FSC says households should not spend more than 6 percent of their income on heating, cooling, lighting and appliances.8 Their calculations look at the number of households below 150 percent of the poverty line, the level used to determine eligibility for assistance through the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.9, After calculating the affordability gap for each state, FSC assesses the assistance provided by LIHEAP, funded annually by Congress, and compares that with actual funding needs. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The attorney generals office urged that the fixed charge be as low as possible to encourage efficiency investments.40 Duke touts its principal South Carolina efficiency program for low-income customers as saving a customer $45 a year,41 but Howat of the National Consumer Law Center noted that Dukes requested fixed-charge increase would wipe that out in two billing cycles.42.
The company does not mark up the cost of fuel and is required by law to pass through the actual cost on a dollar-for-dollar basis to customers. And much of the support comes not from the company but from ratepayers in the form of mandatory bill charges or voluntary donations. *Space heating: includes main (primary) and secondary space heating. Dukes claims that prepay plans result in lower usage are inflated by the utilitys preposterous position that disconnections for nonpayment are energy efficiency measures as if customers who are shut off are choosing not to pay and not to use electricity. Changes are based on numbers of customers only. Thats doubly unfair, because low-income customers tend to use less power than other customers. Protect your health. DuPonts Teflon changed our lives, but also polluted our bodies. He called Dukes proposal an extreme outlier from national practice.25, Howat said the proposal raises profound equity concerns because, if implemented, it would disproportionately harm low-income, elderly, and African-American ratepayers, who on average use less electricity than their counterparts in nearly every region of the country.26, EWG analyzed data from a 2015 survey by the Energy Information Administration on electricity use in American households, broken down by income. Duke does little to close the affordability gap, consistently underfunding its own programs designed to help low-income customers pay their bills. Rising energy demand as North Carolina emerged from the 2020 COVID-19 shutdowns resulted in a significant increase in fuel needs for power generation, compounded by fuel commodity prices climbing drastically in 2021 due to tight supplies. The companys programs remain sorely underfunded, and theres no indication that its executives plan to alter course. Source: EWG, data derived from EIA, 2015 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. If you have a disability and experience difficulty accessing this content request accommodation here. Depending on the extent of unpaid utility bills, or arrearages, once state-imposed disconnection moratoriums are lifted, arrearages for customers up to 150 percent of poverty could range from $1.3 billion to nearly $4 billion in states where Duke Energy operates monopoly utility companies, according to the National Consumer Law Center.22 But Duke wants even more: In Indiana, Duke and its fellow utility companies are seeking to have customers cover its losses from electricity they didnt use during the pandemic, although residential demand has increased since the coronavirus outbreak.23. He discovered that Duke Energy offers a program to make your home more energy efficient. Duke serves 6.1 million residential customers in its monopoly territories in the Carolinas, Florida, Ohio and Indiana. Source: EWG, data derived from EIA (2018 data) and the DOE LEAD Tool. This site designed and maintained by CFAES Marketing and Communications. An official website of the United States government. Those facilities would be replaced by a diverse, "all of the above" mix that includes exponential growth in renewables and storage, as well as energy efficiency programs and other measures to help customers reduce their energy use. In North Carolina, this means working in the areas of energy, industrial agriculture and the forever chemicals known as PFAS. 43955 - DSM 8. All rights reserved. Please refer here for specific incentive amounts. If Duke wants to be seen as a compassionate corporation at the forefront of Americas clean-energy revolution, it must put its money where its mouth is. In addition, the company is investing in major electric grid enhancements and energy storage, and exploring zero-emission power generation technologies such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear.
Prepay customers are often paying toward past bills, not current usage, so they keep falling further behind and incurring late fees. Community solar programs allow multiple customers to share power from a solar array or storage battery. The affordabiity gap is the difference between affordable household energy costs and what people actually pay.
Customers struggling to pay their energy bills can seek assistance through the Share the LightFund, a Duke Energy program that provides assistance to vulnerable customers. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. In Dukes Indiana service area, the affordability gap exceeds $107 million. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning), Machine Tools, Metalworking and Metallurgy, Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American.
But most low-income customers cant afford the upfront cost of installing solar panels. Duke makes it harder for low-income customers to go solar. Duke Energy Progress serves about 1.5 million customers in central and eastern North Carolina and in the Asheville region. The Home Energy House Call is a free in-home assessment.
