Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) said Dec. 3 that it is renaming its Cliffside power station in North Carolina after former CEO James Rogers, who is scheduled to retire as chairman of the Duke board at the end of this month.
Rogers has been chairman, president and CEO of the corporation since its merger with Cinergy in 2006. He stepped down as president and CEO in July and retires from the board Dec. 31.
Last month PennWell’s Power Engineering Magazine named Rogers as the most influential person in the power generation industry in the past 25 years. GenerationHub is also a PennWell news service.
“Naming our Cliffside site after Jim Rogers is a worthy tribute,” said current Duke President and CEO Lynn Good. “Jim has served with distinction the last 25 years as a CEO at Duke Energy or one of its predecessor companies. Unit 6 is one of the cleanest and most efficient coal units in the world, and he played a key role in making the plant a reality,” Good said.
Rogers led Duke through several mergers and acquisitions, the latest being the company’s complicated 2012 combination with Progress Energy, which forced Rogers to delay his plans to retire as chief executive.
Rogers was an outspoken advocate for the modernization project over the course of the permitting and construction of the state-of-the-art, 825-MW unit from 2008 to 2012, Duke said in a statement. He decided to retire 1,000 MW of older and higher emitting coal units across the Duke Energy Carolinas fleet as a key part of the project, including the four oldest units on the Cliffside site. He defended the project with regulators and other interested groups.
Located in Mooresboro, N.C., unit 6 began commercial operation in late 2012. The 550-MW unit 5 is the other operating unit on the site, and was completed in 1972, Duke said.
“I’m honored to have my name associated with this project and those who brought this remarkable power plant and emissions control technology online,” Rogers said. “My goal has always been to reduce Duke Energy’s emissions footprint without jeopardizing our ability to efficiently meet our customers’ power demand, and this project accomplishes that goal.”
Rogers is not the first former major power company CEO to get a new coal facility named after him in recent years. In 2011, Southern (NYSE:SO) subsidiary Mississippi Power officially named the coal gasification plant under construction in Kemper County, Miss., after ex-Southern President, Chairman and CEO David Ratcliffe.
