North Carolina's top lawyer wants data centres, not neighbours, paying for the power they use

The state attorney general has formally asked regulators to build a separate electricity rate class for large data centres, putting nearly $960 million of a live rate case in dispute.

14 September 2026 · 4 min read

What happened

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson asked the North Carolina Utilities Commission on September 14 to create a new electricity rate class specifically for data centres and other very large power users. His office's release says Duke Energy Progress's pending request, a 15 percent increase, would otherwise mean nearly $960 million in what Jackson calls unnecessary rate hikes for ordinary ratepayers over two years. A separate Duke Energy Carolinas settlement, his office says, would still raise average residential bills by about 9.5 percent.

Why it matters

A state's chief legal officer has formally asked a utility regulator to create a new rate class, putting nearly $960 million of a live rate case into dispute; the commission has not ruled. Duke Energy is onboarding an unprecedented number of data centers without a clear plan on how to protect ratepayers from higher rates and unacceptable risk, Jackson said. Independent energy trade reporting says his proposal goes further than what state regulators have separately proposed themselves, so this is not the AG endorsing an existing plan but pushing a stronger one. Jackson also wants Duke to publish its template contracts with data centres and large users, report load forecasts every 90 days instead of every six months, and pause new natural gas plant construction, a set of asks that together would make North Carolina's data-centre buildout considerably more visible than it is today.

What would change it

The Utilities Commission, not the Attorney General, makes the final call. Whether any of this happens in a form Jackson would call sufficient depends on that commission, on a timeline this desk could not confirm from the sources read for this piece.

What we do not know

This desk found only two documents describing this event: the Attorney General's own release, which is the primary source and not an independent check on its own claims, and one specialist energy trade publication, RTO Insider, whose full text this desk could read only as a summary. Other outlets covering the story could not be read directly because of access restrictions, so this desk cannot report Duke Energy's own response to the proposal, which neither source we read contains.

What this changes for you

If you are a Duke Energy customer in North Carolina, this is a live fight over whether the cost of powering new AI data centres lands on your bill or on the data centre's. Nothing is decided. But the size of the number in dispute, nearly $960 million over two years against a 15 percent rate request, is the measure of what is at stake for an average household.

Sources

Everything above is written from these. Each line says what that document proves.

1. ncdoj.gov: The Attorney General's own release: confirms the proposal, the nearly $960M figure against Duke Energy Progress's 15% request, the 9.5% Duke Energy Carolinas figure, all four asks, and Jackson's quotes.
2. rtoinsider.com: Independent energy trade press (RTO Insider): confirms the proposal goes further than state regulators' own plan; read as a summary, not the full article.