In its first report, released on Sunday, the North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force outlined recommendations to ensure North Carolinians have affordable, reliable, and clean energy supplies as demand from an expanding population and business growth continues.
“As demand for energy grows, families and businesses need to be able to count on dependable, sustainable, and affordable power,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a press release. “I’m grateful to the task force for its thoughtful work to inform policies that protect affordability, reliability, and sustainability, and I look forward to our state’s building on this progress in the months ahead.”
He created the task force by executive order in August. It’s co-chaired by North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson and state Rep. Kyle Hall, R-Stokes, and includes 30 energy experts and policy makers.
Their primary focus has been on identifying policy and technology solutions to address the state’s growing energy needs, driven by data centers, advanced manufacturing, and population growth.
“There’s no question that the demand for energy is growing rapidly, and it’s in part because North Carolina is the No. 1 state where people from other states are moving to,” Stein, a Democrat, said at a press conference last week. “We’re extremely fast growing, but we’re also seeing new types of businesses — like server farms, data centers — that are consuming incredible amounts of power. One data farm could consume as much as the entirety of the City of Charlotte. That’s just an incredible addition of load demand that is without precedent in the state’s history. So we’ve got to figure out how do we respond to this, and how do we deal with these data centers.”
The report includes initial findings and recommendations developed by task force members during their first six months of work.
They noted that Duke Energy’s 2025 load forecast projects total demand across its two Carolina systems to increase by 16% to nearly 60% through 2040.
According to the press release, electricity demand in North Carolina rose by 7% from 2005 to 2025. From 2017 to 2024, the average residential electricity bill has risen by nearly 30%. Almost two-thirds of the increases in North Carolinians’ electrical bills have been due to rising fuel costs, mostly driven by rising natural gas prices.
The major public utilities serving the state project significant increases in utility bills by 2040, even beyond the proposed rate increases for many North Carolina residential customers of 16-18% over the next two years.
“Gov. Stein noted the rapid growth in North Carolina’s energy demand, but with that being the case, we should not be in a time when state policy is focused on shutting down reliable, baseload producers of electricity like coal,” Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at the John Locke Foundation, told Carolina Journal. “Nor should be focused on building unreliable, unproductive electricity sources. Unfortunately, under the state’s Carbon Plan, Duke is having to build the least amount of the most productive resource (nuclear) — and the most amount of the least productive resource (solar).”
He said that compared with solar, nuclear is about four times as productive and natural gas is about twice as productive, and both can operate overnight and during stormy conditions. One way to help electricity consumers save on bills, Sanders told CJ, is not to cause them to pay for overbuilding unreliable resources.
In November, Duke Energy filed a request with the North Carolina Utilities Commission for a proposed 15% or $1 billion increase for Duke Energy Carolinas ($727 million in 2027, $275 million in 2028) customers and $729 million or 15.1% increase for Duke Energy Progress ($528 million in 2027, $200 million in 2028) customers. They say the increases would be used for new investments to boost reliability and support economic growth across the state.
Task force members made the following recommendations:
- Develop options for large-load tariffs, which are a specialized standard set of terms and rules for large-load customers such as data centers, intended to ensure that the majority of the costs associated with a new large-load customer are paid by that customer.
- Develop options for “bring your own capacity” and alternative capacity procurement methods, which could allow large-load customers to directly select and acquire the energy resources they need.
- Develop options to encourage load flexibility, such as having large customers reduce the amount of power they use during peak demand periods or during system emergencies.
- Explore reforms to the processes for large-load and generation interconnection. Interconnection involves how electricity generators and users connect to the grid.
- Assess the dollar and strategic value of existing sales and use tax exemptions for data centers. While North Carolina has sales tax exemptions for data center electricity use and equipment, the cost of these exemptions is currently unknown.
- Explore the evaluation process for advanced transmission and grid-enhancing technologies that can increase the capacity and reliability of the electric grid by upgrading existing infrastructure.
- Explore residential and small business incentives for energy efficiency improvements. Increasing energy efficiency can help residential ratepayers lower their electricity costs while helping make the entire grid more reliable by reducing demand.
- Explore the development of a third-party load-forecasting process. Electricity demand forecasts for North Carolina from major public utilities have historically spanned a wide range, in large part due to uncertainties from data centers.
- Explore energy and water usage reporting for data centers, which are major users of water and energy. There is currently no reliable publicly available information for data center energy and water use in North Carolina.
The task force’s next report is scheduled for release in February 2027.
