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. Governor Stein created the North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force in August 2025 through Executive Order 23, with a Load Growth Subcommittee focused on large-load growth, capacity, reliability, transmission, and distribution needs. Its work is already pushing 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 reliability, affordability, generation mix, and infrastructure investment under intense scrutiny. Who pays for the infrastructure required to serve large new loads is no longer a background policy debate. It is an active regulatory and political question with real consequences for developers, industrial users, utilities, communities, and investors.
The same dynamics are playing out across water systems, gas utilities, and municipal providers, each navigating its own version of a system under strain. Vertex helps clients navigate the regulatory, legislative, and stakeholder environments where energy policy, utility decisions, and infrastructure investment are being shaped.
North Carolina Spotlight
- Duke’s 2025 Carbon Plan extends 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 NCUC must issue a final order on the plan by December 31, 2026.
- Duke Energy’s proposed 15-18% rate increases and the NCUC chairman’s unilateral April 2026 order pausing solar procurement — immediately challenged as exceeding his authority — 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 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
- Federal and state legislative engagement on energy and utilities — including energy reliability, grid modernization and smart grid technology, clean energy standards, nuclear and advanced nuclear deployment, solar and renewable energy, natural gas infrastructure, ratepayer protection, federal permitting reform, and municipal utility and electric cooperative policy
- Appropriations, funding strategy, and capital planning across energy, utility, grid modernization, generation, transmission, water and wastewater, and related infrastructure projects — including IIJA, GRIP, WIFIA, RUS, DOE Loan Programs, IRA tax credit programs, and related federal, state, and regional funding opportunities
- Utility policy and resource planning matters — including integrated resource planning (IRP), Carbon Plan proceedings, generation mix decisions, coal retirement, large-load demand, distributed energy resources, and demand response
- Rate case strategy and regulatory proceeding intervention before the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC), Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and other regulatory bodies
- Natural gas and energy infrastructure policy — including distribution systems, pipeline siting, reliability planning, regulatory proceedings, permitting, and utility service considerations
- Interconnection, transmission, and grid capacity policy — including utility-scale solar, grid-scale battery storage, distributed energy resources, net metering reform, community solar, utility competitive solicitation policy, and NCUC approval proceedings
- Advanced nuclear and small modular reactor (SMR) policy — including legislative advocacy, deployment-enabling regulatory engagement, NRC licensing strategy, and nuclear waste and spent fuel policy
- Public engagement, stakeholder strategy, and coalition-building with trade associations, standards bodies, and industry groups — including EEI, NRECA, SEIA, NEI, AGA, NARUC, NCSEA, and CCEBA
- Site acquisition, development, and entitlements strategy — including brownfield redevelopment, zoning and land use, annexation, agricultural conversion, easements, eminent domain, noise and light ordinances, stakeholder and community engagement, moratorium navigation, and political risk management
- Permitting, agency engagement, and environmental requirements strategy — including NEPA review, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act permitting, NCDEQ Title V operating permits, RCRA hazardous waste management, TSCA considerations, GHG and carbon reporting, and related federal and state requirements
Relevant Regulatory & Government Bodies
Federal
- Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
- 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
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
- U.S. Department of Interior (DOI)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- U.S. Senate and House Energy, Environment, and Appropriations Committees
North Carolina
- ElectriCities of North Carolina
- Local Governments, Planning Boards, Municipal Utility Authorities, and Economic Development Authorities
- NC Clean Energy Technology Center (NCCETC)
- North Carolina Department of Commerce (NCDOC)
- North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ)
- North Carolina Electric Cooperatives
- North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force
- NC 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)