North Carolina Town Sues Duke Energy Over Current & Future Climate Losses, Decades Of Greenwashing

[hatrack]

A small North Carolina town is suing Duke Energy, alleging in a complaint that one of the nation’s largest electric utilities has “actively participated in a far-reaching, decades-long campaign to deceive the public and decision-makers” about the dangers of climate change. The complaint alleges that the corporation has known about the perils posed by the climate crisis for more than 50 years, and rather than mitigate its impact, has instead “engaged in widespread ‘greenwashing’ to suggest to the public that it is committed to clean energy and addressing the climate crisis,” even as the problem worsened.

Duke Energy said in a statement that it is reviewing the complaint and said it would “continue working with policymakers and regulators to deliver reliable and increasingly clean energy while keeping rates as low as possible.”

Carrboro, a town of 21,000 about 36 miles northwest of Raleigh, filed the lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court in Hillsborough on Wednesday, and asks that Duke Energy be required to award the town money for current and future losses because of climate change. It’s among more than a dozen cities, counties and states that have sued fossil fuel interests — predominantly oil companies — in recent years, seeking to hold them responsible for damage they say the corporations have caused. In Carrboro, the complaint alleged that the small town that abuts Chapel Hill has faced millions of dollars in road repairs, rising energy bills and other infrastructure costs due to climate change.

EDIT

Some of the efforts to deceive the public, according to the lawsuit, included the company paying substantial dues to trade organizations that “served as mere front groups” for the energy and utility industry. Duke’s officials were often board members or otherwise leaders in these groups, the lawsuit adds. One of these trade organizations, Edison Electric Institute, published a piece in 1989 — when Duke was allegedly well-aware of the climate crisis’s risks — that criticized proposed legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions and “cast doubt upon the seriousness of fossil fuel emissions and climate change,” the lawsuit said. Duke was also a “leading participant” in the Global Climate Coalition, a group of businesses — many of which were fossil fuel companies — created to oppose action on the climate crisis, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also pointed to advertisements supported by Duke — such as one that ran in a Kentucky newspaper in 1991 stating: “If the earth is getting warmer, why is Kentucky getting colder?”

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/12/05/carrboro-lawsuit-duke-energy-climate/

https://wapo.st/3OJgYSc

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. Good!

I’ve hated Duke Energy for decades, even more than ExxonMobil.

https://energyandpolicy.org/duke-energy-knew-climate-change/