Duke Energy 2006 Annual Report Download - page 16

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14
Changing minds by thinking differently
BEVERLY MARSHALL (LEFT), VICE PRESIDENT FOR FEDERAL POLICY AND GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS AT DUKE ENERGY,
AND JULIE GRIFFITH, VICE PRESIDENT FOR STATE GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS AT DUKE ENERGY INDIANA,
ARE TWO KEY MEMBERS OF DUKE ENERGY’S PUBLIC POLICY TEAM.
Over the next three years, Duke Energy’s regulated
businesses plan to invest more than $9 billion to
strengthen customer service and reliability, and to
meet steadily growing demand. Besides investing
in additional megawatt-hours from new plants, we
are supporting a “save-a-watt” business model
focused on energy efficiency to offset the need for
more plants, even as demand continues to grow.
With this new model, energy efficiency becomes
a sustainable system resource that plays a more
significant role in our plans to meet customers’
increasing demand for electricity.
We are working with policymakers to find the
best way to address the timely recovery of these
investments. We believe that recovering financing
costs as we build and implementing a regulatory
framework that encourages investments in energy
efficiency will result in smaller, more manageable
rate increases. This is a win-win proposition for
our customers and our investors. We also believe
that investments in energy efficiency should be put
on an equal footing with investments in new gen-
eration. With comparable earnings on investments,
we would be economically impartial to meeting
our customers’ growing demand for electricity with
investments in energy efficiency or new generation.