By Elizabeth Ouzts, Energy News Network

Duke Energy spends twice as much money fueling and upkeeping its six North Carolina coal plants — costs passed on to ratepayers — than if it replaced them with brand new solar farms, a report issued today shows.  

The analysis by the clean energy policy firm Energy Innovation, the third of its kind, reflects the worsening economics of coal and the ever-tumbling prices of wind and solar. And it shows how incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act — the major federal climate law that passed last year — are making locally sourced renewables even more attractive.

The Allen coal plant just west of Charlotte is the most expensive in the state by far, according to the study, running at over $165 per megawatt-hour. The other facilities average about $44. Building solar arrays near the power plant sites, by contrast, would cost about $20.

The authors of the report, which covers 210 coal plants around the country, stress that they used publicly available data rather than proprietary business information that might produce slightly different cost figures. But the gist is undeniable.

“If you look at the fleet as a whole, you see a pretty stark trend of all of the plants are uneconomic, by a wide margin, compared to renewables,” said Mike O’Boyle, the director of Energy Innovation’s electricity program and a co-author of the report. “In North Carolina, th