Despite massive uncertainty across the economy, Duke Energy is plowing ahead with its plan to build new fossil gas-fired power plants to serve data center, manufacturing, and other large customer load that may not even show up. Duke has asked the NC Utilities Commission for permission to build a combined-cycle (CC) gas plant in Person County, North Carolina, at the site of Duke’s Roxboro coal plant.

SACE has argued against the need for this gas power plant in the Certificate of Public Need and Necessity (CPCN) docket, submitting testimony to the Commission on Monday, June 9, 2025. Here’s a summary of that testimony (prepared by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc.), which explains what this all means for Duke’s billpayers, and how Duke can make changes within its control to protect customers and reduce pollution. These recommendations include:

• Not approving this new gas power plant because the risks that it will increase bills are too high. Instead, Duke should improve the processes that are holding back lower-cost renewables and storage, then use renewables and storage to meet new load.
• Instead of approving this specific gas plant, the Commission should order Duke to use an all-source procurement process to determine a portfolio of flexible assets that can meet the utility’s needs based on real-world costs.
• In the event the Commission approves this gas plant, it should protect customers from high bills due to volatile gas prices by instituting a fuel cost sharing mechanism for the fuel costs spent to run this plant.

Duke Doesn’t Need this Risky Gas Power Plant

Duke’s claim that it needs this fossil gas power plant is based on outdated analysis. In this CPCN docket, Duke relies on its 2023 Carbon Plan Integrated Resource Plan (CPIRP) modeling and the CPIRP supplemental update and analysis filed in January 2024. The world has changed dramatically since then, and it is important that the Commission review the latest information before approving expenditures that will impact customer bills for decades.

Duke’s load forecast – once based on steady, predictable growth – is now subject to significant uncertainty as 1) data center developers look around the country for the best deal and the fastest interconnection to the grid and 2) manufacturers announce projects and then pull back as political uncertainty changes the economics of those projects. Under Duke’s current rate structure, prospective companies and site developers do not need to commit much money to become part of Duke’s load forecast. They have very little “skin in the game,” and Duke currently does not have policies in place to change this. If the Commission allows Duke to build an expensive fossil gas plant for load that doesn’t materialize, Duke’s remaining customers will be on the hook to pay for it.

Duke’s own load forecast updates since 2023 show that there are wild swings in its predictions. In the Spring of 2023, Duke anticipated 8 new large load projects during its 10-year planning forecast period, requiring an average of 169 MW each. Then for Fall 2023 (the supplemental update filed in January 2024), Duke anticipated 35 projects requiring an average of 111 MW each. In Summer 2024, Duke changed its forecast again, projecting 39 projects requiring an average of only 103 MW. And in May 2025, Duke filed an update showing a reduction in the number of projects back down to 35 but a dramatic increase in average need – back up to 169 MW. Duke’s forecasts will continue to show swings up and down – both in the number of projects and megawatts – until Duke has policies in place that require more commitment from the companies that knock on its door requesting service. Duke also has not published information regarding the location of these loads – the latest forecast applies to all of Duke Energy in both North and South Carolina.

It is also important to know that that this gas plant isn’t needed to meet growing load from existing customers or to replace retiring coal plants (according to Duke’s own testimony). This gas plant is being justified by new manufacturing and data centers claiming they will be operating somewhere in Duke Energy Progress or Duke Energy Carolinas territory in North or South Carolina.

Even if the load shows up, this plant won’t be needed for long

Even Duke admits that it doesn’t “need” this fossil gas power plant for very long. These kinds of power plants, combined-cycle plants, are typically used about 80% of the time, i.e. they are “baseload” power plants. But even absent federal carbon regulations, Duke expects this power plant’s usage to decline significantly throughout its 35-year lifetime (from 80% in 2030 decreasing to 46% by 2040 and only 13% by 2050 onwards). As cheaper renewables and storage with zero fuel costs are brought online, they will displace this plant. Duke is proposing to build a giant power plant that will very quickly run less and less – but Duke’s customers will continue to pay for it until 2065—15 years past a state law requiring Duke’s generation fleet to be carbon neutral. This represents a significant change in how power plants are built and run, and this is not in the best interest of Duke’s billpayers. To add insult to injury, Duke hasn’t even procured all of the equipment needed to build this plant, so the costs could skyrocket even more than they already have since last year’s carbon plan proceeding.

Renewables are flexible, would protect customers, and would reduce pollution

Duke’s model only chose a gas plant to meet this capacity need because of limits Duke imposed on the model. Duke claims it cannot interconnect renewables and storage fast enough to meet this capacity need, but the reasons it cannot interconnect those resources faster are all within Duke’s control. As Synapse recommends, Duke needs to update its processes that are holding back renewables and storage from serving customers with low-cost and low-risk resources. These processes include interconnection and transmission planning.

SACE has been advocating for improvements to these processes for years, and Duke has made changes to both its interconnection process and transmission planning. Duke was one of the first utilities in the Southeast to implement cluster studies in its interconnection process, and it is in the midst of the first scenario-based transmission planning exercise in the region. But is there evidence that these updates have helped if Duke continues to limit solar and storage in its future resource modeling? Given the much quicker interconnection process recently demonstrated in Texas, this raises the question of how hard Duke is really trying to streamline renewables interconnection.

Modular, flexible resources such as wind, solar, and energy storage can be adjusted in quantity based on market conditions. As our testimony from Synapse states, “This modularity, combined with the fact that solar and wind have zero exposure to fuel price volatility once they are constructed, makes these resources particularly valuable in the face of trade tariff uncertainty.”

The bottom line is that the Commission needs a lot more certainty about load growth and costs before committing Duke’s billpayers to any type of large fossil gas power plant. We simply do not have that now.

The post North Carolina needs more certainty before committing to an expensive new gas plant appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

North Carolina needs more certainty before committing to an expensive new gas plant