Identifying Gaps Between Utility Decarbonization Targets and Actions

Climate Majority Project
Project completed March 2020

Electricity generation from Duke Energy, Dominion Energy, and Southern Company utilities collectively represent 12.4 percent of U.S. power sector CO2 emissions – equivalent to 4.2 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions. While all three utilities have announced plans to decarbonize their electricity generation by 2050 in order to meet climate targets, a deeper look into their generation portfolios and plans reveals that all three utilities are on track to fall short of their emissions reduction commitments.

On behalf of the Climate Majority Project, Synapse investigated the companies’ current plans for fleet decarbonization. We made the following recommendations to help ensure a path to reach climate targets by 2050: (1) develop science-based CO2 trajectories upon which all future plans and actions should be rooted; (2) conduct robust retirement and replacement analysis to determine the least cost path to retire each company’s existing fossil fleet and replace it with alternative zero-carbon portfolios; (3) invest in renewables and demand-side resources to meet future resource needs; (4) invest in grid-modernization solutions in tandem with retirement of existing resources and development of renewables; and finally (5) evaluate and plan for changing system needs, including load growth driven by electrification instead of traditional steady demand.