Power plays: the state's energy industry expects transformational change over the next decade as gas, battery storage and alternative energies soar and a historic dependence on coal lessens.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: The Future of North Carolina: ENERGY

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The clouds have rolled in, blotting out the sun for days. At night, here on the outskirts of Elizabeth City, blinking red lights warn airplanes of the tall wind turbines west of town. A couple, retirees drawn to northeastern North Carolina by the pleasant climate, grouse about the weather forecast--more rain. Mainly it's just a nuisance. Last week, when it was sunny, power for their television and nearly everything else in their home streamed in through panels in their backyard and now is stored in a box on the wall of their garage.

Home-scale electric storage batteries were a novel idea back in 2015, when Tesla started selling the devices using similar technology as in its electric cars. Duke Energy Corp. also was experimenting with the product then, trying to solve the riddle of how to store energy when there is no sunshine for solar panels or wind for turbines. By 2026, technology advances have loosened the retired couple's reliance on the conventional power grids of Duke Energy or Dominion Resources Inc., enabling them to benefit from sustainable clean energy.

"Transformational change," David Fountain calls the potential of utility-scale electricity storage. James Buchanan Duke would agree, more than 100 years after drought nearly drained the Catawba and Yadkin rivers, forcing the industrial tycoon to find alternatives to hydroelectric power. For the next century, coal became North Carolina's energy king. Now, says Fountain, North Carolina president of Duke Energy, the coming decade represents the twilight of Buck Duke's favorite fossil fuel.

For an industry that once moved at a glacial pace, change is coming in galactic scope. "In 2005, coal was about 35% of our generation source," Fountain says. Now, it's about 27% and by 2026, it'll drop to about 19%. "In the last 10 years, we've retired half of our coal fleet in North Carolina. A significant part of that has been the transformation to natural gas." His boss puts it even more forcefully. "Coal is not an option," Lynn Good, CEO of Duke Energy, the nation's largest utility, said in a speech last year. "There will not be any new coal built in the U.S."

The decline of coal stems from increased concern about greenhouse pollutants such as carbon dioxide. It's also a costly albatross for Duke after a massive spill of ash and contaminated water from a closed plant into the Dan River near Eden in 2014. Duke has spent hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up coal plants, and Fountain says it has cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 25%...