In the midst of countless federal deregulatory actions, it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening to undermine states’ climate regulations and laws. Here in North Carolina, we are facing the cascading consequences of federal deregulation layered on top of threats to our state’s carbon plan law.
House Bill 951 became law in October 2021. It ordered the North Carolina Utilities Commission (Commission) to make a 70 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The Commission passed decarbonization planning over to the monopoly utility in the state — Duke Energy — instead. Now in its second iteration, Duke Energy’s already paltry carbon plan is at risk for even more “watering down.”
The current plan fails to take affordability and equity into full account, nor does it meet the letter of the law to decarbonize. Instead, the November 2024 Carbon Plan order includes the build out of three times the original proposed amount of methane gas capacity and neglects the interim carbon reduction timeline outlined in the law. While there are some additional clean energy resources like 3,460 megawatts (MW) of new solar generation, the order still includes disproportionate amounts of methane gas — a pollutant 28 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
And now, even this minimal progress is at risk with a new Senate bill introduced in March 2025. Senate Bill 261 seeks to entirely eliminate the interim 2030 carbon reduction goal. Further, this legislation attempts to make ratepayers foot the bill for new power plant construction before these facilities even generate electricity. Known as a “construction-work-in-progress” mechanism, similar legislation in nearby South Carolina left ratepayers assuming financial risk for billions in funding for a nuclear power plant that never materialized.
Senate Bill 261 is a bad deal for North Carolinians. We want clean, affordable, equitable energy, not toxic, polluting methane gas and expensive, unnecessary construction projects.