Month: August 2024

Over the last year, Duke Energy has supported more than 11,000 North Carolina households with more than $4.6 million in energy bill assistance

CHARLOTTE, N.C., August 22, 2024 /3BL/ – To help lower energy costs for low-income families this summer, Duke Energy is making more than $4.6 million in financial aid available to eligible customers through the company’s Share the Light Fund®.

“As temperatures climb throughout the summer, these funds will help reduce energy expenses for those who need it most,” said Kendal Bowman, president of Duke Energy North Carolina. We’re proud of the support Share the Light Fund has provided to our community over the past 40 years.”

Duke Energy works with over 100 agencies across North Carolina to distribute funds to qualifying customers to help pay energy bills, deposits and reconnection/connection charges. Individuals should contact their local agencies to see if they are eligible. Click here to find a listing of service providers by county.

Over the last five years, Duke Energy shareholders, employees, customers and the Duke Energy Foundation have provided more than $19.7 million in bill assistance through Share the Light Fund, which has helped support more than 66,000 North Carolina households.

Operation Fan Heat Relief

As part of Share the Light Fund, Duke Energy provides $80,000 each year for North Carolina’s Operation Fan Heat Relief. The program provides free fans to qualifying vulnerable older adults and adults with disabilities who are at risk for heat-related illnesses. The North Carolina Division of Aging and Adult Services distributes the funds to Agencies on Aging and local providers that distribute fans May 1-Oct. 31.

Savings programs and assistance

Duke Energy has more than a dozen energy assistance and bill-lowering tools, including:

Usage Alerts that send customers a notification of how much electricity they are using and its cost so they can make adjustments before their billing period ends.Free Home Energy House Calls, where energy professionals assess a home for efficiency and provide homeowners with a toolkit of energy-saving devices.Budget Billing, which helps ease the impact of higher seasonal bills by leveling out monthly payments.Installment payment plans for customers needing flexibility.

To learn more about these programs, visit duke-energy.com/HereToHelp.

Duke Energy

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is one of America’s largest energy holding companies. The company’s electric utilities serve 8.4 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 54,800 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas utilities serve 1.7 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky.

Duke Energy is executing an ambitious clean energy transition, keeping reliability, affordability and accessibility at the forefront as the company works toward net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2050. The company is investing in major electric grid upgrades and cleaner generation, including expanded energy storage, renewables, natural gas and nuclear.

More information is available at duke-energy.com and the Duke Energy News Center. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, and visit illumination for stories about the people and innovations powering our energy transition.

24-Hour: 800.559.3853

View original content here.

Originally published by Mastercard Strive

There’s an important environmental shift underway, and small businesses are playing a central role. Across the globe, an overwhelming 94% of consumers are demanding a shift to a green economy and holding businesses accountable for driving the crucial changes needed to achieve global net-zero emissions. As the backbones of most economies, small businesses are key drivers of environmental sustainability and need support to address mounting consumer demands for sustainable goods and services.

Recognizing the critical role of small businesses in achieving net-zero emissions, Mastercard Strive has partnered with organizations worldwide to support innovative technologies that enable small businesses to contribute to positive environmental impact. Partners are testing new ideas and scaling socially inclusive innovations for small businesses that minimize the impact on the planet and support communities that are already — or will become — impacted by climate change.

In this post, we share more details about these initiatives, their achievements, and lessons learned so far, where applicable. On the whole, Mastercard Strive programs are supporting small businesses to reduce or eliminate single-use plastic packaging, facilitate their participation in the circular economy, and assess their impact on environmental and social issues.

Reducing and eliminating single-use plastic packaging

The United Nations Environmental Programme estimates that about 85% of all single-use packaging becomes waste, ending up in landfills or as unregulated litter. In emerging markets such as Kenya, most small businesses are informal and tend to sell household products in small packaging quantities (as little as 50 grams) to account for the financial realities of low-income consumers. However, this model ends up hurting consumers and the environment alike: more frequent purchases of small quantities means consumers pay more over time, while also generating large amounts of single-use plastic waste.

