RALEIGH, N.C. - The Ratepayer Protection Act, currently meandering through the North Carolina legislature like a confused tourist, manages to do two completely contradictory things at once: it tells data centers to stop being such energy hogs, but also gives Duke Energy a free pass to keep burning fossil fuels like it's 1999.
Part one of Senate Bill 730 is basically a dream come true for anyone who's ever resented a data center. It bans developers from using eminent domain to snatch land, stops local governments from showering them with tax breaks, and shields regular North Carolinians from paying higher electric bills just so some server farm can mine crypto or stream cat videos. "I couldn't ask for more in this political climate than what is in part one," said state Rep. Pricey Harrison, a progressive Democrat from Guilford County, adding with the resigned wisdom of a veteran legislator that the bill also includes "a bunch of bad stuff" to bribe conservative Republicans into voting for it.
That bad stuff lives in part two, which appears to have been written by Duke Energy's legal team after a very productive lunch. It would fast-track environmental permits for fossil fuel projects, delay the retirement of coal plants even further, and potentially erase Duke's carbon neutrality goal by 2050. "It's the terrible combined with the good," said Shelley Robbins of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, in what may be the understatement of the legislative session. "They should be two separate bills."
The bill was dropped on lawmakers at 9 p.m. the night before a committee meeting, which is legislative code for "we hope you don't read this too carefully." Harrison and her colleagues had barely skimmed it, but she felt encouraged by the data center provisions - she'd introduced a similar bill in April 2025 after watching the issue balloon into a monster. Now Republicans are feeling the heat too, with dozens of local governments passing moratoria on data centers.
SB 730 would require data centers of 100 megawatts or more to conduct site assessments for noise, water, air quality, and other impacts. Cyndie Roberson of the National Coalition Against Cryptomining, who literally moved from North Carolina to Georgia to escape a crypto mine, called the bill "so good" but suggested expanding it to cover cryptomines explicitly and lowering the threshold to 50 megawatts. "The data center near my cabin was 50 megawatts and it drove people crazy," she said, which is not a scientific metric but certainly a persuasive one.
Water protections, however, are less robust. Amy Adams of the Southeast Climate & Energy Network pointed out that closed-loop cooling systems aren't magic - they still lose water, use chemicals, and need flushing. The bill uses squishy terms like "de minimis" and "maximum extent possible" instead of actual limits, and data centers remain shrouded in secrecy about their water, energy, and coolant usage. "There is zero requirement that says the public gets to know that the data center won't impair the water supply," Adams said. "This should not be a private business decision. It's a public resource."
The Data Center Coalition, representing Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, expressed "concerns" about the bill's restrictions on incentives and cooling technologies, warning it "could reduce North Carolina's competitiveness." One imagines they'd prefer to keep the tax breaks and the secrecy, thank you very much.
Meanwhile, Duke Energy is planning rate hikes of 15 to 18 percent, and North Carolinians are packing public hearings to explain they'll have to choose between electricity and food. State Rep. Dean Arp, a Union County Republican, insists SB 730 is the solution: "The whole bill is about reducing rate payer cost for energy." What he didn't mention is that the rate hikes are largely driven by fossil fuel costs - the very thing the bill would incentivize more of.
The bill would require state environmental regulators to offer expedited permitting for fossil fuel and nuclear projects, a process Robbins described as "code for minimizing public input while simultaneously increasing burden on agency staff." It would also prevent Duke from retiring coal or gas plants until at least one nuclear facility providing 1 gigawatt or more is approved - a threshold that excludes small modular reactors, which Duke is actually pursuing at its Belews Creek plant.
Rep. Brandon Lofton questioned whether keeping old coal plants alive would actually save ratepayers money. "Help me get nuclear going then," Arp replied, which is apparently the legislative equivalent of "shut up and let us build stuff." Never mind that the Energy Information Administration estimates advanced nuclear costs at $110 per megawatt hour, compared to $55 for solar. Last year's law already eliminated Duke's 70 percent carbon reduction target by 2030, and SB 730 could go one step further by commissioning a study on the costs of achieving net zero by 2050 - a study that may well conclude it's too expensive and we should just give up.
"Once we receive that data, then we can have these other discussions," Arp said, presumably with the straightest face in the building.