Gillespy discusses debate between environmental concerns, costs
Clark Gillespy stands quietly before a group of about 40 students and faculty in the Business Administration building’s Lumpkin Auditorium, pausing a few seconds before he asks,
“How’s it all going to end?”
He is referring to the nation’s ongoing economic turmoil.
A few students chuckle; “No, seriously,” he retorts. “How’s it all going to end?”
As the U.S. struggles to claw its way back to prosperity while facing high unemployment and trying to make sense of a recovery that seems mostly marked by its stagnation, Gillespy couldn’t help but inquire about it.
“This is the question that keeps me up every night,” he said. “And, ironically, this is the question that inspires me every morning.”
Gillespy, Duke Energy’s vice president for economic development in North and South Carolina, said he sees business expansion as the answer to the nation’s economic woes, and he emphasized his company’s role in bringing such growth to the Carolinas.
That’s an important concern, as South Carolina’s 11 percent unemployment rate in September was the 47th worst in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. North Carolina ranked 43rd with a rate of 10.5 percent.
Duke Energy, Gillespy said, works to attract new business to the state since it courts a set of industries also targeted by the state Commerce Department, such as automobile and pharmaceutical manufacturers, food processors and others.
“(They are) large employers, tremendous capital investments and, from the energy perspective, extremely large power users,” Gillespy explained. “The 10 target industries we are going after are the ones that are cutting-edge, highest growth, [have the] highest potential for growth and that we have competitive advantages in. That’s how we keep South Carolina competitive.”
His company and other utilities play an important role, Gillespy argued, in supporting new business ventures, because corporations ask for cheap, reliable electricity and increasingly, clean energy.
The latter has become more important to the company since the 2007 passage of North Carolina’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard, which requires investor-owned utilities like Duke to provide 12.5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.
Questions from students and faculty pressed Gillespy on the details of his company’s involvement with such sources, including solar, hydroelectric and biomass energy.
The crux of the issue, said Gillespy, comes down to finding a balance between environmental responsibility and keeping down electricity costs.
In the long term, however, he said he sees renewable sources taking on a more prominent role in his company’s energy portfolio.
“We know there will be less coal — absolutely know there will be less coal. We know there will be more renewables,” he said. “The big question mark is around nuclear ... because that is a base load source of energy,” meaning that it can inexpensively provide for the nation’s consistent energy needs.
Gillespy’s lecture represented the third of six talks in the Office of the Provost and Carolina Leadership Initiative’s Duke Energy “Executives-in-Residence” program that focuses on a theme of “Leadership in Sustainability.”
The goal of the series, Peggy Binette of the Office of News and Internal Communications wrote in an email, is to give students and faculty a better understanding of the complex energy industry by inviting officials from one company to speak about its different elements.