Duke Energy to retire coal fleet by 2035

US utility Duke Energy says it will stop burning coal by 2035, 13 years earlier than previously planned, as part of an expanded clean energy action plan.

The plan also calls for cutting coal's share of Duke's energy mix to less than 5pc by 2030. Coal accounted for 22pc of Duke's net generation last year.

The utility called its exit from coal the "largest planned coal fleet retirement in the industry." And the announcement comes less than a year after Duke said it planned to stop using coal by 2048.

Duke already started to suggest, shortly after last year's announcement, that it could hasten its coal plant exit. The preferred scenarios in integrated resource plans filed with state regulators in September and December 2021 listed closing its coal fleet in North Carolina by 2030 and coal plants in Indiana by 2035. The company also had put retiring the Crystal River coal plant in Florida in 2034 and closing the East Bend generating station in Kentucky in 2035 in the preferred scenarios for integrated resource plans in those states.

"The energy sector must transform for the future in a way that also benefits our society today," Duke chief sustainability officer Katherine Neebe said yesterday. "Achieving this vision will require us to transition to low- and zero-emissions fuel sources, invest in our communities and develop and prepare a diverse workforce."

Duke also expanded its goals for having net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to include no longer buying fossil fuel-based power from other generators. And it has added a new net-zero target for its natural gas business that includes upstream methane and carbon emissions related to purchased gas as well as downstream emissions from customers' energy use.

The company also is examining indirect emissions from its value chain and will eventually design a plan for Duke to limit those emissions in its portfolio. It said it will share more details on those initiatives during its ESG Investor Day later this year.

Duke said it is on pace to achieve its previously announced target of reducing CO2 emissions by at least 50pc by 2030 from 2005 levels, and to be carbon-neutral by 2050. Its emissions already are 44pc below 2005 levels, it said.

Duke has retired 56 coal units with a combined capacity of about 7,500MW since 2010. It has more than 16,000MW of remaining coal capacity spread across 11 facilities. Together, they consumed about 20mn short tons (st) (18mn metric tonnes) of coal from January-November 2021, according to the latest data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The coal units received about 14.7mn st of coal in the same period. Deliveries included about 7.8mn st of Illinois basin coal, 4.4mn st of Northern Appalachian coal and 2.4mn st of Central Appalachian coal, EIA fuel receipts data show. Alliance Resource Partners, American Consolidated Resource Partners, Consol Energy and Peabody Energy were among the top suppliers.

Duke would use natural gas and renewable energy to replace coal capacity in North Carolina and Indiana. In the latest integrated resource plan Duke filed in the Carolinas, its preferred roadmap for future load and generation calls for adding 9,600MW of natural gas-fired power through 2035 and nearly quadrupling its solar capacity to more than 15,500MW by that year.

The preferred scenario in Indiana modeled adding 7,325MW of renewable generation.

By Nick Georgiou