Duke Energy, Once Outspoken on Diversity and the Environment, Now Whispers 

Duke Energy’s annual shareholder meeting in May appeared to be the acme of corporate comfort. The Charlotte-based utility’s leadership, featuring recently appointed CEO Harry Sideris, sat in cushy, grey padded chairs, accompanied by tasteful, white floral arrangements and potted green ferns.

It was all smiles and reassuring tones as they glided through shareholder proposal votes and plans to invest $83 billion in electricity generation and transmission over the next five years.

Yet when the presentation turned to shareholder queries, a disruption broke the placid surface. “Just a reminder that I’m reading these questions word-for-word as they were submitted,” said Duke Vice President of Investor Relations Abby Motsinger.

“‘Will you please stop all DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] activities and fire all DEI function workers?’” Motsinger read. Her eyes closed and lips pursed into a frown before the camera cut to Sideris. The CEO stared straight ahead as he addressed the question.

“We respect that there are a lot of differing viewpoints on this social issue,” said Sideris. “First and foremost, let me emphasize that we’ve always had a merit-based approach to hiring—our employment decisions have always been, and still are, based on skills, experience, capabilities, and performance.”

“But it is also our experience that building a diverse workforce with different perspectives and experiences, as well as creating an inclusive workplace, makes us stronger and more resilient,” Sideris continued. “We see diversity as a competitive advantage, ultimately benefiting our employees and the customers we serve. We understand and value that everyone has a difference of opinion on this topic, and we will always remain compliant with the applicable laws and governmental requirements at the federal and state levels.”

If Duke Energy still regards diversity as an advantage, however, it has been less keen to champion its value. In the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests, Sideris’s predecessor Lynn Good told investors that Duke would “continue to advocate for change, stand up for justice and ensure the communities where we work and live are provided with equal opportunities.”

Duke has also taken a more muted position on other initiatives investors commonly lump together as a shorthand for responsible corporate citizenship: environmental, social, and governance, or ESG. 

In 2022, the utility published a full ESG report, calling it “one of our most important annual publications” and its principles “essential to who we are.” This year, the acronym and the phrase it represents were entirely absent from company communications, and the 2022 report appears to have been removed from its website (though a copy of the document is available through the nonprofit Internet Archive).

Duke is far from alone in making this shift. Across both North Carolina and corporate America, many companies have pulled back from bold social statements and shed thousands of jobs tied to diversity efforts since a peak in 2023. Many fear the wrath of President Donald Trump’s administration, which recently called ESG “a Marxist march through corporate culture.”

But activists argue that Duke’s stance—or failure to take one—is particularly important. The utility is the fourth-most valuable company headquartered in North Carolina and a leader among the state’s corporate citizens. It’s faced racial justice issues since at least 1971, when the U.S. Supreme Court found the company was discriminating against Black workers in a landmark case. Environmental groups have put pressure on the company as well, pointing to data that shows Duke Energy has placed polluting infrastructure like coal ash ponds in predominantly minority communities. They also suggest the company’s future plans for power generation could overburden the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Duke itself hasn’t been clear about the extent to which changes in how it talks about ESG relate to changes in practice. Over a series of email exchanges, Duke spokespeople first said that the company planned to comment, then that a response was being considered for approval, and then declined.  

“We have decided to sit this one out and we look forward to working with you on future stories,” spokesperson Shawna Berger finally wrote, two months after The Assembly’s initial outreach.

Under the Radar

The clearest examples of Duke’s shifting messaging can be found in its proxy statements and 10-K forms, which are annual reports the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies to submit informing their shareholders about the firm and its plans.

Documents Duke released in early 2024 featured both internal and external programs meant to further social and environmental goals. The latest iterations omit substantial parts of that language.

On diversity, last year’s 10-K includes references to an executive-level “Enterprise Diversity and Inclusion Council,” “aspirational goals” for workplace representation of women and people of color, and partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities aimed at “building a diverse and highly skilled talent pipeline.”

The 2024 proxy statement highlights employee discussions to “support an inclusive workplace,” along with “diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity [and] gender” as desired qualities for board members.

None of those references show up in the 2025 10-K or proxy statement, and Duke declined to respond to an extensive series of questions regarding the status of its DEI efforts.

Sue Sturgis, a Raleigh-based researcher with the California nonprofit Energy & Policy Institute, said these annual reports are signals to shareholders about where Duke is headed. If something is eliminated, an investor would reasonably conclude it’s no longer a company priority.

“I would presume, as an investor, that what I’m seeing in these documents are statements about material realities,” Sturgis said. “These are not just press releases.”

Attempts to independently verify the status of specific Duke DEI programs yielded mixed results. For example, the utility announced in 2018 that it had joined the HBCU Partnership Challenge spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat who represents most of Charlotte. Adams’ office did not respond to questions about whether Duke Energy remains a partner. 

Comment requests about Duke’s DEI work to the state chapter and national leadership of the American Association of Blacks in Energy, a nonprofit of which many Black Duke employees are members, were either unacknowledged or declined.   

In 2019, Duke touted its work with the N.C. Governor’s HBCU Internship Program, a UNC System initiative, to bolster workforce diversity. But Andy Wallace, a UNC spokesperson, confirmed that the company has not been involved with the program since at least 2021.

In other cases, Duke appears to be continuing support for programs, particularly at HBCUs, though it no longer mentions that work in public communications. Jordan Howse, spokesperson for the North Carolina A&T State University’s College of Engineering, confirmed that the utility has continued to back its HOME Program, but declined to share specifics. At North Carolina Central University, Duke Energy continues to support an internship for law students and a dual-degree program for physics and math students, said spokesperson Quiana Shepard, but she did not provide current funding levels.

