3 little numbers haunt big energy producer

3. 12. 41.

Jim Rogers, who runs Duke Energy, can't shake those numbers.

His electricity company, operating coal- and nuclear-powered plants for the Midwest and Carolinas, is the nation's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Duke is the 12th largest C02 emitter in the world. If it were a country, Duke would be 41st in emissions worldwide.

Rogers, 60, with 19 years experience running power companies, told a packed energy conference at MIT over the weekend that he will be judged by his grandchildren on what he called "the 3-12-41 test'' -- how much he can change his company's history of carbon emissions.

That's one reason, he said, why he's in the hunt to reduce the cost and speed the development of solar power and energy efficiency. To him, "every rooftop is a power plant.'' His goal: to change the rules of the business so that power companies could get credit for energy efficiency and make deals with homeowners and others to share in the cost and profits of solar.

Rogers told the crowd that he doesn't want to penalize his customers and shareholders twice in the big switchover to alternative and efficient energy sources. The first time, he said, took place in the 1970s when the emphasis was on coal and nuclear power to drive energy independence from skyrocketing Middle East oil prices. His company now gets 97 percent of its energy from coal and nuclear power.

Today, with prices of oil and liquified natural gas prices rising, he said regions more dependent on those mainly imported fuels (New England, Texas, California, Florida) are particularly vulnerable. He said that for the first time in a century, "I think we're very close to connecting electricity to world gas prices.''

With China and India energy use rising and the world's population estimated to grow from 6.5 billion to 9 billion by 2050, what to do?

"The most successful countries today are the most energy efficient,'' Rogers said, singling out Japan as a model the United States should humbly follow. Efforts would include modernizing or totally rebuilding the fleet of current power plants, some of which have been in use six decades or more.

Rogers envisions placing a small surcharge on each kilowatt hour of energy used for a fund to subsidize new projects. He raised the idea of a "Save-a-Watt'' program in which power companies would be paid to conserve.

Energy efficiency, he said, should be seen as a production option -- like coal, gas, nuclear or solar/alternative energy. And allowing power companies "to move beyond the meter'' -- that is, not only to provide energy to a household but to share expense/profit from energy produced by a home -- would give an incentive for the large-scale investments needed to save massive amounts of fossil fuel-based energy, he said.

Ernest J. Moniz, a physicist who directs the MIT Energy Initiative and who introduced Rogers to the conference, said in an interview later that the idea of allowing power companies to move beyond the meter has merit because of the urgency in moving the United States toward greener energy.

Moniz, whose MIT group has done authoritative analyses of coal and nuclear power, said that if such a change were accepted by regulators, the next step -- a big step -- would be the negotiation on how companies such as Duke would share profits with customers who have adopted wind, solar or other alternative power.