Duke Energy | Be a Seed for Change

just wanted to give you an update on our activities in North Carolina. Just minutes ago, activists greeted employees at Duke headquarters with a message: We’re not going away until you clean up your act. Duke & its CEO Jim Rogers keep claiming they support using renewable energy, and yet they’re spending their time and money by investing in more dirty coal.

We need to get 50,000 letters to Duke by tonight and we’re almost there. Send your message to Jim Rogers right now and tell him to dump dirty coal!

Thanks, Robert
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From: Robert Gardner, Greenpeace webmaster@greenpeaceusa.org
To: ynative77@gmail.com
Date: Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 9:35 AM
Subject: #OccupyDuke

Help back up these activists by sending the same message yourself to Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers right now.

Just moments ago activists took a stand at a coal-fired power plant in North Carolina.

Duke Energy is looking to acquire the company that owns the plant, Progress Energy. If the deal goes down, Duke will not only be the largest utility in the country but also one of the dirtiest. That’s because both companies rely on destructive practices like mountaintop removal for getting their coal and neither is making very much progress toward renewable energy.

These activists are there to send a clear message to Duke: Dirty energy is not the answer. But you don’t have to be at a coal plant to send the same message yourself.

Help back up the activists and help us reach our goal of 50,000 letters to Duke CEO Jim Rogers in the next 48 hours by sending the same message yourself right now.

Companies like Duke know they can do better and have invested a lot of money in convincing the public they are. Jim Rogers himself recently acknowledged that his company and other utilities are in a “unique position…to deploy solutions, to raise the capital and not raise the national debt, to do it at scale…”

Unfortunately, their behavior doesn’t match that rhetoric. Duke continues to rely on dirty old coal plants like the one these activists are at today in North Carolina. Polluting the air, destroying mountains, poisoning the water and killing the climate in the process.

And Duke’s planned merger with Progress Energy seems to only be leading them down more dead ends — more dangerous nuclear plants, more dirty biomass, and more coal-fired power plants. In other words, more global warming.

Duke can make a different choice if they want to. But that will only happen if we call them out. That’s why activists have taken a stand today at a coal plant in North Carolina today to get the message across, and it’s why you should take a minute to deliver the same message yourself right now.

Quit Coal,

Robert Gardner
Greenpeace Coal Campaigner

Two years ago, some of the biggest banks announced the Carbon Principles. Heralded as a new path for the banking industry, The Carbon Principles were supposed to make it “tougher to finance conventional coal-fired plants in the U.S.”

Today, we release our new report http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=gjkLELXGRCm6e1kZE68om7Z7zdTXIu4B examining the implementation and impact of these Principles, and the role that banks play in financing filthy new coal plants. The news is not good.

Our research reveals that, while the broader economy has been shifting away from new coal power plants, the banks signed on to the Carbon Principles are continuing with business as usual in regards to financing dirty coal.

Tell the banks to stop funding coal-fired power plants.

Coal-fired power plants provide nearly 50 percent of our electricity and, pound for pound, are the planet’s dirtiest source of energy. Burning coal is the nation’s top source of air pollution and toxic mercury, and is responsible for one third of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions – nearly 2 billion tons per year.

Yesterday, activists paid a well-deserved visit to Duke Energy’s Cliffside coal power plant in North Carolina, which received almost $1 billion in financing from the banks that adopted The Carbon Principles. It’s high time for banks to stop funding climate change.

Demand that the bankrolling of dirty coal be stopped!

We have delivered copies of our report to all the banks this morning. Please join us in telling the banking sector that the Carbon Principles just don’t cut it. Ask the banks to phase out support for all new and existing coal-fired power plants.

For clean air and a healthy planet,

Amanda Starbuck

Energy Finance Campaign