Duke Energy filed its 2025 Carbon Plan Wednesday morning. Seismic shifts in federal energy policy over the last year have left a mark on the utility’s approach to clean energy.
Over the next decade, utilities nationwide are predicting that data centers, manufacturing and electrification will drive up energy demand at an unprecedented rate. Duke forecasts that energy demand will grow at eight times the rate it grew during the preceding 15 years.
Meanwhile, President Trump's administration is phasing out solar tax credits and making renewable energy sources harder to develop. He has also incentivized more fossil fuel use among utilities, with a push from Washington to reemphasize coal and natural gas. The combustion of fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change, through the release of carbon dioxide that traps heat and warms the planet.
Glen Snider, managing director for Duke’s Carolinas resource plan, said the utility took changing policies into account when deciding how it will meet upcoming energy demand and climate goals.
“Further flexibility from changes in policy enables coal to run and new natural gas to run in ways that weren’t possible in prior policy,” Snider said.
Doubling down on nuclear
The carbon plan proposal emphasizes new nuclear power generation, natural gas and battery storage. Duke proposes adding a large light-water reactor to its energy generation fleet by 2037. State regulators gave Duke Energy the green light to explore the possibility of building a small modular reactor last year.
“That technology is not projected to be available at the old retirement date that we had for Belews Creek,” Snider said, referencing a coal and natural gas plant in Stokes County. Last year, state regulators ordered Duke to retire its remaining coal plants by 2036. “Pushing that [retirement date] to 2039, 2040 allows more time for nuclear to become an option for replacement generation at that site.”
Duke plans to push back coal retirement at its Belews Creek, Cliffside and Marshall sites, with some generators at Marshall running until 2034. Of Cliffside’s remaining units, one will retire in 2033, and the other will continue burning both natural gas and coal through 2040 before phasing out coal.
Batteries get a boost, solar and wind delayed
The North Carolina General Assembly eliminated the state’s 2030 carbon pollution reduction target earlier this year. This benchmark would have required Duke to reduce carbon emissions to 70% of 2005 levels.
Snider said that the utility still aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, but plans for some clean energy sources like solar and wind are delayed. Since 2022, Duke has acquired 3,200 megawatts of new solar. It’s also looking to procure 1,700 megawatts of solar with 300 megawatts of paired battery storage in 2025.
“We’re making a lot of investments in solar, battery storage,” said Kendal Bowman, Duke Energy’s North Carolina president. “We’re also going to be talking about enhanced liquified natural gas storage.”
The Allen and Riverbend sites — two former coal plants in Gaston County — will receive 217 and 115 megawatts of battery storage upgrades, respectively.
Duke proposes postponing onshore and offshore wind development until the 2040s. In August, the utility announced that offshore wind was no longer a feasible “least-cost option.” For onshore wind, unfavorable early site assessments, coupled with uncertain wind speed projections, delayed consideration of the resource until 2034.
“Furthermore, the recent shift in federal energy and trade policy priorities away from wind energy has significantly challenged the viability of near-term wind energy development,” Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton said in a written statement.
More natural gas
Duke’s updated resource plan proposes building 12 new natural gas-powered generators. This includes seven combustion turbines, also known as "peaking power" plants, that are activated to supply additional energy to the grid during periods of peak demand.
“Some amount of dispatchable natural gas is essential for system reliability, both in the near term and the long term,” Snider said.
A recent Sierra Club report found that Duke’s Carolina operations would be among the largest buildouts of new natural gas in the country. This was based on the utility’s previous resource plan.
To reach carbon neutrality, those plants would need to switch to hydrogen fuel or implement carbon sequestration technology. Neither solution is technically or economically feasible in North Carolina at the moment.
Snider said the plants would see less use anyway over time as new solar and wind resources go online:
“Over the coming decades, as you add solar — the decade after that, wind — as you add storage, the utilization rate of these gas units declines over time,” Snider said.
State regulators will host public hearings on the plan starting in 2026.
