Across the country, legislators are figuring out how to regulate the worst harms from data centers. In North Carolina, the latest bill to do so is Senate Bill 730. Unfortunately, SB 730 is not a step forward in protecting North Carolinians from the harms of data centers. Rather, it is a step sideways, evading needed regulations.
SB 730 seeks to force communities to accept the “inevitability” of land, water, and energy-intensive extractive data centers while giving North Carolinians merely the pretense of protection. The utility-friendly bill does not speak to broader concerns — namely, that communities (now 23 jurisdictions) have repeatedly said “no data centers” at all.
Communities know that bare minimum ratepayer protections like SB 730 still have loopholes that leave them vulnerable to long-term costs like stranded assets (especially with the 15-year contract provisions outlined in the bill). This is particularly problematic due to the added burden of “construction work in progress” passed last year, which allows Duke Energy to foist infrastructure costs (i.e., the proposed nuclear facilities in SB 73) onto ratepayers, even if those plants never come online. With new gas plants already justified and approved to power data center growth, ratepayers are already on the hook for fuel and infrastructure costs for new data centers. SB 73 does not address the harms from the effective repeal of our state’s carbon law and ignores that we are in an active climate crisis.
SB 730 lacks enforceable mechanisms for overconsumption of water resources, it does not repeal state-level tax incentives for data centers, and, arguably the worst part, it has easy loopholes to undermine the state’s 2050 carbon reduction goals. Protection gaps still exist for community members living near data centers — water provisions like water assessment still remain mostly optional, “closed-loop” is still treated as if it solves the water problem, and “de minimis” withdrawal/discharge still remains undefined.
All of this means that communities, especially in vulnerable, drought-prone areas of the state, will lack control over their water resources and accountability mechanisms to prevent even worse harms. Additionally, the “large-load tariff” structure that would force the tech company to pay a higher rate than residential customers for electricity costs is only in the study phase. Until there is an actual mechanism for ensuring residential customers are not subsidizing these rates at all, the public will be on the hook for fuel and infrastructure costs associated with data centers on top of usual utility commission-sanctioned rate-hikes.
After a major erasure of our 2030 goals last year (SB 266), we are barely fulfilling our state’s carbon reduction law; new provisions in SB 730 allow Duke Energy to extend the 2050 deadline for “adequacy” and “reliability” purposes. This is what enabled Duke to be out of compliance and ultimately lobby to repeal 2030 carbon reduction goals with SB 266. By inflating load growth from data centers, Duke Energy argued that it couldn’t meet reliability with more renewable resources and had to build new methane gas plants to meet this demand. SB 730 effectively does the same for North Carolina’s 2050 carbon goals.
Further, the bill includes provisions that require nuclear plant approval before baseload facilities (fossil-fuel based sources) can be retired, yet again prolonging fossil fuel-based pollution, and substituting clean, affordable, and reliable solar and wind resources for expensive and unproven nuclear technology. Nuclear energy is the most expensive non-carbon energy resource, and ratepayers will be again on the hook for this infrastructure with construction work in progress.
Our neighbors in Georgia have warned us about paying for expensive nuclear plants with ever-increasing costs over time with their own Plant Vogtle; we should heed this warning. In the meanwhile, communities will have to deal with even longer timelines for coal-based air pollution at the whims of Duke Energy, which continues to move the needle on “reliability” and “affordability.”
A better alternative to a patchwork of underbaked, ratepayer protection provisions would be a state-level data center moratorium. As of June 2026, lawmakers in 14 states are considering temporary bans on data centers while air, water, land, and public health harms are studied. A May 2026 Gallup poll reflected a broader, national trend on the public’s rejection of data centers: 7 in 10 Americans oppose AI data centers in their communities. Food and Water Watch, alongside legislative champion U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has introduced a proposed federal moratorium on data centers given their sweeping and multi-state harms.
Here in North Carolina, Rep. Donnie Loftis introduced a two-year moratorium bill with an attached study at the Collaboratory, a research arm of the University of North Carolina System. While delegating data center impacts research to a pro-AI university (University of North Carolina) isn’t preferred ( what’s needed is more community-based and environmental justice-led research), Loftis’ bill suggests that community members are reaching their representatives and are asking not just for “less harm,” but “no harm.”
North Carolina should be the next state to reject subsidizing big tech for an inequitable deal — communities will experience health harms, economic devastation, and will subsidize the costs of data centers without a strong floor of protection at the state level.
The tide is turning against Big Tech and its expensive, polluting infrastructure all across the United States. Will North Carolina lead the way with a moratorium or settle for half-baked protections?
