| Sourced From |
Limits on carbon emissions are coming either through legislation or EPA regulation no matter your beliefs on whether global warming is a serious threat, the executive overseeing Duke Energy Corp.’s programs dealing with climate change, renewable energy and environmental technology said this morning .
“This is a job for Congress, not bureaucrats,” said John Stowell, Duke’s vice president of environmental, health and safety policy at the opening of the City of Cincinnati’s Energy-Economic-Environment Summit at the Duke Energy Center. The half-day event, part of Mayor Mark Mallory’s Green Cincinnati Plan, drew about 400 local business and energy officials to discuss green and energy efficiency approaches.
Climate change will impose costs on businesses and consumers. For example, Duke expects to replace all of its electric generation facilities, which provides power to 4 million customers in five states, by 2050.
Dealing with increases in heat-trapping carbon dioxide in our atmosphere “is one of the biggest challenges we face environmentally,” he said. “Our children and grandchildren may say it’s the biggest challenges of all time.”
Duke hasn’t taken a position on the climate change legislation introduced this week by U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, but Stowell said Duke believes any legislation needs certain features.
Among them: A cap and trade provision, “not a carbon tax,” he said, which caps carbon emissions and puts a market-based price on emissions to encourage innovation and greater efficiency.
Stowell said a similar cap and trade scheme has succeeded in reducing acid rain and smog-producing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide since the early 1990s.
Also, the legislation needs incentives to develop new technology and carbon offsets, and “we need to take a look at nuclear.”
Duke hopes to hear this month from the federal Department of Energy about a funding request to develop a so-called “clean energy park” in Piketon, east of Cincinnati, which could include a new nuclear generating plant in a decade.
Developing so-called “clean coal’ technologies such as burying carbon emissions deep under ground also are important because coal provides up to 50 percent of the nation’s electricity. A massive switch to competing fuels, mainly natural gas, would dramatically increase the cost of manufacturing on home heating, he said. “We need to keep coal in the game.”
Stowell also said any climate change legislation needs to protect the U.S. manufacturing base.
