The Duke Energy settlement is just the beginning for North Carolina’s data center energy policy

When Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) initially submitted its 2025–2026 general rate case, customers faced the prospect of an 18% rate hike — a crushing burden at a time when North Carolina families are already struggling with high costs of living. As an intervenor in the proceeding before the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC), Environmental Defense Fund stepped in with clear goals: stop the unfair shift of massive infrastructure costs onto working families, and accelerate the transition to a clean, resilient electric grid.

The comprehensive settlement reached between Duke Energy, the Public Staff, EDF and key partners represents a critical course correction. It cuts the amount Duke is allowed to earn on grid infrastructure investments, reduces the utility’s request for excessive revenue guarantees by more than half, and makes meaningful, targeted cuts to some of the utility’s proposed capital investments. Altogether, this agreement spares household electric customers a lot of unnecessary financial pain.  

However, this settlement doesn’t solve all issues and isn’t yet final. In particular, the question of what happens to the state’s critical Customer Assistance Program for residents struggling to pay their power bills remains unresolved. A final Commission order on this and the pending Duke Energy Progress (DEP) rate cases will be issued this fall, which may or may not accept this settlement’s provisions.

While we expect other advocates, and leaders like Attorney General Jackson, will rightly continue to push for lower rate increases, the proposed settlement also includes a significant win in the fight over who pays for the infrastructure costs from soaring energy demand in North Carolina.

Taming the data center boom via large load tariffs

North Carolina is facing unprecedented electricity demand growth. Driven by an explosion of hyper-scale data centers, peak energy use across Duke’s Carolinas system is projected to surge over the coming decades, largely driven by “computational load.” Historically, when large commercial users enter a utility’s territory, the utility builds expensive new generation and transmission infrastructure, socializing those capital costs across all customer classes. Under Duke’s original proposal, ordinary residential customers were on track to continue subsidizing power-hungry tech giants.

EDF and clean energy allies challenged this dynamic directly. Through expert analysis, we demonstrated that large load expansion must not come at the expense of everyday consumers. In the hearing, commissioners agreed that, for example, the cost of building a new power line from a power plant to support a data center shouldn’t go on “grandma’s light bill.”

In response, we secured a vital concession from Duke Energy: supporting a separate, expedited regulatory proceeding dedicated to establishing a formal Large Load Tariff (LLT) before new rates go into effect.

A properly structured Large Load Tariff is essential for customer protection and, if done correctly, will provide relief to future residential power bills, remove risk for other customers, and potentially offer a pathway towards the financing and expedited deployment of new, affordable, clean energy solutions. By establishing rules such as minimum monthly billing requirements, multi-year power purchase commitments and exit fees, an LLT ensures that data center developers carry the full financial risk and cost of their grid connections. 

A properly designed LLT enforces a simple principle: the data center energy giants must pay their fair share.

The proposed settlement agreement  does not set the details of a LLT, which are key, but it does commit Duke and Public Staff (North Carolina’s professional ratepayer advocacy agency) —with input from stakeholders like EDF — to submit a special tariff covering large data centers by the end of September.

What’s next: Enabling “Bring Your Own Clean Energy” and preparing for 2027

While establishing a Large Load Tariff prevents unfair cost-shifting, it only solves half the equation. If data centers satisfy their massive energy needs by expanding centralized fossil fuel generation, North Carolina’s climate progress and public health will suffer. The next frontier is ensuring that new large-scale demand is paired with dedicated, zero-carbon energy.

To achieve this, EDF is championing “Bring Your Own Clean” (BYOC) frameworks. Under a BYOC structure, large commercial operations are required to directly procure, co-locate or contract for their own clean energy, battery storage and demand-response resources. By pairing data center expansion with new clean energy capacity, incoming tech operations can meet their own power needs without driving up system-wide peak prices or adding new sources of climate- and health-harming air pollution to the grid.

The momentum for BYOC policies is rapidly building. Governor Josh Stein’s Energy Policy Task Force, established under Executive Order 23, highlighted this exact priority. The Task Force’s interim report called for BYOC options, load flexibility (when data centers temporarily reduce their power use from the grid), and grid-enhancing technologies to manage load growth from data centers responsibly.

Implementing BYOC framework in North Carolina will most likely require legislative action. To this end, EDF is actively collaborating with Task Force stakeholders, state regulators and industry leaders to translate these recommendations into concrete policy proposals. Looking ahead to the 2027 legislative session, our focus will be on codifying statutory protections that enable data center developers to bring their own clean energy. 

Legislative action in 2027 will be vital to safeguard grid reliability, better protect customers’ wallets, and ensure that any future data center development in North Carolina powers all of us toward a clean, affordable energy future — rather than a retreat to outdated, expensive fossil fuels that further strains North Carolina families’ budgets and health.