Require North Carolina Data Centers to Pay for the Power They Need

I urge you to introduce and support legislation ensuring that data centers pay the full costs their enormous electricity demands impose on North Carolina residents and businesses. Residential ratepayers should not be forced to finance new power plants, grid expansions, or other infrastructure built primarily to serve highly profitable technology companies. This is your responsibility because the legislature passes the laws under which the NC UC operates. The proposed large-load tariff announced October 7 is a useful starting point, but requiring data centers to pay for grid upgrades alone does not address the full cost of supplying their power. The state’s Energy Policy Task Force projects that meeting data centers’ energy demands could cost North Carolina $50 billion by 2050. Apparently, data centers account for about 80 percent of projected future energy demand. Those costs must not be passed through to household electricity bills. Please pass legislation directing the North Carolina Utilities Commission to establish a distinct rate class for large data centers. Require that these customers pay the full, transparent cost of the generation, transmission, and distribution resources needed to serve them, including costs associated with new power plants. The law should prevent existing customers from being left with stranded costs if a data center delays, reduces, or abandons its plans. Any new power plants built to meet data center demand must be carbon-free. Data center companies should be required to bring or fund sufficient clean energy and storage, operate flexibly when the grid is strained, and demonstrate that their projects will not increase pollution or undermine the state’s climate and public health goals. North Carolina should not saddle families with the costs of new fossil-fuel plants built to power corporate expansion. I also ask you to hold public hearings and provide strong legislative oversight of the Utilities Commission’s review of the proposed large-load tariff. The public deserves clear information about projected demand, who bears each cost, and how customers will be protected. Please require regular reporting and ensure that affected communities and residential customers have a meaningful opportunity to be heard.