Key Points

Duke Energy Rate Hike Webinars – May 13th and 15th

May 13, 1-2 p.m.: Information on Duke Rate Hikes
May 15, 6:30-7:30 p.m.: How to Tell a Compelling Story at the hearings

CARH Testimony at Duke Energy Shareholder Meeting

These two powerful statements — by Satana Deberry of the N.C. Housing Coalition and Patrick Cobb of AARP South Carolina — were offered as testimony at the May 2, 2013 Duke Energy shareholder meeting in Charlotte, NC.

Advocates to Duke Energy: No Rate Hikes for Dirty Fuels

Ratepayers and concerned North and South Carolinians gathered outside Duke Energy’s annual shareholder meeting for a teach-in to highlight community concerns. Duke Energy seeks to raise electricity prices to pay for extending the use of obsolete and dirty power plants that threaten the health of people, the environment, and the economy.

Action at Duke Shareholder Meeting on May 2

The shocking burden of $800 light bills, News & Observer

Op-Ed by Gene Nichol, director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the UNC School of Law
The poorest citizens in the poorest communities in North Carolina often pay the highest rates for electricity. They are required, in the process, to subsidize the services of others much wealthier than themselves. They also, in some instances, are taxed by municipalities in which they can neither vote nor run for office. The burden of crushing electricity prices thwarts economic development in much of Eastern North Carolina, the state’s poorest region…

Rep. Leo Daughtry, a veteran Republican legislator from Smithfield, has tried repeatedly to curb the wounds the N.C. Eastern Municipal Power Agency inflicts on Eastern North Carolina. “I could tell you story after story of businesses closing down and people having to leave Smithfield because of it,” he says. “Towns can’t prosper because no one wants to pay those bills.”

New Statewide Poll Shows Strong Support for Cleaner, Cheaper Energy

In a new statewide poll of over 600 North Carolina consumers, respondents expressed both a strong desire for the North Carolina Utilities Commission to help low-income residents as well as their support for cleaner and cheaper energy alternatives to those being proposed by Duke Energy and Progress Energy.

News Release: Diverse Coalition Calls for Rejection of Duke and Progress Energy Carolinas Business Plans

Of concern to members of the coalition is the continued high reliance on the burning of fossil fuels and plans to build new nuclear plants whose price tag will run between $20 and $24 billion.

Groups Urge NC Utility Commission to Protect Public Interest when Weighing Duke Energy’s Long-term Operating Plans

A broad range of consumer, energy, environmental and religious advocates gathered at the entrance to the Public Utilities Commission today to urge members to act in the best interests of residential, municipal and small business ratepayers when they review the Integrated Resource Plan of Duke Energy, North Carolina’s largest electric utility provider.

Duke Energy to file for another rate increase, ABC 11

Risks to Ratepayers – Synapse Energy Economics study on impacts of Annual Rate Hike Bill in NC

Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., in a study commissioned by CARH, rejected Duke’s key talking point that an Annual Rate Hike Bill would somehow save customers money by charging them as the plant is being built.