Duke’s New Energy Plan for Data Centers Requires Consumer Protections Now

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — Duke Energy released its latest long-range energy plan, which proposes two additional gas plants and extends costly coal plant operations based on speculative data center developments, according to its own documents released last Friday. This alarming development underscores the need for the South Carolina Public Service Commission to adopt strong consumer protection guardrails for residential and small business customers to protect them from data centers.

“People are mad that our bills keep going to pay for Duke’s record profits and its expensive, pollution-heavy energy infrastructure intended to serve data centers,” said Paul Black, Sierra Club’s Senior Campaign Organizer in South Carolina. “We need Duke’s regulators at the Public Service Commission to establish the strongest consumer protection safeguards for residential customers and small businesses because we’ve lived and worked here for generations, and the richest companies in the world should fully pay for their cost of service.”

Duke notes it has 8,000 megawatts (MW) of demand from 43 large load customers in “advanced development.” The utility also notes it has 6,000 megawatts of demand in its “development pipeline” that are in the “earlier stages of the process,” meaning there are no signed contracts with the utility as it plans to build new power plants to serve these speculative customers. As Duke plans for significant new demand from data centers, energy demand from residential growth has trended down from 1.9 percent down to 1.3 percent while retail demand has reduced from 1.8 percent to 1.2 percent. Duke has the opportunity to make serious investments in solar and battery storage, but its half-step forward on clean investments is undermined by doubling down on coal and gas.

The Sierra Club has consistently pushed for large load tariffs and protections for customers in South Carolina. The Public Service Commission docket on large load customers, where it can add consumer protections for data centers impacts, is here and the Sierra Club’s filing is here.