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.

North Carolina's power suppliers, awash in solar energy and other clean resources, said today they will not be able to meet a state mandate this year for generating electricity from two of the state's most abundant renewable resources: swine waste and poultry waste. 

The organizations, including Progress Energy and Duke Energy, said they have fallen behind in efforts to sign contracts to buy power output from independent generators that burn or extract flammable gas from those agricultural animal wastes.

The power suppliers collectively asked the N.C. Utilities Commission for a delay to meet those green energy goals, saying the technologies are immature, the markets are not developed, and potential suppliers are inexperienced.

The filing was made by Raleigh-based Progress, Charlotte-based Duke, Richmond-based Dominion N.C. Power, GreenCo Solutions, Public Works Commission of Fayetteville, Tennessee Valley Authority as well as a number of rural electric cooperatives and municipal power agencies.