Renewed purpose: Bountiful supplies, new technology and fresh guidance from Raleigh have North Carolina's renewable-energy industry positioned for success.

• Author: Saylor, Teri
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION: ENERGIZED

North Carolina has many riches, but none are fossil fuels. There's nary a lump of coal or drop of crude to be found from Manteo to Murphy. But it makes up for its lack with plentiful sources of renewable energy.

Washington, D.C.-based Solar Energy Industries Association says North Carolina had the second-most installed solar capacity in the country through 2016. Its biofuel resources are the country's third richest, says Gus Simmons, vice president and director of bioenergy for Winston-Salem-based consulting firm Cavanaugh & Associates. "There is an immense resource base, and most dominant are agricultural resources such as pork, poultry, crops and forestry products."

Simmons is working with Wilmington-based Optima Bio-Energy, which uses anaerobic digestion to turn hog waste into natural gas. Piedmont Natural Gas Co., a subsidiary of Charlotte-based Duke Energy Corp., recently agreed to build lines that will allow the natural gas Optima produces at three Duplin County hog farms to be used as renewable energy. "The amount of natural gas we produce is really a small fraction of the amount we consume in the state, but it's an important first step," he says.

The Optima project comes at an opportune time for the state's hog industry, says Angie Maier, the North Carolina Pork Council's director of government affairs and sustainability. "Because of a 2007 moratorium on new swine farms in North Carolina, there has been no new swine-farm expansion, and renewable-energy opportunities give the farmers a new use for their product. The Optima project is exciting--the first of its kind in North Carolina--and represents the first native natural gas to be harnessed from our state's resources."

Even though North Carolina is home to plenty of pigs--9.3 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture--making waste-to-energy economics work is tough, Maier says. "The viability of using hog waste for energy depends on production methods, the size of the farms, how the swine are raised and how the waste is maintained. You have to have a lot of pigs concentrated in close proximity. Optima's work is a small but important part of what is to come later."

North Carolina is harnessing its abundant sunshine, too. Enough solar energy is generated, mostly in eastern counties, to meet more than 5% of the state's electricity needs, according to a 2017 Environment North Carolina Research and Policy Center report. Solar production in North Carolina increased...