I think you have to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal to see this, but I’ll excerpt the relevant bit:
North Carolina regulators balked at a big power project fueled by coal, which furnishes half of U.S. electricity but is on the defensive over worries about pollution and global-warming gases.
The state utilities commission gave Duke Energy Corp. permission to build only one of two requested coal-fired power plants there and said it must spend millions of dollars on energy-efficiency programs to tamp down growing demand.
A commissioner at the North Carolina Public Utilities Commission said it was the first time in the state that approval of a major power plant had been tethered to a requirement that a utility help consumers reduce energy use through energy efficiency and conservation. Duke must plow 1% of utility revenues, about $50 million a year, back into demand-reduction programs and mothball four old plants.
