Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, Duke Energy Corp
Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good Talks Climate Goals | Bloomberg Talks
Speaking with Alix Steel and Romaine Bostick, Duke Energy Chair and CEO Lynn Good says the company is working toward ...
About Lynn Good
Lynn Good, chair, president and CEO of Duke Energy, has said the company is navigating a period of significant electricity demand growth driven by data centers, artificial intelligence, and the onshoring of U.S. manufacturing. Good stated that Duke Energy sees data center load doubling by 2028 and doubling again by 2030, and described the company as a "growth industry." She said the company is working with large customers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft on customized solutions to fuel growth while maintaining affordability and reliability. Good noted that Duke Energy's five-year capital plan has been raised to $83 billion, with a significant portion directed toward grid investment and clean energy. Good has stated that Duke Energy remains committed to a clean energy transition, with goals of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and retiring coal by 2035. She said the company is seeing an uptick in natural gas generation to meet near-term demand, which she described as a reflection of the need to maintain reliability while pursuing cleaner energy over time. Good said she does not see Duke Energy restarting coal plants, citing the age of the plants and challenges with the coal supply chain. She has emphasized the importance of nuclear power, noting that 50% of power in the Carolinas comes from nuclear, and said the company is pursuing second license renewals for its nuclear fleet. Good has also called for permitting reform to help build the infrastructure needed for the energy transition.
Transcript (13 segments)
I
Interviewer0:00
All right, shares of Duke Energy are down by about 2 and a half percent. The company reporting earnings where they raised their 5-year capex plan to about $83 billion due to increased data center and industrial demand. The company also removed certain language concerning methane emissions and net zero carbon emissions from their statement. We spoke earlier to Lynn Good, the chair and chief executive officer at Duke Energy, about that data center demand in the wake of DeepSeek's emergence and the company's commitment to clean energy.
L
Lynn Good0:30
The strategy hasn't changed. Duke Energy is committed to a future of reliability and affordability, increasingly clean energy as we retire older plants and bring new things on. But to your point around load growth and data centers, we do see an uptick in gas generation that wouldn't have been the case five years ago, just as we put together plans on how we're going to serve this load in this moment. So really committed to a future, and we see a bright opportunity for the company as we pursue this growth.
I
Interviewer1:02
I am curious, Lynn, when we talk about those gas plants and more importantly some of those coal plants and the longer term trajectory. I mean, originally Duke had made plans to shut some of those plants. I know you've reversed on that partly because of demand, and I don't know how much the new administration is factoring into that. But you take your big facility out in Indiana that's now supposed to be online until 2038. Should we expect that to be extended even further than 2038?
L
Lynn Good1:29
We have been working toward a 2035 date for retirement of coal, and we really see that as being important because these assets are aging. The supply chain supporting coal has been challenged, and we expect that to continue. But we have always looked at those dates as something that has to be reviewed in the context of what's going on in the business and also within the context of where our regulators are. So as I think about 2025 to 2038, I don't look at that as a huge shift. Duke is not stepping away from a commitment of modernizing our fleet. We're just reflecting the reality of the growth that we see in the near term, and how do we maintain reliability and keep bills as low as we can for customers at the same time, while pursuing our goals for cleaner energy over time.
I
Interviewer2:16
I'm glad you used the word reliability, particularly in the context of the data centers and AI. There's been a lot of talk amongst the companies, hyperscalers, and some of the other end users here about having reliable transmission. Was there any shift at all in some of those customers' needs, demands, hopes based on what we learned out of DeepSeek a couple of weeks ago?
L
Lynn Good2:40
It's a really good question because there's been so much dialogue over the last week about what it means. And I would say to you, the tone of the customers we're dealing with, the hyperscalers that we are dealing with, has not changed. They have always expected and shared with us that energy efficiency would be a part of their business model because they know they're big consumers of electricity. How can I reduce that demand on the system over time because I also expect my volume to increase? So as we look at our plans over the next five years, we do not see a big impact from this recent event. But of course, they're continuing to listen for changes in the industry, and as I said, we'll expect energy efficiency to continue to be an objective for the tech companies. And we welcome that because the demand for electricity broadly is just putting an impact on the system that'll demand more and more resources.
I
Interviewer3:31
Lynn, the other day I was talking to the Energy Secretary, newly confirmed, and he was talking about coal and extending the life of coal plants. He doesn't think there'll be a renaissance of coal, but nonetheless, I'm curious, Lynn, as to the direct: what would it take for a utility like you guys, a power company like you guys, to say restart a coal plant?
L
Lynn Good3:50
I don't see us restarting coal plants, Alex. And I would get back to the business case around coal in addition to clean energy over time. These plants, many of them 50, 60 years old, where the decisions around how to maintain and how to replace equipment can be challenging when you're looking at a useful life that is shortened. And so we believe the right answer is to continue to modernize our fleet, continue to take advantage of new technologies so that we are making the right decisions for our customers over the long term. That has been our strategy at Duke, it continues to be our strategy. And with the growth that we're seeing, this is why natural gas is showing up more strongly than it would have five years ago, because it represents a baseload resource that we believe matches this load requirement in this moment. And you can see that in some of our plans that we think adding those resources is important in this decade, but we will continue working toward cleaner energy over time, and those plans have not changed.
I
Interviewer4:53
You have a 5-year capital plan that actually increased capex to $83 billion, and I'm assuming a lot of that is going to be that hyperscaler and that data demand. Do you think we're ever going to be in a place where you're going to build like a mini power plant right next to a hyperscaler, or is everyone just going to be sharing the same power on a grid?
L
Lynn Good5:14
I look at this opportunity, Alex, as being a combination of both. And as you can imagine, for customers of this scale that have this amount of demand for power, we are having conversations with them about how we can meet their needs. And it could, for example, include connecting to the grid but also having a backup power supply that we could take advantage of in a peak period. There will be demand response opportunities, energy efficiency opportunities, and I believe some of them may have an interest in having their own on-site generation. I think what's important is we want to be a part of that, part of data centers, artificial intelligence, US leadership in technology. We want to be an enabler of that. And so those conversations with customers are ongoing, and I would say largely those conversations mean taking advantage of the grid for at least some, if not all, of their load, and then some of these other technologies more on the margin at this point.
I
Interviewer6:14
How cooperative, Lynn, are regulators going to be, not necessarily at the federal level but at the local and state level?
L
Lynn Good6:22
We work hand in glove with our states and local communities on economic development. And in this moment, we're talking about data centers, think about expansion of life sciences, think about advanced manufacturing. We have had a longstanding partnership around economic development, and the states see data centers as an important part of economic development, particularly at the local level. Property taxes, for example, could be important to a community. So we're in ongoing dialogue also with regulators. Their interest is in making sure if we add this load, that we're not in some way subsidizing that load with other customers. So those conversations are ongoing, and we have a lot of experience in how to execute those types of contracts, and we see them as being relevant to this moment as well.
I
Interviewer7:10
Lynn Good there, the chief executive officer over at Duke Energy.