Another effort Duke has continued is a free laptop program with the Davidson-based nonprofit E2D. The company highlighted its support to distribute computers to students at 10 North Carolina HBCUs in a 2024 blog post, but hasn’t mentioned the program since then. When it was announced, E2D President Pat Millen said Duke’s leadership was “setting a new standard for corporate responsibility in North Carolina.”

In a recent interview, Millen said Duke’s commitment hasn’t changed and has helped provide more than 5,000 computers a year, along with volunteer hours and financial support. But he acknowledges that companies (and nonprofits like his both face “difficulties associated with how the White House wants us to perceive certain words and certain phrases.” 

E2D’s laptop program now explicitly targets first-generation college students rather than HBCUs, though most students receiving computers already met that criterion, Millen said. The nonprofit made that change independently, he said, and not due to pressure from Duke or other business partners. Still, he recognizes that the shift may provide some donors political cover by not tying their gifts to race or diversity initiatives.

“Specific language seems to matter more at this moment than at any other time I can recall,” Millen said. “That said, we are proud to be leaning even harder into our core principles than ever, and our first-gen work, if anything, represents a broader and more expansive expression of E2D’s and our partners’ impact.”

The Bottom Line

Duke has also pulled back on its environmental positioning. This year’s 10-K drops a previous claim that the company was “advancing regulatory models that support carbon and methane emission reductions.”

Instead, the utility now seeks to “leverage regulatory models that support the delivery of reliable energy, timely cost recovery, and affordable customer rates.”

In Duke’s proxy statement, the company removed two full pages outlining plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. It also eliminated language that claimed the company’s carbon reduction goals were in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty meant to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

And Duke leaders now have weaker financial incentives to accelerate the company’s green transition. Progress on “energy modernization”—formerly called “clean energy”—now accounts for 10 percent of bonus pay, down from 12.5 percent in 2024. Changes to that bonus goal also no longer reward executives for boosting battery storage or expanding customer-owned rooftop solar. Company spokespeople declined to comment on any of these points.

As with its diversity language, Duke’s environmental messaging is responding to a new political landscape, said Mikaela Curry, a campaign manager for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in North Carolina.

But Curry believes the difference here is that the company sees economic opportunity in pivoting. She pointed to Duke signing on to a January letter to Lee Zeldin, Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, asking him to roll back regulations on emissions and coal ash cleanup that it claimed were “unnecessary costs on the power sector.”

At the state level, the utility lobbied for Senate Bill 266, legislation passed this July that eliminated a previous requirement to reduce carbon emissions 70 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. (The company must still reach net-zero emissions by 2050.) Duke’s latest plan for meeting North Carolina’s projected power needs takes advantage of the delay in targets to add more gas plants, extend the life of existing coal plants, and delay building wind and hydropower infrastructure. It adds less utility-scale solar than the company had planned in 2023, even though it’s among the cheapest available sources of power. 

The changes benefit Duke financially, as state regulations provide the utility an approximately 10 percent return on equity for power plants it builds. 

Another 2021 state law requires Duke Energy to purchase 45 percent of its solar power from third parties, a cost it can pass on to ratepayers but does not yield a return on capital investment. Because the law does not require that for other sources of power, Duke profits more from building and operating its own gas power plants. 

“The company will take advantage of any opportunity that it can to advance its own interests,” Curry said, “and those interests are not always necessarily aligned with the best interests of North Carolinians.”

Charging Ahead

Duke is certainly not acting in a political vacuum. The Trump administration has threatened companies it deems “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” with civil compliance investigations; in a recent appearance at the United Nations, Trump lambasted “the green energy scam.” 

The North Carolina General Assembly is moving in a similar, if less rhetorically florid, direction. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed the measure eliminating the 2030 emission targets, but the Republican-majority overrode that veto with the help of three Democrats. 

The N.C. Utilities Commission, which regulates Duke Energy, came under majority Republican control after the passage of legislation last December that removed an appointment from the governor. The most recently appointed commissioner, Donald van der Vaart, has denied the scientific consensus on humanity’s role in climate change and the health dangers of greenhouse gases.

Duke’s shareholders, like others across the country, don’t seem to be showing a particular appetite for progressive policies. According to investment firm Morningstar, the average support for shareholder resolutions on ESG has dropped to 16 percent, down more than half from a peak of support a few years ago.

Bryant Sewell, the co-executive director of the shareholder advocacy group Majority Action, said he encouraged Duke shareholders to vote against reelecting then-CEO Good and Lead Director Michael Browning to the company’s board in 2021 over what he called a failure to act on the climate crisis and racial equity. 

Those votes didn’t come close to unseating the two leaders, but this year’s campaign against reelecting board members Theodore Craver and Robert Davis received even less shareholder support.

“Particularly in the electric utility sector, [companies] have made enough progress to where investor attention has been diverted elsewhere,” Sewell said.

But in a political landscape hostile to environmental and social activism, Sewell said, outside pressure on private companies may become even more important—at least to get shareholders to consider the potential impacts of climate change on their investments.

“Particularly in this moment where there’s government retrenchment, these institutional investors are critical players that can make or break our future,” he said. “I think that’s really important for people to know and to factor into not just their financial decision-making, but their decision-making around what kind of world we want to see and live in.”

Daniel Walton is an Asheville-based freelance reporter covering science, sustainability, and political news. He was previously the news editor of Mountain Xpress and has written for The Guardian, Civil Eats, and Sierra. Contact him at danielwwalton@live.com.