N.C. House Republicans and a few Democrats advanced a bill Wednesday that would set some guardrails on data center development, while putting restrictions on Duke Energy’s coal- and gas-fired power plant retirements. Mecklenburg County’s newly unaffiliated representatives Nasif Majeed and Carla Cunningham also voted in favor of the bill.
While some environmental groups appreciated the limitations the bill would impose on new data center development, such as a ban on water-intensive cooling systems, they said it constrained Duke Energy’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels.
The bill would require Duke Energy to start construction on a new nuclear plant before retiring any coal- or gas-fired plants.
“This is a good first step in putting guardrails up on data center development,” said Drew Ball, southeastern campaigns director for Natural Resources Defense Council, in a written statement. “But the bill ultimately short-changes ratepayers by limiting new energy development to coal and nuclear power.”
Ball said that new data centers would require more energy, and “extending the production of the most expensive forms of power generation will not protect the ratepayers.” Last fall and winter, Duke Energy Carolinas generated 11.1% of its energy from coal — the fossil fuel represents roughly the same share of the fuel costs the utility plans to recover in the ongoing fuel-adjustment rate case.
For comparison, Duke Energy Carolinas burned gas and oil to produce nearly 30% of its energy, but those fossil fuels accounted for 47% of its fuel costs. Although nuclear energy is relatively expensive to build, its fuel-cost-to-power-output ratio is much better.
CleanAIRE NC opposed the bill, saying it would block renewable energy development and threaten the state’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The bill currently proposes examining utility policies, including the state’s climate goals, to determine the cost of compliance to ratepayers.
“By forcing a slow, expensive transition to nuclear while keeping coal plants burning, [Senate Bill] 730 ensures that ratepayers will be saddled with high energy bills for decades,” said Andrew Whelan, the nonprofit’s communications director, in a written statement.
Others weighed in, saying that the General Assembly is unnecessarily interfering with utility commission proceedings.
“That’s what we’ve got the utility commission for. There’s no need for this coal-mandate language. I think we could still strip that out and have a bill that did some good things on data centers,” said Will Scott, NC policy director for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Jim Warren, executive director of energy watchdog group NC WARN, said the bill was “pro-coal, pro-nuclear and pro-Duke Energy.”
“The corporation and subsidiaries have failed on 9 of the last 10 nuclear reactors they've tried to build, wasting billions of public dollars,” Warren said. “Sadly, Duke Energy still owns most of our state government.”
The bill now returns to the Senate for another vote.
