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NC House Passes Sweeping Energy Bill

The N.C. Legislative Building in Raleigh. PAUL GARBER/WFDD FILE

The state House passed wide-ranging energy legislation during a rare midnight session early Thursday. Republican leaders called the House back in session for a required second vote on the measure after Democrats blocked an earlier attempt.

The bill would expand solar production and retire several Duke Energy coal-fueled power plants. Environmentalists say those facility retirements rely too much on shifting to natural gas for electricity.

The legislation also lets Duke Energy seek multi-year rate increases, rather than year by year, and directs the utility to find a location for a new type of nuclear power plant. 

The measure now heads to the Senate. A spokesman for Gov. Roy Cooper's office expressed opposition to it, saying it weakens regulators' ability to block unfair higher electricity rates on consumers and doesn't do enough to boost clean energy. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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