Aerial photograph of the OVEC-operated Kyger Creek Power Plant in Cheshire. (Getty Images.)

Duke Energy is among the companies enjoying massive subsidies from 2019’s corrupt-but-still-not-fully-repealed Ohio House Bill 6. 

And while ratepayers are propping up two aging, uncompetitive coal plants, a new report says Duke and its predecessor companies have known for 40 years that burning coal causes climate change. It said the companies then tried to misinform the public about the threat. Then they promoted unproven, likely impractical technologies as a workaround. 

Now the utility giant acknowledges the overwhelming scientific consensus around climate change — while working behind the scenes to stifle competition from renewable sources such as solar, the report said.

In “Duke Energy Knew: Documenting Duke Energy’s Early Knowledge and Ongoing Deception About Climate Change,” the Energy and Policy Institute traced how positions on whether fossil fuels caused global warming shifted over time at Duke and its predecessor companies — Cincinnati Gas & Electric, Public Service Indiana, Duke Power and Carolina Power & Light.

The town of Carrboro, N.C., last week sued Duke, making similar claims. 

“We are in the process of reviewing the complaint,” the company said in an email when asked to comment on the Energy and Policy Institute Report. “Duke Energy is committed to its customers and communities and will continue working with policymakers and regulators to deliver reliable and increasingly clean energy while keeping rates as low as possible.”

More violent storms, corrupt legislation

The utilities’ shifting claims about fossil fuels seem especially relevant now, after Hurricanes Helene and Milton smashed into the Florida coast in quick succession this year, doing billions in damage in Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. In an attribution study, scientists said climate change made both storms worse than they otherwise would have been.

Duke is also a shareholder in the Ohio Valley Electric Cooperative, or OVEC, which owns two 70-year-old coal plants — Clifty Creek and Kyger Creek — that are among the 100 most polluting power plants in the United States. 

As part of 2019’s scandal-plagued House Bill 6, Ohio ratepayers so far have been required to pay more than $400 million to subsidize the plants, prompting the observation that because of public corruption in Ohio, ratepayers are being forced to finance global warming. 

Akron-based FirstEnergy put up $60 million to be the biggest beneficiary of the $1.3 billion bailout that resulted from the bribery scheme that sent former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, to federal prison for 20 years. Testimony during his 2023 trial indicated that the OVEC subsidies were meant to gain the support of utilities that were heavily invested in OVEC. 

At 9%, Duke is the third-largest shareholder in the cooperative. So that means Ohio ratepayers have given it $36 million so far to finance the old, dirty plants — including Clifty Creek, which is in Indiana, not Ohio, according to OVEC’s website. 

Recognizing the problem

Two generations ago, Duke’s predecessor companies and some other utilities were publicly agreeing with the emerging consensus that fossil fuels such as coal were spewing heat-trapping molecules into the atmosphere in amounts that would change the climate, with all the consequences that would entail.

However, they might have had an ulterior motive. Many were investing heavily in nuclear power when in 1979 a reactor partially melted down at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Middletown, Pa.

In 1983, Cincinnati Gas & Electric was trying to resist proposals to convert its perennially troubled William H. Zimmer Power Station in Moscow, Ohio, from nuclear to coal so it could open. CG&E President William Dickhoner played the environmental card, saying, “With coal you have acid rain and the greenhouse effect,” the Energy and Policy Institute report said.

It was part of a pattern.

“During the 1980s, what are now Duke Energy-owned utilities — including Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light (CP&L), Cincinnati Gas & Electric (CG&E), and Public Service Indiana (PSI) — all proposed addressing the looming climate crisis by expanding the use of nuclear power,” the report said. 

Changing tunes

But as the sun set on the era of building big nuclear plants, the utilities began telling a different story about the potential harm from the fossil-fuel generators they were left with. It was a story they knew was untrue, the report said.

“Despite having publicly recognized the climate risks of burning fossil fuels, these same utilities would soon play a leading role in disinformation campaigns like the Global Climate Coalition that denied the human causes of climate change as part of broader efforts to oppose national and international limits on greenhouse gas emissions from their coal and gas-burning power plants,” the report said.

For example, in 1991 the Edison Electric Institute — an industry group to which the Duke predecessors belonged — began a campaign to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact),” according to leaked documents. A request for comment has been sent to the Edison Electric Institute.

One campaign supported by the industry group operated in Bowling Green, Ky., where CG&E owned Union Light, Heat & Power Company. It financed newspaper and radio ads, one of which said, “The most serious problem with catastrophic global warming is – it may not be true,” the report said.

Adjustment

According to the Energy and Policy Institute report, Duke and other utilities again shifted positions on climate change as the scientific consensus behind it became overwhelming in the early 2000s. 

They then began to promote unproven technologies such as “clean” coal and carbon sequestration, and to focus blame for greenhouse-gas emissions on other sectors. The real goal was to forestall the day they would have to retire their fossil fuel-fired generators, the report said.

It cited a peer-reviewed study by researchers and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“After 2000, (climate-change-denying) front groups were largely shut down, and utility organizations shifted to arguing for delayed action on climate change, by highlighting the responsibility of other sectors and promoting actions other than cleaning up the electricity system,” the study said. “Overall, our results suggest that electric utility industry organizations have promoted messaging designed to avoid taking action on reducing pollution over multiple decades. Notably, many of the utilities most engaged in communicating climate doubt and denial in the past currently have the slowest plans to decarbonize their electricity mix.”

The same study said the industry group is guilty of duplicity.

“By the 2010s and early 2020s, (the Edison Electric Institute’s) public messaging recognized the reality of climate change and the need to transition to cleaner sources of electricity, including renewable energy sources like wind and solar,” it said. “At the same time, EEI focused its political efforts on blocking competition its members faced from the growing rooftop solar industry.”

Still a heavy polluter

Even though its predecessor utilities were warning of the dangers of global warming due to fossil fuels way back during the Reagan administration, Duke continues to be one of the biggest carbon emitters among utilities.

“According to its latest report to (the Carbon Disclosure Project), Duke Energy in 2022 emitted 78.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to the atmosphere,” the Energy and Policy Institute report said. “An analysis of companies’ self-reported 2021 emissions data by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that Duke Energy was the third-largest greenhouse gas polluter in the United States overall, surpassed only by two other electricity generators: Southern Company based in Atlanta, and Vistra based in Irving, Texas.”

Even if Duke keeps its promises to reduce emissions, it might be too little, too late.

“The company doesn’t plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions until 205o, by which time the climate crisis could cause an additional 14.5 million deaths and $12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide,” the report said.