Energy in the News

The Raleigh advocacy group is the latest in a string of environmental organizations to issue reports setting lofty goals for renewable resources and energy efficiency. The organizations emphasize that green energy targets that once seemed inconceivable are within reach if backed by government policies to pay the costs.

Environment North Carolina in Raleigh doesn't estimate a price for its solar proposal, but according to a state regulator it would be astronomical -- more than $100 billion at the current price for solar panels.

"Someone would have to raise it and finance it," said James McLawhorn, director of the electricity division in the Public Staff, the state's consumer protection arm in utility matters. "That seems tremendous to me."

North Carolina seems years away from using the sun to provide 14 percent of the state's electricity. Under a 2007 state energy law, solar energy will have to provide just 0.2 percent of the state's electricity.

The state has about 31 megawatts of solar energy in operation or under development.

The goal set out by Environment North Carolina would require the state to develop 13,900 megawatts of solar energy, which would make this state nearly equivalent to the 14,730 megawatts of solar energy currently available worldwide.

Megawatt for megawatt, solar power is the most expensive form of electricity today, but green energy advocates say planning can't be based on current costs.

"The cost of solar power is coming down, while the cost of dirty energy is going up," said Elizabeth Ouzts, state director for Environment North Carolina. "In the not-too-distant future, the cost of solar will be cheaper than building a new coal-fired power plant."

The solar report comes a day after the group released a study saying North Carolina's greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere have risen 39 percent from 1990 to 2007. The data come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's "State Energy Consumption, Price and Expenditure Estimates."

The rise in emissions is caused by more cars on the road burning more fuel, and more electricity being generated by the state's 45 coal-burning units.

The reports come as legislative proposals that would require states to cut emissions by more than 80 percent in coming decades are making their way through Congress. Some power companies, including Raleigh-based Progress Energy, plan to shut down older coal-burning power plants as a way of curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide is the only major pollutant that can not be controlled with available technology.

Electric utilities in this state have spent billions of dollars to trap and contain other pollutants -- such as sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides and particulates - in response to North Carolina's Clean Smokestacks Act. The 2002 law requires the state's coal-burning plants to cut ozone-forming emissions by three-fourths by 2012.

Even as energy consumption has increased, North Carolina's air quality this summer was the cleanest it has been in more than three decades, according to the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The improvement is in large part because of the smokestacks law and other environmental legislation.