Build Clean Energy to Save Money

It’s now cheaper to build new clean energy than it is to operate existing fossil fuel power plants in most instances.

• Why It Matters

  In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest investment in clean energy in our nation’s history. As a result, the cost of solar, wind, storage, and other clean energy technologies is dramatically lower today than it was just a year ago. Unfortunately, utilities aren’t using this year’s economics when proposing to build new power plants. This leads to more proposals to power our communities with dirty energy like Duke Energy Indiana’s plan to build a massive natural gas plant instead of using readily available clean energy resources – wind, solar, and battery storage. An Advanced Energy United study shows that clean energy performs as well as the dirty energy proposal and would save customers $68.5 million. Duke’s not the only utility using old data and making bad decisions. Far too often, decision makers aren’t asking utilities to show their work and prove their decisions are in our best interest.

• What’s the Solution?

  The IRA made large-scale clean energy resources the better choice: they can serve energy needs just as reliably as fossil fuels – while also saving customers millions of dollars. Utilities that choose to build anything but wind, solar, and storage are making more money while investing in outdated technologies that raise our utility bills.

• What Can I Do?

  Counterspark is calling on governors, state legislatures, and state regulators to demand that electric utilities reassess their plans to build new energy resources using the current cost of clean energy and reject proposals using outdated information.