A newly rewritten bill that was heard in the N.C. House Energy and Public Utilities Committee on Wednesday mandates that Duke Energy keep baseload powerplants online until the N.C. Utilities Commission has approved the construction of nuclear plants to replace that generation.
Lawmakers have expressed interest in bolstering North Carolina's nuclear energy as part of an effort to bring consistent power onto the grid while also adding carbon-free resources that could steer Duke Energy toward carbon-neutral by 2050, a target written into state law.
"The way it was written was not specifically for coal plants or any other type of plant. We specified baseload because the main thing we want to make sure is that we're not retiring any other baseload plants until we have new nuclear other baseloads to replace it," Rep. Matthew Winslow, R-Franklin, who is a primary cosponsor of the updated legislation, told the Energy committee on Wednesday.
The bill directs the commission to not allow Duke Energy to retire baseload power generation like coal or natural gas plants until it has first issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity for a nuclear plant to replace it. That certificate is issued following an in-depth review by the commission meant to determine that a facility is needed and will help the public.
But questions linger about how much nuclear power costs, with a recently completed plant in Georgia running billions of dollars over budget and a South Carolina utility abandoning a nuclear plant after cost overruns.
The proposed committee substitute to Senate Bill 770 also includes a slew of proposed laws about data centers and tweaks the state's standards for generating electricity from sources like poultry and swine waste.
Baseload generation includes powerplants that generate electricity at any time to consistently meet needs placed on the grid. In North Carolina, that includes coal plants, natural gas plants and nuclear plants. It does not include solar facilities, which are reliant on the sun shining to generate power, although solar attached to battery storage is able to call upon power when the sun is not shining.
Critics of the legislation argue that it will force Duke to keep coal plants online while forcing it to turn to nuclear plants — and risk cost overruns — instead of renewable resources.
"Limiting North Carolina’s access to the lowest cost and fastest-to-build sources of power — solar, wind and battery storage — guarantees higher bills and more health-harming pollution for communities. North Carolina made a commitment to pursue affordable and reliable power — this proposal takes us in the wrong direction," Will Scott, the Environmental Defense Fund's North Carolina policy director, wrote in a statement.
Duke operates six nuclear plants across North and South Carolina. They were all built in the 1970s or the 1980s, with the newest one, the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant in Wake County, coming online in 1987.
"Duke Energy is committed to its customers and communities and will continue working with policymakers and regulators to deliver reliable and increasingly clean energy while keeping rates as low as possible," Craig Wilson, a Duke Energy spokesman, wrote in a statement.
Duke's eight remaining coal units can generate nearly 6.2 gigawatts of power when demand is highest in the winter. Replacing that energy would take at least five large nuclear reactors.
In the resource plan it filed in 2025, Duke proposed retiring coal plants in the Carolinas beginning with the Mayo plant in Person County in 2031; followed by retirements of coal plants in Cleveland County somewhere between 2031 and 2033; then the retirement of two coal plants at the Marshall Steam Station in Catawba County between 2032 and 2034; then the retirement of a pair of coal-fired generators at the Roxboro Steam Station in 2034.
Those retirements are slated to start about five years from now.
By comparison, the two new reactors at Georgia Power's Vogtel took about 15 years to complete.
Notably, the proposed House bill does not require that the plants be complete before the Utilities Commission allows other baseload generation to come offline, only that it gain the key approvals.
"We are telling the Utilities Commission, here is how we want you to act: We don't want you to allow retirement of (baseload) resources no matter what they are until we know they can be replaced ... and that's how we're protecting our ratepayers and our citizens here in North Carolina," Winslow said.
Duke has indicated that if its evaluation of small modular nuclear reactors is successful, it could build its first small modular reactor at Belews Creek in 2036. The utility submitted an early site permit application for small modular reactors at Belews Creek to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission late last year.
The 2025 resource plan also says that the Shearon Harris plant and the William States Lee III Nuclear Station in Cherokee County, S.C., make the most sense for new large nuclear reactors but that moving forward would require "significant amendments or revisions" to previous federal licensing efforts for a pair of nuclear reactors at each site.
Still, Duke wrote, "Both sites will have significantly less licensing risk and a shorter time to construction than if starting the licensing process at a site that has not completed any licensing activities."
