Driving past Lake Norman over Thanksgiving weekend, I was once again struck by the fact that this body of water helps power millions of homes across the region and in the state of North Carolina.

Using water from the lake to feed the towering condensers, the two nuclear reactors at McGuire Nuclear Station generate over 18 gigawatts of clean and abundant energy, adding to the impressive nuclear capacity of Duke Energy that powers nearly half of its customers’ homes in North and South Carolina.

Nationally, Duke is seen as a champion for nuclear energy and carbon-free alternatives. 

In the small Triangle town of Carrboro, however, Duke has been painted as the ultimate bogeyman, responsible for the ills and harms of climate change. A lawsuit based on this premise was filed last week in the Orange County Superior Court, accuses Duke Energy of knowingly running a decades-long “deception campaign concerning the causes and dangers posed by the climate crisis.” Carrboro seeks monetary damages in a jury trial to mitigate current and future “climate-related harms.”

The attorney filing the case on behalf of the city of Carrboro is Matthew Quinn of the tort law firm Lewis & Roberts, who also happens to be the lawyer for the pro-solar nonprofit NC Warn, the group bankrolling the case.

NC Warn, a perennial critic and antagonist of Duke Energy, has been running recent primetime television advertisements accusing the energy utility of “crushing our solar industry” and expanding its exploitation of natural gas to the detriment of North Carolina energy consumers.

The group has charged Duke with using the “tobacco industry playbook,” knowing the true harms of the products they were selling but not acknowledging such to their customers.

This case in Carrboro, funded by an outside group with a specific agenda, however remarkable, is only part of a nationwide pattern. In mostly left-leaning local courts in Honolulu, San Francisco, and Minneapolis, state attorneys general have used fraud, public nuisance and consumer protection laws to accuse select companies of covering up their role in climate change.

While other cases have targeted oil giants, refineries, and plastics manufacturers, the Carrboro case will be the first major climate-change litigation aimed at an electrical utility that is investing massively in carbon-free nuclear energy generation.

In helping the state fulfill its clean-energy plan, as established by Gov. Roy Cooper, Duke has also just recently won approval to reduce energy prices by nearly $212 million for its customers.

Added to that, it has sought regulatory approval from the NC Utilities Commission to convert its coal-powered power plants into sites for small modular reactors — nuclear reactors with a much smaller footprint and less required infrastructure to produce electricity. 

Environmental groups have, surprisingly, been opposed to this shift to nuclear energy, citing higher infrastructure costs while downplaying its reduced carbon emissions.

“There’s nothing special overall as far as we can tell with the technology,” said NC Warn executive director Jim Warren, who also called SMRs “experimental reactors.”

Despite the opposition to energy exploration from local environmental groups, it should be stated that Duke Energy has played a key role in getting North Carolina to decarbonize.

In 2023, nuclear power plants in North Carolina generated over 43 gigawatt hours of electricity, all of that at the Duke Energy nuclear stations at McGuire, near Charlotte; Harris, close to Raleigh; and Brunswick, on the southeast coast.

Nearly a third of the state’s electricity generation comes from nuclear power, and North Carolina boasts one of the lowest uses per capita of natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration, a number that continues to decrease year by year.

Whatever the case against Duke Energy may have been in years past, it remains a company that must listen to its customers, follow the market, and deliver solutions that help bring our energy costs down responsibly. Its investments in nuclear energy should make us more hopeful for a carbon-free revolution.

Globally, the role of peaceful nuclear energy for fighting back against climate change and providing a better future for all of us is, thankfully, getting a second look. In our own state, we should look to do the same.

Originally published here