Duke Energy Gets $28.4M Federal Grant to Upgrade Coal Plant
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- Duke Energy could receive $28.4 million in federal taxpayer funds to upgrade Units 2 and 3 at the 60-year-old Roxboro coal plant in Person County, NC, with the utility matching $44 million in ratepayer money and terms to be negotiated over the next six months.
- The U.S. Department of Energy is invoking the Cold War-era Defense Production Act to fund 13 coal projects nationwide as "critical to national security," in the Trump administration's latest push to expand the climate-damaging fossil fuel.
- The Roxboro plant sits 1.5 miles from an elementary school on the shores of Hyco Lake; its units are scheduled to burn coal until retiring January 1, 2034, and the new grant does not alter that timeline.
- Person County residents are contending with a stack of industrial projects—Duke's two new natural gas plants coming online by January 1, 2029, the Enbridge T15 natural gas pipeline, a proposed Microsoft data center on 1,300 acres, and a 17-million-ton coal ash excavation to a double-lined landfill scheduled for 2036 completion.
- The N.C. House of Representatives passed a bill this week requiring the state Utilities Commission to allow Duke to operate its coal and gas plants until it receives a certificate for a large nuclear facility, which critics say could let the utility abandon its 2050 net-zero emissions goal.
- Duke Energy earned $5 billion in profit last year and is asking the Utilities Commission to approve a 15-18 percent rate hike; customers have testified that monthly bills could rise $30-40, with community advocates saying the new coal funding will extend high cleanup costs into the future.
Why it matters: Ratepayers in North Carolina are being asked to pay twice—through $44 million in matching funds for a plant retiring in 2034 and a pending 15-18 percent rate hike—while Person County residents absorb the cumulative environmental and financial burden of coal ash excavation, new gas plants, a pipeline, and a proposed Microsoft data center, all in a county already dealing with contaminated groundwater from unlined ash basins.
