In 2021, after months of tough negotiations over clean energy policies, North Carolina lawmakers, Gov. Roy Cooper and public energy utilities made a commitment: by 2050, North Carolina’s largest electric generating facilities would reach carbon neutrality. 

By then, facilities would offset each ton of carbon dioxide they released into the atmosphere with renewable energy. In 2030, they’d have to show some progress by reducing emissions by 70%. 

Now, some lawmakers want to renege on the clean energy deal by removing the interim date. And that’s not the only climate-friendly policy they’re walking back. 

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This session, lawmakers are pushing bills to phase out solar energy property tax exemptions, give themselves final approval of environmental agreements between state and federal environmental agencies and redefine clean energy eligibility to include older nuclear and hydroelectric facilities.

Last year, lawmakers took away one of the governor’s Utilities Commission appointments, so that he no longer controls a majority of the board regulating much of the state’s energy. 

Together, these steps and proposed changes signal a reversal of North Carolina’s commitment to clean energy, which has been a boon to the state’s environment and economy. 

If not directly inspired by President Donald Trump’s environmental agenda, lawmakers have certainly been “emboldened” by his declarations of a national energy emergency and attempts to roll back key climate legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, State Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, told Carolina Public Press. 

Before, some climate change skeptics in the legislature and North Carolina commissions wanted to roll back environmental protections and commitments, Harrison said. But federal backstops like the the Environmental Protection Agency director and President Joe Biden wouldn’t let it go too far. 

Those barriers have disappeared, and with them, much of the willingness to address North Carolina’s climate future. 

However, one potential obstacle to complete environmental rollbacks remains: Gov. Josh Stein‘s veto power. 

North Carolina as a clean energy leader

Today, North Carolina is positioned as a national leader in the clean energy industry, specifically in solar energy and electric vehicle technology. It wasn’t always this way. 

The industry gained steam after a 2007 law created a new renewable energy portfolio standard requiring utilities to generate part of their electricity from clean, renewable sources, said Josh Brooks, North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association chief of policy strategy and innovation.

As the solar energy market grew, it became cheaper to develop solar in North Carolina than other states, Brooks said. Soon enough, five megawatt projects were popping up, and in the decades since, the state has secured the second most solar deployment in the country. 

Former Gov. Coopersaw an opportunity to do more. In 2021, he issued an executive order setting an offshore wind energy target: by 2040, he wanted the state to develop eight gigawatts of offshore wind capacity — enough to power up to a quarter of the state’s electricity generation. 

The same year, he also helped negotiate the now-threatened 2050 carbon neutrality commitment for electric public utilities. Under the law, the Utilities Commission would create a Carbon Plan to meet 2030 and 2050 carbon reduction goals, while keeping energy costs low and ensuring any changes maintained or improved the power grid’s reliability. 

Later that year, former President Joe Biden’s climate agenda further boosted North Carolina’s growing clean energy sector. 

Collectively, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act granted North Carolina several billion dollars toward programs and tax rebates designed to cut consumers’ energy bills while incentivizing them to make energy efficiency upgrades, particularly in lower income and disadvantaged communities. 

Indirectly, the laws spurred more than $21 billion in private sector clean energy investment and created more than 17,000 jobs, according to one analysis. Only South Carolina has seen more investment. 

Many of the 26 major clean energy projects announced since then are located in rural areas, like the $13 billion production of lithium ion batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles at the Randolph County Toyota Battery Plant. 

Following Trump’s move away from clean energy

When Trump took office, North Carolina’s clean energy windfall appeared to face an early expiration date. 

On his first day, Trump froze federal climate funding, declared a national energy emergency and announced the end of the “EV mandate,” among other acts. America would be energy dominant, and that energy would primarily include coal, natural gas and petroleum. 

While federal courts have ordered the administration to resume most federal funding, for now, Trump’s actions have increased uncertainty in the clean energy industry, Brooks said. 

Repealing IRA incentives would waste a lot of private investment, which was made under the promise that federal support was on its way, he said.

Trump’s actions have also threatened electric vehicle infrastructure grants and the work of now laid-off EPA scientists stationed in the Research Triangle Park who were researching climate change and PFAS pollution, said Mary MacLean, Southern Environmental Law Center director of North Carolina offices. 

The threatened electric vehicle money would pay for charging stations on highways and interstates, MacLean said. Without it, electric vehicle demand and manufacturing will decrease.

“Putting in electric vehicle chargers, it’s not a hippie environmental thing,” she said. “It’s an economic thing, and it’s a way for people to move around in a clean and equitable manner.” 

The Southeast has disproportionately benefited from electric vehicle manufacturing, said Stephen Smith, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy executive director. There’s the Toyota plant in North Carolina, the Hyundai electric vehicle plant in Georgia and Ford battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. Those projects, and the jobs that come with them, are now at risk.

Congressional Republicans are now proposing a bill that would repeal clean energy tax credits, including EV charging tax credits. 

Smith thinks resistance to clean energy, in spite of its economic benefits, has become “almost tribal.” As the Republican Party’s leader, Trump’s rhetoric rules, and he’s telling his supporters to “drill, baby, drill.” 