In 2022, Mastercard Strive partnered with Novek to develop and test an Internet of Things–enabled dispensing system for washing powder for micro-retailers in Kenya. Mastercard Strive and Novek believe there is an opportunity for this technology to eliminate single-use plastic packaging and grow micro-retailer revenue at the same time. During the program, Novek built and successfully tested dispensing prototypes, learning several lessons on building innovative technology for small retailers. They learned that regular touch points involving training can promote consistent use among retailers and that it takes time to build trust among customers to switch to accessing a product in a new way. Novek is now building a more stable machine that requires less maintenance and focusing on building partnerships that can support their growth.

More recently, in Indonesia, Mastercard Strive has partnered with Alner, which employs a reusable and returnable packaging system to replace single-use, non-recyclable packaging for daily essentials such as detergent, rice, cooking oil, and more. Consumers can use the packaging up to 20 times. Alner creates a sustainable consumption loop by first providing Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) companies with reusable packaging and then incentivizing consumers to return the packaging through a deposit-reward scheme. Through a mobile app, small businesses can monitor their business performance and environmental impact by tracking the volume of returned single-use plastic. Mastercard Strive is enabling Alner to further enhance its mobile app by introducing features to boost small businesses’ performance. These enhancements include comprehensive training materials, peer-to-peer learning, gamification elements, digital payments, and timely market insights.

Participating in the circular economy

Thousands of tons of unnecessary waste are created each year. The circular economy can minimize waste by keeping products, materials, and resources in use for as long as possible, reducing the 80% of products that are currently going to landfill or being incinerated.

In the UK, Mastercard Strive has partnered with Tern Eco, a retail tech solution that leverages circular retail models, such as reuse and resale, to support small businesses on their journey to circularity. Tern Eco’s enhanced solution will enable smaller time-poor retailers to intuitively set up circular retail programs, offering greater flexibility and new functionality to enable repairs, upcycling, and relisting products traded-in for resale.

Additionally, using the data generated and aggregated across merchants, consumers, and product verticals, Tern Eco will build a comprehensive view of the full life cycle of products to identify emerging market and consumer trends — data that will be shared with the wider retail community to encourage circular models in other markets.

Assessing business impact on social and environmental issues

Today, countries require major buying organizations to mandate their small business suppliers to measure and disclose their impact on social and environmental issues, known as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting. Despite this growing demand, current ESG and sustainability data solutions are often inaccessible and expensive, and do not cater to small businesses’ unique needs. To address this, Mastercard Strive has partnered with Vested Impact, an impact assessment platform, to provide micro- and small businesses across the globe with independent, affordable, and data-driven impact assessments.

Through Vested Impact’s platform, small businesses can leverage more than 300 million science-based research papers and impact data points to assess the impact of their products and services on global priorities like climate, education, healthcare, and the economy. Small businesses will gain access to an AI-powered comprehensive summary, offering a breakdown of complex ESG data that aligns with leading regulations and supply chain requirements. This data has the potential to improve small businesses’ market access and empower them with the data they need to become sustainable and impactful.

Supporting small businesses to navigate evolving regulatory and consumer demands around sustainability is also an important priority for Mastercard Strive in the EU, which sought applications for innovative solutions to address these issues in its recent innovation fund.

Mastercard Strive is also increasingly turning its attention to the impact of climate on agriculture and farmers in the United States. A partnership with California Farmlink will pilot a program that integrates capital tools, digital solutions, and conservation measures to better support farmers and promote social impact investment in climate-smart agriculture. Further, federal funding focused on the climate crisis, such as the $27-billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, is also top of mind for Mastercard Strive in the US as organizations begin deploying funding across the country this summer. Public-private partnerships will play a critical role in ensuring this funding is invested in small businesses and the local communities they support.

Looking ahead

As suppliers, consumers, and regulators increasingly shift toward a green economy, micro- and small businesses cannot be left behind. Through these initiatives, Mastercard Strive aims to contribute to global net-zero gas emissions goals and promote the growth and financial resilience of small businesses worldwide. We are delighted to support these innovative partners and work alongside such inspiring entrepreneurs. We look forward to the insights and lessons our partners will share as they work to deliver digital and data-first solutions that support small business growth and environmental sustainability.

Originally published by Mastercard Strive

Follow along Mastercard’s journey to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere.