State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird writes to her constituents weekly. Here is an excerpt from her latest message.

A far-reaching environmental measure was passed several years ago. It was called the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS) and required energy companies to purchase 7 to 14 percent of their energy from alternative sources by 2020. It has proved successful, providing a boost to our solar energy industry as well as preventing the need to build more coal or nuclear power plants.

This session, a bill was introduced that would have repealed this alternative energy requirements. In a victory in this grim legislative session, a House committee voted down the chair’s own bill to repeal the renewable energy requirement. Even Republicans joined to vote the bill down.

Interestingly, Duke and Progress Energy that have participated in the alternate energy production goals, and neither asked to have the requirement repealed. The bill was purely ideologically based on the idea that government shouldn’t force industry to meet such requirements. Solar is one of the fastest-growing industries in the state. And while there are complaints that the solar industry is subsidized, the oil and gas industry is much more heavily subsidized.

Former Progress Energy CFO Mark Mulhern, one of the casualties of Progress's merger with Duke Energy, has been picked as chief financial officer of a Texas oil and gas exploration company that has diversified into fracking.

Dallas-based Exco Resources announced Mulhern's appointment this morning before the start of market trading. Mulhern had been a member of Exco's board of directors and chaired the company's audit committee.

As the price of solar energy continues to plummet, Progress Energy is reducing its incentive programs to avoid overpaying for electricity bought from small solar power producers.

Raleigh-based Progress has canceled a popular rebate program for small businesses that install solar panels, and the electric utility has halved a solar rebate available to residential customers.

Under its Commercial SunSense program, Progress had paid a fixed price of 15 cents a kilowatt hour for solar power under long-term contracts. The fixed rate had been available for solar arrays between 10 kilowatts and 500 kilowatts, which are regarded as small by today's measure.

Progress froze that program last summer and said in late 2012 it would not be available this year. In recent years the company had contracted more than 9 megawatts of electricity as part of Commercial SunSense.

NC WARN asked the N.C. Court of Appeals on Wednesday to review modifying or even revoking the $32 billion merger between Progress Energy and Duke Energy that created the nation’s largest electric utility.

The advocacy group based in Durham alleges that the merging companies withheld material financial information and that the N.C. Utilities Commission did not allow hearings on issues raised by NC WARN.

The group says that the merger's hidden costs will result in increased costs for customers, even though the deal was touted as a cost-saver and public benefit.

The Utilities Commission, which had previously approved the Progress-Duke merger with conditions, had rejected NC WARN’s arguments in December. Wednesday's court filing is an appeal of the Utilities Commission review.

Duke Energy said Thursday it has added three major power plants in recent weeks, including the Cliffside coal-burning power plant that many believe will be the last coal burner approved in the state.

The announcement of 2,365 megawatts of new generation anticipates Charlotte-based Duke's request for rate increase, which is expected in February. The cost of the touted power plants will part of the rate case.

Two of the power plants, in Mooresboro and Eden, belong to the Duke electric utility. Another, near Goldsboro, belongs to Raleigh-based Progress Energy, a Duke Energy subsidiary that already has a rate increase request pending at the N.C. Utilities Commission.

The $2.2 billion Cliffside coal plant, west of Charlotte in the Appalachian foothills, was mired in controversy from the outset and opposed by hundreds of North Carolinians in public comments and letters sent to the N.C. Utilities Commission. The commission in 2007 approved only one of the two coal burners Duke had requested.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said it wasn't illegal, it wasn't improper, and it couldn't be helped.

But he's sorry anyway.

That sums up Rogers' sentiments as expressed in a one-page letter written this week to the N.C. Utilities Commission. The Commission has just wrapped up a 5-month investigation of Charlotte-based Duke and imposed additional conditions on the power company's $32 billion merger with Raleigh-based Progress Energy.

One of the additional conditions: Duke had to write a public statement of penance for the way in mishandled the merger and fired CEO-to-be Bill Johnson just hours after the merger was completed on July 2. Rogers' Dec. 10 letter is the mea culpa the Utilities Commission felt was necessary to bring closure to the merger investigation.

The N.C. Utilities Commission had approved the merger just days earlier, on June 29, on the understanding that Johnson would lead the combined company. Johnson was formerly CEO at Progress.

"Duke Energy is a company that can be trusted," Rogers wrote in the letter. "We take our bond of trust with all regulators very seriously, and will work hard to continue to earn and maintain your trust."

Durham advocacy group NC WARN is continuing to press state regulators to undo the merger between Duke Energy and Progress Energy, using some of its strongest language to date to denounce the $32 billion deal.

On Tuesday NC WARN told the N.C. Utilities Commission it had discovered an internal document that suggests "criminal misconduct and perjury" on the part of Progress and Duke officials in the weeks leading up to their merger.

NC WARN director Jim Warren said the document demonstrates that the companies were deliberately withholding information from each other, from regulators and from shareholders. 

"The shareholders are looking at at $2 billion to $3 billion lunch that they may have to eat," Warren said.

Barely a month after Progress Energy said it wanted to raise rates in North Carolina, the state Attorney General is jumping into the case.

The AG has a long history of involvement in utility matters over the years, but defers to another state agency, the Public Staff, to protect consumers. Attorney General Roy Cooper said that he has just one dedicated lawyer for utility matters, compared to dozens of attorneys, lawyers and engineers at the Public Staff.

Monday's one-paragraph legal notice filed with the N.C. Utilities Commission signals the regulatory body that the AG will press its case that corporate profit margins at public utilities must be held down during a prolonged economic downturn.

The AG lost the same argument this year before the Utilities Commission on Duke Energy's rate case. The AG has appealed and last week urged the N.C. Court of Appeals to throw out the Utilities Commission's approval of a 7.1 percent residential rate increase for Duke.

"When we see a situation that's important, we intervene," Cooper said. "We were concerned about double-digit profit margins in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression."
 

A year ago, when it looked like Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers would be stepping down, Duke executives were fishing around for a suitably-sized thank-you to their chief executive.

The grandest gesture of all in utility-land is naming a power plant after a onetime CEO. So Duke officials mused: What power plant could make a lasting public statement about the legacy of Jim Rogers?

Internal emails released this week by Duke to the N.C. Utilities Commission show that company officials briefly considered associating Rogers with two of the most controversial energy projects in Duke's recent history.

The irony was not lost on longtime Duke critic, Jim Warren, who runs NC WARN, a Durham advocacy group.

"Interesting parallel to what a lot of the activists were thinking down the same line," Warren said, laughing. "We want to wrap his legacy around building the last coal plant -- while he's dancing on the international stage as the visionary power CEO."

Progress Energy will soon be buying electricity from an unusual source of energy: Ted Turner, the founder of the CNN cable news empire.

In an announcement issued Thursday, Raleigh-based Progress will buy the power output from a recent Turner investment: a solar farm near Oxford in Granville County.

The 2.5-megawatt solar farm is jointly owned by Turner Renewable Energy and by a subsidiary of Southern Co., the multi-state electric utility based in Atlanta.

Turner Renewable Energy is owned by media mogul Ted Turner, whose business interests include alternative energy and more than 55,000 head of bison on land holdings spanning 2 million acres in a dozen U.S. states and in Argentina.

The Granville Solar Facility is the first North Carolina energy project and fourth joint solar acquisition for Southern and Turner. The facility is nearing completion and expects to begin generating power this month.

Southern Co., which issued the announcement, said the company teamed up with Turner Renewable Energy in January 2010 "to strategically develop renewable energy projects in the United States." The Turner-Southern venture owns solar farms in New Mexico, and Nevada.