On Monday night, at an intense, impassioned rezoning hearing in Davidson County, Duke Energy revealed a stunning bit of information it had previously held close. Duke, via its subsidiary Piedmont Natural Gas, was seeking the rezoning of 1,616 acres of forested and farmed land along the last undeveloped part of the Yadkin River for a massive “enhanced” liquefied natural gas (ELNG) facility. The ELNG facility would liquefy and store gas from a major pipeline in huge, 20-story-high tanks, and then regasify it and relay it to be burned in 2,730 MW of proposed combined cycle power plants (CCs) on the Davie County side of the river. Late in the evening, after a record-size crowd begged the Commission to deny the rezoning, a Commissioner asked what seemed like a simple question: how long could the ELNG facility provide gas to the proposed gas power plants without help from the pipeline?
A representative from Duke subsidiary Piedmont Natural Gas replied: 26 days. In other words, if the Transco methane gas pipeline that runs through Duke’s property cannot provide any gas at all to the combined cycles for 26 straight days, the plants can still run full blast — “peak burn” — on just the gas stored at the ELNG facility for almost a month.
Sounds reasonable? Comforting? Here’s the thing: if there ever comes a day when Duke Energy cannot access capacity on the Transco pipeline for 26 straight days, we have much bigger problems. The Transco pipeline runs the length of the East Coast – from the Gulf of Mexico up to New York City, and it supplies gas to electric and gas utilities all along the way. In all likelihood, if Duke can’t access any gas capacity at all on Transco for these two plants for almost four weeks, then there are bigger gas supply issues all along the pipeline, and we might actually be in an Eastern Interconnection blackout (the grid from the Rockies to the Atlantic).
And if the entire grid is down, the 2,730 MW of combined cycles cannot run either. No one has power. This begs the question of why Duke wants to build the largest utility ELNG plant in the US under the guise of “fuel security,” sized it for a never-before-seen situation — but if it actually happens, the ELNG will completely fail to provide fuel security due to the larger implications of a 26-day outage on Transco.
Here’s the thing: Duke kept this information completely secret during the Carbon Plan Integrated Resource Plan (CPIRP) process this past summer. In the CPIRP, Duke is asking the NC Utilities Commission (NCUC) to approve a plan that includes the ELNG and the two dependent CCs. Both the size of the ELNG tanks and the duration of the ELNG without pipeline access were classified as “Attorneys Only” and were not accessible to intervenors, including SACE, even under our non-disclosure agreement. We could not offer our East Coast interstate gas pipeline expertise to help guide our own attorneys’ questions or Public Staff’s and Commissioner’s questions on the planned size and worst-case scenario operations. Because SACE works across the Southeast, we have unique knowledge of the entirety of the pipeline systems that serve our region and beyond. But that expertise was kept out of the process at the NCUC that will determine whether Duke should be allowed to pursue the ELNG facility and ultimately whether ratepayers should have to pay for it.
Ratepayers should not have to pay for it. It is ridiculously large and ultimately does not provide the extreme fuel security that Duke has touted. It doesn’t even provide security for Piedmont Natural Gas’ customers because it isn’t on the PNG system. It is in an isolated location on Transco. The entire project is a boondoggle that Duke has desperately tried to keep hidden from real scrutiny because Duke is poised to make huge profits if the project gets approved.
Duke succeeded in getting the parcel rezoned, paving the way for a project that will ruin that section of the river forever. While the Davidson County Commissioner who raised the question did vote with the 4-3 majority on Monday to rezone the property from Rural-Agricultural to Heavy Industrial, we are grateful that he did ask that one important question right before the vote that shines a spotlight on Duke’s dirty tricks.
We are still awaiting the NCUC’s order on the CPIRP, which is expected by the end of the year. If Duke succeeds in gaining zoning control of the Davie County side of the project, Duke is expected to file for the Commission’s approval of the two CCs in Davie County and the ELNG project in Davidson in February. SACE will be there to help the Commission scrutinize this boondoggle before construction begins and before Duke can ruin the last wild section of the Yadkin River, pollute the air and water, and further increase all Duke customers’ bills.
Watch the Commission exchange for yourself here, 5 hours and 12 minutes in.
