A law that eliminated North Carolina’s interim climate target increased Duke Energy earnings per share 17% in 2026, according to Duke’s most recent earnings report. But Duke says the difference comes from a different part of the law — and that the effect on earnings will be “neutral” in the long run.
In 2025, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that eliminated the state’s 2030 climate goal. That goal had required Duke to reduce planet-warming emissions by 70% from 2005 levels. Sue Sturgis, research and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, said Senate Bill 266 was “a really big deal.”
“It was really the bill this session that was the ‘Duke bill,’” Sturgis said, referring to last year’s legislative session.
The law also changed how Duke Energy recovers the cost from customers for building new power plants, making it less risky for the utility to invest in energy sources like natural gas-fired generators and nuclear reactors. Ratepayer advocates say this also shifts the risk onto the people who buy that electricity, while clean energy advocates worry that this makes cheaper solar farms less appealing to the utility.
Sturgis said the Energy and Policy Institute was curious to see how soon these and other changes would affect Duke’s bottom line. This is the first earnings report showing how much more Duke shareholders earned as a result of the 2025 law. The reference to SB266 appears as two footnotes in the nearly 40-page report.
The report shows the difference between earnings now and this time last year.
In the report, Duke says it earned 32 cents more per share this year due to “riders and other retail margin.” Of that, the company attributed 9 cents per share to SB266. In total, Sturgis calculated that the law earned Duke shareholders between at least $66 million to $74 million in 2026, though it didn’t detail how.
“We don’t even know which section of the law is producing this result,” Sturgis said.
Duke Energy spokesperson Gillian Moore provided some context behind the footnotes.
“The North Carolina Power Bill Reduction Act (SB266) did not increase costs to customers but simply changed the method by which purchased power costs are recovered,” Moore said in a written response to WFAE.
When Duke Energy buys and transports fuel, it passes those costs directly onto ratepayers. The utility doesn’t make or lose money on fuel for its power plants. That didn’t change after lawmakers passed SB266. Duke sets rates to recover those fuel costs during the base rate case and adjusts them through annual fuel riders.
Duke Energy also buys power from other grids and third-party power plants, often to ensure reliability during extreme weather, and those costs are eventually passed on to customers.
All of those costs have always been paid for by customers. Before SB266, Duke recovered some of those costs through annual fuel riders and some through the base rates it charges for electricity. Now, it recovers all of them through a fuel rider, aligning North Carolina with recovery in most other states – but the total amount recovered is the same over time. The legislation also prevents Duke from over- or under-recovering what it paid for fuel or power.
Moore said the timing of this change in recovery method under SB266 led to the extra 9 cents per share in third-quarter earnings.
“It is a timing issue and expected to reverse in coming quarters and will therefore be neutral,” Moore wrote.
