Maybe Duke Energy thought that Bill Johnson would be accommodating enough to disappear from public view after they voluntarily resigned him. After all, they gave him a package worth up to $44.7 million to go away and work on his short game.

But then an unpleasant thing happened to the guys in Charlotte this weekend, which is that the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a huge utility, picked Johnson to be the new  CEO. Which may be puzzling to Duke shareholders.

After all, Johnson was said by the old Duke members of the new Duke board to be such an overbearing sort that they felt they had to eject him from the C-suite toot suite once the merger with Progress Energy closed and give him a huge pile of cash to get his badge. In a matter of four months, however, Johnson is back in a big job with a big salary.

Presumably, given his nano-tenure atop Duke (congratulations on your appointment, handshakes all around, and, then, "It's been literally minutes, and it's just not working out, Bill"), Johnson probably said to the TVA board something like: "You guys really mean this. I mean, you don't have crossies on, or nothing?" And the TVA board replied: "No crossies." And they all probably had to pinky swear in the execution of  the employment contract.

Well, it's been several hours, and nothing from Knoxville suggests that Johnson has been frog-marched out the front door yet, and it is early afternoon, so his new job is probably secure.

---Dan Barkin, senior editor

Claim: “The North Carolina Supreme Court and Justice Lake had a case, and they said when he was mayor pro tem he collaborated with his employer, Duke Energy, to have the city of Charlotte condemn part of a family farm in order to enhance Duke’s profit line,” Dalton said during the debate. “And they said he filed a sworn affidavit and didn’t tell the truth. He was looking after that special interest. He wasn’t looking after the people. He certainly wasn’t looking after the farmer.”

McCrory responded by saying, “This is the first I’ve heard of this. It is just amazing, this attack on the private sector. … I had 34 years of business experience with Duke Energy, which I am very proud of. I was employed by them the whole time I was mayor. Never was there a question of ethical indiscretion.”

Dalton later responded, “I think that is a pretty significant indiscretion.”

Progress Energy is scheduled to shutter two more coal-fired power plants on Monday as the company phases out its use of the cheap but dirty fuel across the region.

The latest closings are the final two units at the Cape Fear plant near Moncure in Chatham County and the H.B. Robinson Unit 1 plant near Hartsville, S.C.

In all, Progress is now in the process of demolishing a dozen coal-burning units at five sites. Two weeks ago it closed the aging H.F. Lee power plant near Goldsboro.

Progress Energy Carolinas, a subsidiary of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, announced its coal-abandonment strategy in 2009 in response to expected federal caps on greenhouse gases and stricter limits on pollution.

The 316-megawatt Cape Fear plant has six coal-fired units on site, the last two of which were built in 1956 and 1958. Two of the six units were retired in 1977 and another two last year.

The H.B. Robinson plant is Progress' only coal-fired plant in South Carolina.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers touched on all his talking points Thursday morning as the beleaguered chief executive continues making his speaking circuit around the state to reassure the public -- and public officials -- that the newly-merged electric utility can be trusted to act in the interest of the state and its residents.

Charlotte-based Duke has been under scrutiny since merging with Raleigh-based Progress Energy in July, and almost immediately firing Bill Johnson as CEO and reinstating Rogers at the top of what is now the nation's largest electric utility. The firing is under investigation by the N.C. Attorney General and also by the N.C. Utilities Commission, which had approved the merger with the understanding that Johnson would run the combined company.

"The CEO change at the end was a big surprise to this community in particular. That's not what we had in mind at the start of this long journey," Rogers told a group of business people in downtown Raleigh. "And I'm sorry it created more anxiety about this merger. Some of you already viewed the merger with mixed feelings."

Duke Energy is on track to staff its entire 29,000-employee organization by next month in the wake of the Charlotte power company's merger with Raleigh-based Progress Energy.

The newly structured company is also preparing to introduce a new corporate logo and a name change for its recently acquired electric utility subsidiary. That means that customers of Progress Energy, formerly called Carolina Power & Light, will have to get accustomed to a new name: Duke Energy Progress.

