Supporting Paris Agreement Reentry to Complement Significant Industry Progress
By Lynn Good, Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer, Duke Energy
Our country is at a critical point in addressing the important issue of climate change. At Duke Energy, we’re taking aggressive action to address this challenge while delivering affordable, reliable, and increasingly clean energy. This is what our customers, communities and stakeholders expect from us and what we expect from ourselves.
As one of our nation’s largest energy providers, we have a clear vision for our company that centers around an ambitious goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Critical to our work and this vision is working with stakeholders at every level to shape policies that enable us to aggressively reduce carbon emissions. Continuing the journey to net-zero will require significant advancements in clean energy technologies and continued collaboration with our stakeholders to help deliver a clean energy future that balances sustainability, reliability and affordability.
Our long-term, net-zero target also includes achieving at least a 50% reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. As of 2019, we have achieved a 39% reduction, well ahead of the industry average. And last year, we outlined a new target of net-zero methane emissions in our natural gas business by 2030.
U.S. reentry into the Paris Agreement will send an important signal to all sectors of the economy that the country intends to meet the objectives as outlined in the pact. And while energy companies like ours are ahead of the curve, there’s no question of the importance of all industries pulling in the same direction to tackle this global challenge. To that end, we support President-elect Biden’s decision to reenter the Paris Agreement. As the Biden Administration engages in this critical global dialogue, we look forward to adding our voice and ensuring that the policies, which seek to achieve national emission reduction goals, are cost-effective, market-based and equitable, while promoting a broad range of technology development and making provisions to efficiently address greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy.
We are committed to bringing our customers and communities affordable, reliable and clean, carbon-free energy as quickly as possible. We stand ready to deliver on this commitment, working with our regulators, elected officials and stakeholders in securing an equitable and clean energy future for the millions of Americans we are proud to serve.
