The impacts of a North Carolina state law that removed an interim carbon dioxide reduction target for Duke Energy are evident in the utility's latest resource plan, which was filed Wednesday morning.
Among other provisions, Senate Bill 266 removed a targeted 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from the utility's North Carolina operations by 2030. It kept in place a requirement that Duke Energy reach net zero by 2050.
Both targets were originally enacted as part of a sweeping compromise energy bill in 2021, in which Duke Energy effectively traded the mandated carbon dioxide reductions for the ability to have the N.C. Utilities Commission set rates in multi-year chunks instead of annually.
The plan that was filed Wednesday is the company's first since the interim target was removed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Duke Energy proposes delaying the build-out of no-emissions electric generation like wind energy and a proposed hydro storage pumphouse.
"By not having that interim target date, it gives us more flexibility in the system," Kendal Bowman, the president of Duke's North Carolina operations, said in an interview.
That flexibility has contributed to Duke Energy's decision to delay investing in large-scale low-carbon resources.
Those include a proposal to wait until the 2040s to build a second powerhouse at the Bad Creek pumped storage hydro facility in South Carolina or invest in an offshore wind farm, although that generation source faces other regulatory hurdles in the second Trump Administration.
Glen Snider, Duke Energy's managing director of integrated resource planning, said that removing the interim target was one of a number of shifts that resulted in changes from Duke's 2023 proposal to this one.
Snider also pointed to how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act overhauled tax credits for certain low-carbon energy sources and how the Trump Administration's changes to certain environmental policies.
"When taken in collection, (SB) 266 has allowed for us to change the pace at which the resources are being added to the system," Snider said in an interview.
Critics of Duke Energy's plan include Will Scott, the Environmental Defense Fund's Southeast climate and clean energy director. He says Senate Bill 266 is a key enabling factor for anticipated emissions increases in the 2030s.
"Unfortunately, what removing the target is going to allow Duke to do is run its aging, inefficient, dirty coal plants for longer. So they're proposing pushing back retirement dates several years for several of those old units," Scott said in an interview.
Instead of focusing on solar and wind, Scott said, Duke Energy is prioritizing meeting increasing demand from expected new data centers and manufacturers by turning to coal plants at times when energy demand is highest.
What's in Duke's plan?
Duke's proposal would:
- Delay both on- and off-shore wind farms. That's a decrease of more than two gigawatts of onshore wind Duke proposed by the mid-2030s and potentially as much as 1.6 gigawatts of offshore wind from the 2023 plan.
- Delay construction of a second powerhouse at the utility's Bad Creek pumped hydro storage facility to 2040. The 1.8 gigawatt facility was supposed to come online in 2034 in the former plan.
- Delay the retirement of power plants that can burn either coal or gas at Belews Creek, Cliffside and Marshall until as late as 2040.
- Nearly double the amount of battery storage to 5.6 gigawatts by 2034, up from 2.7 gigawatts by 2031 in the 2023 plan.
- See the construction of 12 natural gas plants, including five combined cycle plants that are used to meet baseload demand and seven combustion turbines that are typically used when demand spikes. That's two more combustion turbines than proposed in the 2023 plan. It would also aim to move up the completion of two combined cycle plants to 2032 and 2033 from their original 2034 dates.
- Add 9.2 gigawatts of solar energy to Duke's system by 2035 and 15 gigawatts by 2040.
Duke Energy's favored proposal would see carbon dioxide emissions climb into the mid-2030s. In 2036, they would peak around 60 million short tons of carbon dioxide.
Then, Duke Energy projects a steep decline through 2050, largely driven by ongoing deployments of solar panels and anticipated construction of new nuclear plants.
Duke Energy anticipates that its new resource plan will result in customer bills rising about 2.1% annually through 2035 and about 2.4% annually through 2040. The company says that amount is lower than the nation's 3% average annual inflation over the last 110 years.
Snider, Duke's resource planning lead, said the company is hoping to dovetail the growing dynamics of the Carolinas and delaying some large-scale investments like nuclear plants to limit customer bill impacts.
"As we move in time and continue to see growth, we have a larger customer base and a larger amount of projected sales over which to spread both existing and future costs. So as we see this growth in industry and IT-related growth, the number of customers over which to recover these incremental investments as well as existing system investments is growing," Snider said.
History of Senate Bill 266
Gov. Josh Stein vetoed Senate Bill 266 earlier this year, citing the potential for North Carolina's utility customers to be dependent on volatile natural gas prices and that it backtracked on the state's planned carbon reductions.
Once the Senate's Republican supermajority overrode Stein's veto, a trio of House Democrats also voted to make the bill law over the governor's objections.
Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, celebrated Duke Energy's new proposal Wednesday and also Senate Bill 266's impact on shaping it.
"This is great news! Senate Bill 266’s focus on reliability and doing away with Green New Scam goals is making an impact on costs for North Carolinians," Berger wrote in a message on X.
The N.C. Utilities Commission must approve Duke's proposal and, to that end, will hold hearings in 2026 before issuing a final order. In recent years, the Commission's order has approved a set of near-term actions instead of serving as a blanket approval of the entire plan.
