by Russ Outcalt and Tom Harris
Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Durham, NC has written open letters to Duke and Gov. Cooper urging Duke to revise its new fifteen-year Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), and move to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions more rapidly. You can review the letters here and consider having your faith community become a signatory.
Duke’s IRP unveils its plans for how it will generate electricity for its customers over the next fifteen years. Unfortunately, the baseline scenario that Duke outlines is far too reliant on fossil fuels, and the move to renewable energy is much too slow to meet the challenge of the world’s looming climate crisis. The U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that society has less than ten years to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and Duke’s IRP does not align with IPCC guidance or NC Governor Roy Cooper’s Clean Energy Plan.
Public hearings on the Duke IRP took place this spring, and many individuals and organizations have stepped forward to protest their plans and urge them to move quickly to retire coal-fired power plants and lower the number of fracked gas power plants currently in their plans. ICCT has blogged on this before and many of you have stepped up and made your voices heard. Now there is a way for your entire faith community to weigh in on this as a moral issue affecting people of limited means as well as our children and grandchildren. Having other faith communities sign on adds moral weight, and Duke Energy and Gov. Cooper will listen. We hope you will join this critical campaign for our planet.
Review the letters here. You can sign or request further information.