“If you run counter to Trump’s energy agenda and to the MAGA approach to energy, then all of a sudden you are on the outs of this sort of tribal perspective on what is acceptable, instead of letting the facts determine where we go,” Smith said. 

Scrap that

If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election, Smith doesn’t think North Carolina would see the kinds of energy bills it’s seeing this session  — particularly Senate Bill 261. 

The bill would eliminate a 2030 interim goal, previously amended to 2034, to reduce emissions by 70%, on the way to 2050 carbon neutrality for large public utilities. Bill sponsor Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, said the move would save North Carolinians billions of dollars in a committee hearing. 

Newton, a former Duke Energy executive, said moving the interim goal from 2030 to 2034 already saved Duke Energy $4 billion already, and scrapping it entirely would reduce its construction costs by $13 billion. 

Smith isn’t convinced. The math doesn’t include the long term costs of inaction, and removes any sort of accountability measure Duke would face in the next decade, he said. 

“This is an opportunistic move by Duke to back away from their commitments, more than it is a legitimate technological or financial reason,” Smith said. 

Republican lawmakers hypothesized in committee meetings that North Carolina could still meet its 2050 goal without meeting the 2030 interim goal, by say, powering on nuclear power plants in 2048. 

That makes no sense to Smith. Or MacLean. 

“You’re not going to say, ‘I’m going to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year and not start on that until November,’” MacLean said. “You need measuring sticks along the way. That’s what our current law provides.” 

Besides, between now and 2050, carbon will continue to be emitted. The climate will warm, threatening future natural disasters like Hurricane Helene. And there’s no guarantee nuclear technology will be ready to go by then anyways, MacLean said. 

The bill’s second provision may be its death knell: construction work in progress. 

CWIP allows electric generating facilities to increase rates while a project is under construction, instead of waiting until completion to get a return on investment. The provision is deeply unpopular, after South Carolinian ratepayers took on the $9 billion cost of a nuclear reactor project that never came to fruition. 

While the bill pushed soared through the state Senate, the House Republican caucus has seemingly not given the bill its blessing yet, Rep. Harrison said. 

Solar scapegoat 

According to the American Farmland Trust, North Carolina is projected to lose about 1.2 million acres of farmland — about the size of Delaware — between now and 2040. 

“The people moving in, the businesses moving in and the solar development all share in that disappearance of farmland,” said Republican Agricultural Commissioner Steve Troxler at a committee hearing over The Farmland Protection Act. 

The proposed bill would phase out solar energy property tax exemptions, in place since 2008, in the next four years. Counties need the tax revenue, argue proponents like the county commissioners association. 

Detractors counter that solar makes up a tiny fraction of disappearing farmland. Harrison said there’s resistance to the bill from farmers. Regardless of how they feel about the politics of clean energy, many of them have leased land to solar operators and companies that have invested in solar operations. 

The tax exemption has allowed land that would otherwise sit vacant to generate stable revenue for families and counties, while diversifying the state’s power supply, Brooks said.

In some cases, farmers have also negotiated for dual land use as grazing pasture around the photovoltaic solar panels, making the land doubly profitable.

It’s a system proven to work in a very American industry, he added. So why get rid of it? 

“If we are truly in a moment of explosive demand, then we need to be utilizing the resources that we can quickly deploy, but are also inherently flexible in where they’re sited,” Brooks said.

A clean energy messaging problem

Duke environmental toxicologist Linda Birnbaum has spent decades trying to convey the urgency of climate change, as former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and federal EPA scientist. 

The message doesn’t always hit, despite the increasing prevalence of severe weather and warning temperatures. 

Research on climate change in the past decade has discovered a plethora of concerning developments, Birnbaum said. Wildfires are coming more often, and are more intense when they do. The distribution of fish in the ocean has shifted due to rising water temperatures, forcing fishermen to adapt. Longer growing seasons have led to changes in insect and bird populations. As temperatures warm, crops become less nutritious and more prevalent heat waves kill people. 

Federal funding bankrolled a lot of that research. But, with the Trump administration, the spigot turned off, Birnbaum said. It will now be harder to make informed decisions about the nation’s climate future as a result, she added. 

It will also be easier to mislead the public with outdated science, Smith said. Myths about solar energy being unreliable when the sun isn’t shining still surface constantly, despite improved storage technology, he said. 

Solar and wind are labeled unreliable while gas market volatility has risen in the past few years as it’s asked to handle more and more, Brooks said. Diversification boosts reliability, he added. 

“The grid operates like a symphony,” he said “It’s not one instrument. It’s a symphony of resources. And the job of the grid operator, the utility, is to manage the orchestra.” 

While climate change pleas may fall on deaf ears, economic messaging could be a savior for clean energy in North Carolina this session. 

Lawmakers can’t ignore the thousands of clean energy businesses, even though there’s increasing hostility toward climate change initiatives in Raleigh, Harrison said. 

If these bills pass , Harrison and her peers will be watching closely to see whether Democratic Gov. Stein uses his veto pen, and then, whether House Democrats, who have just enough votes to prevent a Republican veto override, can hold the line.

“We still have enough economic activity in our state tied to our renewable energy standard and clean energy customers like Facebook and Apple and Google that want clean energy, it seems like it’s still the prevailing interest to continue to invest in clean energy,” Harrison said. “I feel like we’re still in decent shape.”