Utilities and regulators are confronting load forecasts that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Duke Energy’s 2025 Carolinas Resource Plan projects that customer energy needs across the Carolinas will grow over the next fifteen years at eight times the rate of the prior fifteen — more than double what was forecast when the 2023 plan was filed. That kind of demand acceleration does not just stress the grid. It stresses the regulatory, permitting, infrastructure, and stakeholder processes built around a much slower growth assumption.
The policy response is still taking shape. In August 2025, Governor Stein created the North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force through Executive Order 23, including a Load Growth Subcommittee focused on how major new demand will affect capacity, reliability, transmission, and distribution planning. Its work is already moving questions around large-load tariffs, bring-your-own-capacity arrangements, load flexibility, and cost allocation into the center of North Carolina’s energy debate.
At the same time, Duke Energy’s proposed rate increases and ongoing Carbon Plan proceedings are putting the cost and reliability of North Carolina’s energy system under intense scrutiny. The central question is no longer whether new infrastructure will be needed. It is who pays for it. That question now carries real consequences for everyone tied to new growth — from developers and industrial users to utilities, communities and investors. And the pressure is not limited to electricity. Water systems, gas utilities, municipal providers and cooperative networks are confronting their own versions of the same strain.
Vertex helps clients identify where energy and utility decisions are moving, where risks are likely to emerge, and what needs to happen before regulatory, legislative, or stakeholder dynamics narrow the path forward.
North Carolina Spotlight
- Duke’s 2025 Carbon Plan would extend coal operations at Belews Creek as late as 2040 — four years longer than previously planned — as the utility navigates the tension between accelerating load growth, reliability requirements, and the state’s energy transition commitments. The North Carolina Utilities Commission must issue a final order on the plan by December 31, 2026.
- Duke Energy’s proposed rate increases — reported at roughly 15% in requested revenue increases and up to 18% in customer bill impacts — along with the April 2026 order pausing solar procurement, have put cost allocation, regulatory process, and North Carolina’s energy development pipeline into simultaneous conflict, with real consequences for developers, investors, and industrial users across the state.
- North Carolina water utilities are navigating a compounding per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) challenge across major watersheds and municipal systems, creating regulatory uncertainty, capital planning pressure, potential rate impacts, and difficult compliance decisions for local governments, utilities, and large water users.
Specialty Areas
- Energy and utility policy — including reliability, grid modernization, clean energy standards, nuclear and advanced nuclear deployment, solar and renewable energy, natural gas infrastructure, ratepayer protection, federal permitting reform, municipal utility policy, and electric cooperative policy.
- Load growth, resource planning, and cost allocation — including integrated resource planning (IRP), Carbon Plan proceedings, generation mix decisions, coal retirement, large-load tariffs, bring-your-own-capacity arrangements, load flexibility, distributed energy resources, demand response, and the allocation of infrastructure costs across customers, utilities, and major energy users.
- Rate cases, regulatory proceedings, and stakeholder strategy — including proceedings before the North Carolina Utilities Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and other regulatory bodies where utility investment, affordability, reliability, and public interest considerations are being evaluated.
- Transmission, interconnection, and grid capacity — including regional transmission planning, generator interconnection reform, advanced transmission and grid-enhancing technologies, utility-scale solar, grid-scale battery storage, net metering reform, community solar, utility competitive solicitation policy, and NCUC approval proceedings.
- Funding, appropriations, and infrastructure capital strategy — including energy, utility, grid modernization, generation, transmission, water, wastewater, and related infrastructure projects supported through IIJA, GRIP, WIFIA, RUS, DOE Loan Programs, IRA tax credit programs, and related federal, state, and regional funding opportunities.
- Natural gas, water, and utility infrastructure — including distribution systems, pipeline siting, utility service considerations, system reliability, water and wastewater capacity, PFAS-related compliance pressures, regulatory approvals, and infrastructure investment needs.
- Advanced nuclear and small modular reactors — including legislative advocacy, deployment-enabling regulatory engagement, NRC licensing strategy, nuclear waste policy, and spent fuel considerations.
- Siting, permitting, and public approval risk — including site acquisition, brownfield redevelopment, zoning and land use, annexation, agricultural conversion, easements, eminent domain, noise and light ordinances, moratorium navigation, environmental review, agency engagement, stakeholder concerns, and political risk management.
- Permitting, agency engagement, and environmental requirements — including NEPA and SEPA review, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act permitting, NCDEQ Title V operating permits, RCRA hazardous waste management, TSCA considerations, greenhouse gas and carbon reporting, and related federal and state requirements.
Relevant Regulatory & Government Bodies
Federal
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
- Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)
- Rural Utilities Service (RUS)
- Southeastern Power Administration (SEPA)
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- U.S. Senate and House Energy, Environment, and Appropriations Committees
North Carolina
- Local Governments, Planning Boards, Municipal Utility Authorities, and Economic Development Authorities
- North Carolina Department of Commerce (NCDOC)
- North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ)
- North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force
- North Carolina Environmental Management Commission
- North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA)
- North Carolina Rural Electrification Authority (NCREA)
- North Carolina State Energy Office
- North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC)
- State Water Infrastructure Authority (SWIA)