Since completing its merger July 2, the combined Duke has now filled the top 675 executive and management positions and is staffing mid-level and lower level slots. What remains unknown is the number of people who will be laid off as a result of the consolidation that will eliminate 1,860 positions company-wide.

"We are making extensive efforts to minimize the number of employees who must leave the company involuntarily," Duke CEO Jim Rogers said in an Aug. 31 letter to the N.C. Utilities Commission. "Our goal is to provide affected employees with options whenever possible.

"In situations where we have exhausted these options and an involuntary severance is unavoidable, we have put in place a severance plan that provides financial assistance for the transition," Rogers wrote.
 

The volume of internal corporate records Duke Energy has filed with the N.C. Utilities Commission as part of the agency's investigation into Duke's conduct already exceeds 5,000 pages.

Duke said in filings yesterday that it plans to make additional disclosures in the coming weeks. The filings are part of the fallout from Duke's ill-fated merger with Raleigh-based Progress Energy, which has exposed deep rifts between the two companies and triggered a pair of state investigations.

Only about 600 of Duke's pages are publicly accessible on the commission's web site -- consisting largely of emails sent between board members and CEO Jim Rogers. They have been filed along with nearly 1,900 pages submitted under seal by the Charlotte-based Duke's Raleigh law firm, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

The confidential filings cite exemptions to the state's public records laws, which shield records protected by attorney-client privilege as well as corporate trade secrets.

The bulk of the filings, however, were made by the white-shoe New York firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore. This firm is representing six former board members of Progress Energy who joined Duke's board July 2 as part of Duke's merger with Raleigh-based Progress.

Not a single page of the Cravath filings is public.
 

Another top executive from Progress Energy is leaving in the wake of the Raleigh-based power company's troubled merger with Charlotte's Duke Energy.

Duke said today that Vincent Dolan, 57, will step down by the end of this year. That would make Dolan, who will have worked for the Raleigh utility more than a quarter-century, the fifth high-level executive to leave what is now the nation's biggest electric utility in the wake of the $32 billion merger.

No reason was given for Dolan's planned departure. But it's no secret that Duke was disappointed in the way Progress handled its Florida operations, which Dolan had overseen since 2009. Duke officials told the N.C. Utilities Commission in public hearings last month that they had serious concerns about the Progress-Duke merger on account of soaring nuclear costs in Florida, Progress Energy's biggest service area.

In its announcement, Duke lauded Dolan as "an exemplary leader and a tireless advocate for Florida customers."

Progress Energy and Duke Energy have agreed to sign more contracts for solar power as they continue looking to buy electricity generated from swine waste and poultry waste.

The utilities' proposal with industry lobbying organizations is intended to buy time for the two North Carolina electric utilities to contract for power generated from this state's abundant agricultural wastes.

Raleigh-based Progress and Charlotte-based Duke signed their agreement with the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, N.C. Farm Bureau, N.C. Pork Council and the N.C. Poultry Federation. The N.C. Utilities Commission, which has the authority to approve or reject the proposal, has scheduled a hearing for next month.

The companies have warned they will be unable to meet state-imposed mandates this year and in 2013 on contracting for green power generated from poultry and hog waste. The main problems are lack of operating facilities and high costs for such energy sources that are still regarded as experimental.

The nation's top utilities regulator, who oversaw the approval of the merger between Progress Energy and Duke Energy last month, staunchly defended the right of a corporate board to fire the CEO and replace him at will.

The comments by Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, suggest that even if such a CEO switch is unpopular with other board members, employees and state regulators, "everybody needs to move on."

Wellinghoff made his comments Tuesday at an industry conference in Washington. His remarks were reported by Bloomberg News.

Wellinghoff's remarks came in response to reporters' questions about Charlotte-based Duke's firing of CEO Bill Johnson, 58, just hours after the merger was completed July 2. Wellinghoff noted that he's not specifically discussing Duke or Johnson because the FERC docket on the matter remains open and he can't comment on it, Bloomberg reported.

"I believe that a board of directors of a utility has the right to decide whoever they want to run the utility," Wellinghoff said at a Platts Energy Podium. "Once the board of directors does that, regardless of their timing, I think everybody needs to move on."