Duke Energy has joined the Trump administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, promising to support measures intended to prevent households and small businesses from paying for the power plants and grid infrastructure needed to serve rapidly expanding data centers.
The utility’s participation drew praise from Gov. Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson, but both Democrats said Duke must convert its voluntary federal commitment into legally enforceable protections approved by the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
The pledge calls on technology companies, utilities, and data center developers to ensure large energy users build, bring, or buy the additional power needed to serve their facilities and pay the full cost of new transmission, distribution, and other infrastructure.
Participants also agree to pursue separate rate structures requiring large customers to pay for power and infrastructure reserved for them, even when they ultimately use less electricity than expected.
The White House says more than 300 organizations have committed to the pledge, including utilities, electric cooperatives, major technology companies, and data center developers. The pledge also calls for investments in local workforce development and cooperation with grid operators to improve reliability during electricity shortages.
Duke announced its participation on July 23 alongside a broader effort to promote what the company calls its Customer Protection Plus framework.
“Data centers will provide billions of dollars in customer benefits,” said Harry Sideris, president and CEO of Duke Energy. “Duke Energy remains laser-focused on ensuring data centers not only pay their fair share but also yield savings for our existing customers.”
Duke says the framework requires engineering studies before new data centers are connected to its system and relies on long-term agreements intended to protect existing customers. Those agreements can include customer-funded connection costs, upfront financial security, termination charges, and provisions allowing temporarily curtailed electricity use during emergencies.
The company argues that revenue from large new customers can exceed the cost of serving them, producing savings for other customers while supporting investments in power generation and the electric grid.
“We’ve always put customers first, and these agreements are designed to do exactly that,” Sideris said. “Through long-term commitments, financial protections and careful planning, we’re working to ensure growth supports reliability and creates lasting value for customers.”
Sasha Weintraub, Duke Energy’s executive vice president and chief customer officer, said the company is examining the potential benefits of developing data centers amid the industry’s enormous electricity demands.
“A lot of the discussion around data centers focuses on how much energy they use,” Weintraub said. “We’re equally focused on what that growth can mean for all customers. We’re committed to an ongoing, collaborative and transparent partnership with our customers, regulators and other stakeholders to ensure projects create meaningful customer benefits, all while ensuring the energy system is prepared for future growth.”
Stein and Jackson welcomed Duke’s participation but said company contracts and public commitments are not substitutes for an enforceable rate structure.
“Duke just promised the federal government that it won’t shift the cost of data centers onto families,” Jackson said. “We agree, but a promise in Washington doesn’t lower a power bill in North Carolina. We’re calling on Duke to make that same promise to the Utilities Commission, in writing, where it can be enforced.”
Stein called on Duke and state utility regulators to establish a separate tariff for data centers and other exceptionally large electricity users.
“I am pleased to see that Duke Energy has signed on to the Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” Stein said. “Now, Duke Energy must make that voluntary pledge real. The North Carolina Utilities Commission and Duke Energy must create a legally binding large load tariff to charge data centers their full freight, and they must establish a program that allows data centers to directly select and pay for their generation.”
“North Carolinians are struggling to make ends meet, and data centers must pay their own way to protect families from rising electricity costs,” Stein added.
A large-load tariff would place data centers in a separate customer class with minimum payment requirements and other safeguards intended to prevent infrastructure costs from being shifted to residential customers if a proposed facility is delayed, canceled, or consumes less electricity than projected.
Duke Energy Carolinas, the Utilities Commission’s Public Staff, and other parties recently agreed to participate in a fast-track process to consider large-load tariffs. Jackson’s office plans to participate in that process and is separately asking regulators to create a distinct rate class for data centers in Duke Energy Progress territory.
Jon Sanders, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Food, Power, and Life, said policymakers should consider a less regulatory approach that allows large users to secure their own electricity.
“Keeping North Carolina’s power grid reliable and shielding ratepayers from rising costs, while still allowing data centers and other large-load industrial customers to meet their power needs, is a challenge for policymakers,” Sanders said. “But they do not have to solve everything. They can give the private sector the freedom to ‘build, bring, or buy’ power from systems off the grid.”
Duke’s pledge comes after North Carolina lawmakers spent much of the legislative session debating how to prevent data center expansion from increasing costs for households and small businesses.
Lawmakers advanced Senate Bill 730, the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require large data centers to cover certain energy and infrastructure costs while imposing additional requirements related to water use, local development approvals, and grid reliability. The House passed its version of the bill in June, but the Senate has not agreed to the changes. The measure remains in the Senate Rules Committee.
Lawmakers also considered House Bill 1213, the bipartisan Protect Taxpayers and Consumers Act, which originally sought to eliminate several sales and use tax exemptions for qualifying data centers. The bill followed Stein’s request for his Energy Policy Task Force to examine whether North Carolina’s data center incentives should be repealed or modified.
The final state budget stopped short of repealing all the incentives proposed in House Bill 1213 but eliminated the exemption for electricity consumed by data centers.
The legislative efforts reflect broader public support for placing a greater share of the energy burden on data centers themselves. Nearly four-fifths of voters, 78.2%, agreed that new data center facilities should have to provide for their own energy generation, according to Carolina Journal polling. Of those surveyed, 59.8% strongly supported the measure, while fewer than 10% opposed requiring data centers to provide their own electricity.
Sanders said the idea is worth considering as lawmakers look for ways to protect ratepayers from costs associated with new data center demand.
“This is an idea worth exploring in order to keep other customers from shouldering the costs of constructing new power plants to meet the new demand, specifically from data centers,” Sanders said. “That said, changing the law to allow data centers voluntarily to supply or contract for their own power independent from the grid would shield other customers from the risks without requiring special contracts and terms with the utility.”
Duke’s pledge places the utility publicly behind the broad principle that data centers should pay the costs they create. The next dispute will be whether Duke’s existing contracts provide sufficient protection or whether the Utilities Commission must place those commitments into a separate, enforceable rate structure.
