The utility companies that comprise today’s Duke Energy Corporation were privy to early warnings about climate change in the 1970s, well before the phenomenon emerged as a major public issue in 1988, according to a new report by the Energy and Policy Institute.

The report, “Duke Energy Knew: Documenting the Utility’s Early Knowledge and Ongoing Deception About Climate Change,” details the following:

• Duke Energy utilities’ history of involvement in industry groups that acknowledged the climate change risks of burning fossil fuels for electricity as far back as the 1960s and ‘70s.
• Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light, Public Service Indiana, and other utilities now owned by Duke Energy used the looming threat of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels to promote nuclear power as a climate solution since the 1980s.
• Duke utilities began backing disinformation campaigns in the 1990s that denied the science on the human causes of climate change and opposed binding national and international legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
• Duke Energy’s recent efforts to block policy solutions to climate pollution and delay the transition to clean energy through new investments in methane gas and by pushing back plans to phase out coal.

This is the third in a series of such reports produced by EPI, with the previous ones focused on Southern Company and the utility industry broadly. It comes at a critical regulatory moment for Duke Energy, which has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 but continues to spend billions of dollars building out fossil fuel infrastructure.

Read and download the entire report here.

(Photo is of the Sutton gas plant in North Carolina. Credit: Duke Energy Flickr page. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.)