Big Coal on global warming

May 17, 2005 11:00 PM

Coal-burning utility Cinergyincludes 35 pages on global warming in its annual report. Letter from the CEO, interviews with investors and other stakeholders. Via Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
posted by russilwvong (8 comments total)

The reason they feel they need to address this is because others are concerned ("signposts" 1-6). Go stakeholders, go!

Better too late than never, I suppose.
posted by sourwookie at 11:39 PM on May 17, 2005

Might be interesting if CIN had not just been bought by DUK for their coal-fired baseload capacity.
posted by JPD at 12:07 AM on May 18, 2005

The acquisition of Cinergy by Duke could be a really good thing because Cinergy Chairman and CEO Officer Jim Rogers will become president and CEO of Duke Energy. Rogers seems to be the guy behind the push to reduce GHGs at Cinergy. So now potentially he has a much bigger company where he can apply his green (for a Utility Executive) philosophy.

Sounds like a good thing to me. Too bad there aren't more electric utilities in the United States that are this forward-looking.
posted by joedharma at 2:33 AM on May 18, 2005

Exactly. If "stakeholder concerns" and "oncoming legislation" are what it takes, then that's what it takes.

I do congratulate Cinergy for being forward with this. They could have done what ExxonMobile is doing, but no, they're not going to fight the tide, they're going to surf.
posted by eriko at 4:40 AM on May 18, 2005

This development appears to be related to the fact that Rogers was one of several big-ticket speakers at a recent UN institutional investor summit on climate change.
posted by nyterrant at 5:22 AM on May 18, 2005

Uhm if the deal was done for the coal chances are the new entity won't be real quick to shut it down. And there is nothing that can be done about the amount of CO2 produced by a coal plant.

Also companies produce stuff like this all time. It never means anything.
posted by JPD at 7:31 AM on May 18, 2005

Well compared to the Bush Administration's insistence that "emissions intensity" (which is greenhouse gas emissions indexed against economic production, in which a given site and show a lowering of emissions intensity, while STILL increasing the total release of greenhouse gasses-I am not making this up) is a valid concept for evaluating this issue, it is a breath of fresh air, as it were.

Even if it's empty rhetoric.
posted by Danf at 1:47 PM on May 18, 2005

"... it is a breath of fresh air, as it were."

Yep. Coal suppliers have been a major source of astroturf global-warming denial, so it's nice to see one of their big customers facing the problem squarely. I also thought the discussion of global warming from a business/economic perspective was quite interesting.

It may be too late to prevent global warming, but it's never too late to stop making the problem worse.
posted by russilwvong at 3:51 PM on May 18, 2005