Dive Brief:
- NC WARN, a small non-profit environmental group, filed a lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court this week challenging two laws it believes are unconstitutional and are helping shield a proposed gas-fired power plant from proper scrutiny, the Raleigh News & Observer reports.
- One law would require NC WARN to post an $98 million bond before it could appeal the North Carolina Utilities Commission's (NCUC) decision to approve two units of Duke's proposed gas plant. The other law, the Mountain Energy Act passed in 2015, allowed for expedited approval of the project, which the group described as a "short-cut" in the process.
- The group says the state utility commission "shielded itself from an appeals court review" of Duke's $1 billion natural gas project by invoking a never before used law from 1965 "to require a $98 million bond that unconstitutionally locked the courthouse doors." According to the group, North Carolina is the only state that allows regulators to require a bond to review a power plant.
Dive Insight:
NC Warn and Duke have locked horns in a years' long struggle over the type and amount of generation the utility plans to use in its planning process. Last year, regulators denied the advocacy group the ability to act as an intervenor in Duke's planning process, saying the group's filings were too "cumbersome and time-consuming."
Now this lawsuit is the latest highlighting the tug-of-war between NC Warn and Duke over the future of the state's power mix.
In March, NCUC approved Duke Energy's proposal to construct two gas-fired turbines near Asheville, totaling 560 MW. A third unit was denied.
NC WARN says its attempt to appeal the approval of Duke's Asheville gas units, and its attempts to sue have been thwarted by a seldom-used law that effectively block the group's access to the court system.
Jim Warren, executive director of NC WARN, in a statement said the North Carolina General Assembly "gave special favors to a powerful special interest. But it is plainly unconstitutional for politicians and regulators to allow the giant Duke Energy monopoly to keep building power plants without careful, open review.”
Critics of the decision, which was reached through a 45-day expedited process, say the project avoided sufficient scrutiny. NC WARN has previously argued that regulators never pressed Duke to explain why it must build new plants "instead of using a large excess of power supply within and surrounding its own service areas."