When utility Duke Energy backed North Carolina legislation four years ago to spur new investments in natural gas and nuclear power, opposition from pulp and paper mills, furniture factories, and other large industrial customers helped tip the political scales and reshape the measure into what ultimately became a landmark bipartisan climate law.

Today, some of the same companies are changing their tune: deriding solar and wind investments, embracing coal and gas, and backing a bill that would unravel the 2021 statute.

Testifying before the Senate Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Committee in March, three major industrial associations spoke positively about Senate Bill 261, which would eliminate a 2030 deadline for Duke Energy to cut its carbon pollution by 70% compared with 2005 levels, but maintain a requirement that it decarbonize by midcentury.

The bill would also allow the utility to recover power plant development costs from ratepayers before the facilities are producing electricity — a break from the status quo that would encourage Duke to build conventional nuclear plants, which have high upfront costs and long construction timelines.

Kevin Martin, head of the manufacturing and industry trade group Carolina Utility Customers Association, told Canary Media his organization is ​“directionally supportive” of SB 261 but also backs the 2021 law’s long-term carbon goals. Martin made similar comments to senators in the Republican-run General Assembly.

Other stakeholders who testified displayed less support for the clean energy transition.

“The pause in the interim [2030] goal is wonderful,” Susan Vick, a lobbyist representing the Carolina Industrial Group for Fair Utility Rates, said in her testimony. ​“We have some of the cleanest coal plants in the country, and we worry about those being retired.”

Vick said her group is ​“resource agnostic” but has ​“serious concerns” about Duke’s latest carbon reduction plan, a requirement of the 2021 law. The plan allows for what Vick called ​“prolific” investments in solar and wind, resources she said were neither ​“least cost” nor reliable. She also noted that her group’s member companies had seen rates increase 24% on average since the law was passed.

How the economics of clean energy won over North Carolina’s industrial customers

Although the Trump administration has made a sharp U-turn on Biden-era policies meant to spur clean energy, little about the economics of renewables has changed since the start of the decade.

As of 2024, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, large-scale solar fields, land-based wind turbines, and plants fueled by geothermal energy are the cheapest sources of electricity, even without tax incentives.

Such realities, alongside booming power demand, have prompted major industries in North Carolina to welcome renewables alongside more traditional electricity sources.

Duke Energy’s monopoly has also influenced industries’ approach to energy policy. Because they can’t purchase power anywhere else, large customers have relied on regulators to control prices. Big power users have also sought green tariffs — allowing them to buy renewable energy at a premium with Duke acting as a go-between — to help them meet their own sustainability goals.

Those dynamics led major industry groups to join forces with clean energy advocates in 2021 to fight an early draft of a bill that prescribed massive new investments in gas plants and would have charged customers for the utility’s forays into new nuclear power.

Dozens of mills and factories pushed back on those measures in a 2021 letter, writing that ​“ratepayers are still paying hundreds of millions of dollars for similar investments at the Lee site where no power ever has, or ever will be generated,” referencing a nuclear project Duke had abandoned in South Carolina. ​“The risk of new nuclear units should be shared between ratepayers and shareholders,” the companies wrote.

“We support the need to transition to clean energy,” Christina Cress, an attorney for the Carolina Industrial Group for Fair Utility Rates and an author of the letter, told Canary Media at the time. ​“We have several member companies who have very ambitious carbon reduction goals.”

By the fall, the bipartisan version of the bill that was signed into law allowed Duke to seek multiyear rate increases, prompting some of the industrial groups to oppose it and others to remain neutral. But none voiced opposition to a 2030 requirement that the utility cut its carbon pollution by 70%, nor to an incentive that could speed the retirement of the company’s coal plants.

Rising electric rates prompt calls for more power plants

Fast forward to 2025, and some of these same mills and factories are lining up behind a measure that would roll back the climate benefits of the 2021 law.

David Haines, president of the North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, suggested in his testimony that the state’s climate law is causing recent energy price increases. ​“We appreciate your concern over escalating utility costs,” Haines said to lawmakers. ​“The Manufacturers Alliance shares that concern. However, [Duke’s carbon reduction plan] is still out there.”

One of SB 261’s primary sponsors, Paul Newton, a Republican from Cabarrus County and former Duke Energy executive, resigned in March from his post as a state senator to become vice chancellor and general counsel for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But before leaving, he promoted his measure as an antidote to rising rates, citing a study from the North Carolina Utilities Commission’s Public Staff, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate. The modeling, obtained by Inside Climate News, shows consumers would save about $13 billion by 2050 if Duke could ignore the 2030 target.

But advocates caution that price projections that far into the future are circumspect. They also point to a 2024 analysis by EQ Research showing recent Duke rate increases are tied primarily to the cost of fuel, especially natural gas.

In an interview, Martin didn’t blame renewable energy for rising rates. Instead, he tied the Carolina Utility Customers Association’s ​“directional support” for SB 261 to its potential ability to spur a massive buildout of the always-on power sources Duke says it needs.

“We’re looking at physical needs and physical limitations,” Martin said. ​“If baseload growth is what’s occurring, baseload generation is what needs to be put in place to serve that new load.”

The provisions in SB 261 that allow Duke to charge ratepayers for plants still under construction lack ​“guard rails” to adequately constrain costs, he said. But Martin praised the idea of spurring more nuclear power.

“We need to add more nuclear to the mix,” he said. ​“This is a clean technology — carbon-free.”

‘The economics of clean energy haven’t changed’

To be sure, not all large electric users align with the industrial groups who’ve spoken favorably of SB 261. Late last month, eight major employers, including Ikea and brewery Sierra Nevada, wrote to lawmakers opposing the bill in no uncertain terms.

“Companies like ours value a stable environment for energy policy,” the letter says. ​“Rolling back the state’s interim target would not only jeopardize the long-term transition to carbon neutrality by 2050 but would also disincentivize future investment and expansion by our business and industry colleagues.”

Both businesses and investors value policy certainty, said Mel Mackin, director of state policy at Ceres, the nonprofit advocacy organization that helped draft the letter.

What’s more, she said, ​“clean energy supports their bottom line. The economics of clean energy haven’t changed. The resources are more cost competitive and continue to provide greater cost reliability.”

While President Donald Trump and his backers have made corporate climate targets decidedly less in vogue, Mackin said Ceres’ business members largely remain steadfast. 

“We have not seen any signals that these companies are wavering on their clean energy goals or broader decarbonization goals,” she said.

Though Newton abruptly resigned soon after moving SB 261 through his chamber, the bill still has powerful proponents in the legislature. Another lead sponsor is Sen. Phil Berger, the Senate’s top Republican. Before lawmakers took their Easter break, senators inserted the text of the bill into their version of the budget.

That means the bill is now in the hands of the Republican-led House twice over.

While the economics of clean energy or corporate climate goals could yet influence the bill’s outcome, advocates also emphasize that incentivizing expensive nuclear and gas projects could leave Duke customers, large and small, in the lurch.

They point to two examples in the region as red flags.

“When South Carolina had a similar policy in place 10 years ago, ratepayers paid billions of dollars to fund the construction of a nuclear power plant that never produced a single unit of power,” said Claire Williamson, energy policy advocate at the North Carolina Justice Center.

In Georgia, Southern Co. finally completed its Vogtle nuclear plant last year but only after significant cost overruns. Lawmakers there later sunsetted a state policy that allowed utilities to charge customers for plants still under construction, Mackin said.

“It is perplexing to me why North Carolina would consider this type of policy now,” she said.