Duke Energy CEO Calls for Purpose-Driven Capitalism

Our greatest competition isn’t inside North Carolina.Our biggest competitors aren’t the companies and states in the South,or the East or West Coasts. Our competition is global, and that’s truewhether you’re selling pork, or loan portfolios, or even kilowatthours. 

The change begins with us – North Carolina and American businesses. The only way to get our mojo back as a countryis through innovation, drive, and creativity, and that’s whatpurpose-driven capitalism can do.  

New Nuclear Must Be Part Of Our Energy Future

As we wait for Washington to breakits gridlock and deflate its deficit bubble, we need to continue tomodernize our power infrastructure and build more efficient sources ofgeneration. We need to innovate and push ahead, and one of the keys tomoving forward is new nuclear power.

New nuclear generation is an important part of our decarbonizationstrategy because it’s the only source of carbon-free, base-load power.Nuclear is expensive in the short term, but actually low-cost in thelong term. We know this well in the Carolinas because nuclear provideshalf of our generation. It’s a large part of the reason why ourelectricity rates are so much lower than the national average. Today webenefit from decisions made decades ago to invest in nuclear power. Weneed to continue that tradition and be willing to invest more now sofuture generations can pay less in the future.  

Across the U.S. from the Carolinas to the Midwest and the Westcoast, utilities are modernizing their aging fleets for the nextforty-fifty years. By 2050, Duke Energy will need to replace our entirefleet, with the exception of our hydro facilities. In the next two yearsalone we will spend $8-to-$9 billion onnew capital construction. You can count the number of companies in theU.S. that will invest as much capital to build plants that employAmericans in America on one hand.  

That’s part of the good news. In 2010, Duke Energy spent more than $2 billion constructing new plants and solar farms in the Carolinas. Theseinvestments created more than 2,500 jobs directly, and of coursesupported many others indirectly through our suppliers such as Shaw,General Electric, and hundreds of small North Carolina businesses.  

Keeping The Nation’s Largest Utility In North Carolina

Our merger with Progress Energy will help make the construction ofnew nuclear generation possible because our combined company will have astronger balance sheet with more diverse earnings. This is important inorder to access the large amounts of capital needed to build newnuclear plants.  

Bigger is not always better. But what our merger does is combine the talents of two great North Carolina companies so we can lead the nation into a lower-carbon, more efficient energy future.

The merger also makes financial sense. By combining our operations we will be able to save our customers $600-800 million in fuel costs in the Carolinas over the next five years.  

I’ve led three mergers during my 22-year career as a CEO, and I knowthere is a lot of concern in the community, and in our companies. Ourcompany will remain a key contributor to our communities across ourstate, especially Raleigh and the Triangle, where Progress Energy is an exceptional corporate citizen.

Purpose-Driven Capitalism

We hear about the real estate bubble, excessive leverage, and flawedregulation in the financial services as causes of the economic crises.It’s true. All of these factors contributed to the crisis. But at adeeper level what happened is that business lost its sense of purpose inthe U.S.

We need to refocus on purpose now, on values, on significance.Wealth for wealth’s sake is meaningless. Just as getting big simply toget large is misguided, and sometimes tragic. This reorientation ispurpose-driven capitalism.  

Purpose-driven capitalism is really an old-idea in a new suit. It’sthe recognition that business has a role to play in society beyondsimply driving shareholder returns. Business serves a wide array ofstakeholders, from customers and employees, to business partners, thegovernment, and our communities. And I believe the true value of abusiness can only be measured in relation to its impact on its widearray of stakeholders, not just earnings per share.

This isn’t to say that the bottom line doesn’t matter. As all of usin this room know, it does and always will. But it’s only one limitedmeasure of success.  

Purpose-driven capitalism. Many of you live it. I certainly havetried to throughout my career. I actually think we have a better senseof what this means in North Carolina than elsewhere in the U.S. And soon we will have an opportunity for somemore of the world to see our values. In 2012, we’ll be hosting ourfirst national political convention in North Carolina. It will be a rare opportunity to showcase our state’s resilience on a national and international stage.

The change begins with us, here, now. It’s not just energy, orhealthcare, or new-generation textiles, or financial services. It’s allof us who are making a living in the private sector and creatingopportunities for others. It’s purpose-driven capitalism, home grown,here in the great state of North Carolina.

About Duke Energy

Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power companies in the United States,supplies and delivers energy to approximately 4 million U.S. customers.The company has approximately 37,000 megawatts of electric generatingcapacity in the Midwest and the Carolinas, and natural gas distributionservices in Ohio and Kentucky. In addition, Duke Energy has more than 4,000 megawatts of electric generation in Latin America, and is a joint-venture partner in a U.S. real estate company.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C.,Duke Energy is a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York StockExchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company isavailable on the Internet at: www.duke-energy.com.