The program Duke came up with seems designed to fail. E-Mail:CustomIncentives@duke-energy.com Over the past five years, Duke provided an average of about $760,000 a year in assistance for low-income customers winter bills, with about 15 percent of that coming from mandatory surcharges on other customers. Cision Distribution 888-776-0942 The Regulatory Assistance Project says that jacking up the customer charge is akin to a monopoly business charging its customers whatever it wants the very kind of practice that utility regulations are intended to prevent.
Phone: 1-855-386-9548 In Dukes Florida service area, the affordability gap is more than $400 million. Only with space heating does the lower income bracket use slightly more power than the $40,000 to $59,000 income level. | Columbus, Ohio 43210. Dukes bill-assistance funding is a potential of at least $2 million, depending on customer contributions and Duke Foundations matched contributions.
CHARLOTTE, N.C., June 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy Progress this week made its annual filings with the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) for costs associated with fuel and various riders, including state programs to encourage renewable energy adoption, and energy efficiency and demand management programs to reduce energy use. your account number or are not a. Duke Energy provides one FREE kit per household every 36 months for eligible Duke Energy account holders. Duke repeatedly tries to raise fixed charges, which hurts low-income customers the most. Email: Info@MyEnergyKit.org, Please select your child's grade level. Every eligible request for the FREE Energy Kit helps your school and teachers win cash rewards, and gives each family the chance to win a $1,000 prize. Although low-income customers use less energy, their homes tend to be less efficient. If you are not a Duke Energy residential customer, you will not be eligible to receive a kit however, your sign-up will still be credited to your school and count toward the school reward contest.
By targeting low-income neighborhoods, working with local leaders to build neighborhood engagement and buy-in, and conducting energy assessments, energy-saving improvements, and participant education at no cost, the program is able to upgrade hundreds of homes in a cost- and time-efficient manner while reducing carbon pollution. In 2017, North Carolina legislators mandated that Duke start its first community solar program. Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy transition to achieve its goals of net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business and at least a 50% carbon reduction from electric generation by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The utility company will never show up at your door to offer this service out of the blue you must schedule an appointment. Duke has also pursued changes in rate structure and weak energy efficiency programs that actually undermine a low-income customers ability to pay their monthly bills or save money by going solar. Utilities claim that prepay plans benefit low-income customers by giving them control over their bills, letting them pay as often as they like, eliminating connect and reconnect fees and reducing late payment fees. Most prepay plans actually end up costing customers more than conventional payments. In the most recent South Carolina rate case, Howat pointed out that although nearly 40 percent of Dukes residential revenue comes from lower-income customers, the Neighborhood Energy Saver program gets just 3.5 percent of Dukes funding for all efficiency programs.43 In North Carolina in 2018, Howat argued that to make funding proportionate to revenue, Duke should increase the programs funding from $1.9 million to $11.5 million.44, In ACEEEs 2020 analyses of U.S. utilities energy efficiency programs based on savings per customer, level of funding and the comprehensiveness of programs Duke continues to rank low, with four of six Duke monopoly utilities ranking in the bottom half of major U.S. electric utilities.45 Taken together, Dukes efficiency programs for low-income customers in the Carolinas, Florida, Ohio and Indiana showed improvement from ACEEEs report in 2020, compared to 2017.46 Nonetheless, three of Dukes subsidiaries score zero points for percent of energy efficiency funding dedicated to low-income programs.47 (See Appendix Table 3 for ACEEEs rankings by state. According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEEE, the electricity saved through advances in efficiency achieved in the past 20 years equals almost a fifth of that generated by all power sources combined.33 ACEEE says that since 1990, efficiency investments have averted the need for more than 300 additional large power plants. The My Energy Kit program, brought to you by Duke Energy and produced by The National Theatre for Children, is designed to engage K-12 students in green living and saving energy. Duke Energy'silluminationfeatures stories about people, innovations, community topics and environmental issues. The sharp increase in commodity prices contributed to a $210 million under-recovery across the prior year, when fuel prices rose after the company's annual filing. Just as efficiency investments help low-income customers lower their bills, so can going solar. A $20 increase in the flat monthly charge would be an outrageous gouging of all Duke households but might hardly be noticed by middle- or upper-income customers. Duke also underfunds its programs that are supposed to help low-income customers pay their bills. ), The most improved subsidiary was Duke Energy Florida, ascending to a ranking of 14, from 35 in 2017. But in return, Duke wants Indiana regulators to waive consumer protections for prepay customers, such as those that protect customers from unwarranted shutoffs for nonpayment. Official websites use .gov John Howat, an analyst with the National Consumer Law Center,24 was an expert witness for the NAACP and other groups opposing Dukes most recent request to raise the flat monthly charge in South Carolina.
