), which mainly explains the partnership of Duke Energy with Carbon Cycle Energy for renewable energy in North Carolina.

The REPS dates back to 2007 when North Carolina officialised it on August 20^th to become the first southeastern state of the U.S. to adopt such a measure. This law requires corporations producing and selling utilities, such as electricity, that renewable energy accounts for 12.5% of their energy needs. Specifically concerning electricity, power suppliers can comply with the REPS by various ways, like producing or purchasing, for new or existing facilities, electricity coming from all types of renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, hydropower, geothermic, ocean current, wave energy or any biomass resource like organic residual waste, animal waste, agricultural waste, etc.

Therefore, North Carolina’s REPS is behind the partnership between Duke Energy (DE), the biggest electricity provider in the U.S. with 7.4 million customers, and Carbon Cycle Energy (C2e), a renewable energy project development company specialized in biogas. Their joint project consists of a 15-year term during which C2e, who will build and own the anaerobic digestion plant, is expected to generate over 1 million MMBtus (approximately 28 million cubic meters) per year of high-quality biomethane (refined biogas). C2e’s biomethane production will then be purchased by DE in order to supply about 125,000 megawatt-hours of electricity to four of its energy production plants. For the record, this is enough to fulfill 10,000 households in electricity for a year in this area. Also, the plant which is expected to start running by mid-2017 will generate 40 to 50 jobs for its operations.

It follows that biogas has an obvious sustainable energy potential, based on its economic viability, environmental benefits as well as the social involvement it induces related to the revaluation of organic residual waste. Though, in order to develop biogas as a major part of the global sustainability solution, a push emanating from the political sphere will be necessary for every country. As we can see with the DE and C2e partnership in North Carolina, the compliances required by the REPS are one of the main motivations behind the project.

Elsewhere, comparable patterns are making their way through, such as in the province of Quebec, Canada. Indeed, their recently launched 2030-oriented Energy Policy is aimed towards sustainability, notably by fossil fuels reduction as well as renewable energy production and transition. The province will be devoted to encouraging this transition by setting, inter alia, mandatory compliances to certain types of energy. In short, it is evident that the public sector has the power to regulate in order to reach global objectives in terms of sustainable development, renewable energy, and climate change. Governments should, as a duty, be using more this power because it works, even if there is a powerful lobby by the fossil industry.

By Simon Lefebvre | 2016-04-12

Sources: Duke Energy News, Duke Energy, Carbon Cycle Energy, PolEnergieQC (French only), Charlotte Business Journal (image)