--- title: "In North Carolina, a $500 Million Gas Plant for Amazon Meets the Word ‘Voluntary’" description: "Regulators cite Trump’s own Ratepayer Protection Pledge in rejecting Duke Energy’s project for a 21-building data campus" author: "Inez Holloway" published: 2026-09-26T15:00:00Z modified: 2026-09-27T02:07:41Z url: https://rews.cc/a/in-north-carolina-a-500-million-gas-plant-for-amazon-meets-t-2ac3b1 language: en tags: ["energy", "ai", "data-centers", "trump", "deregulation", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # In North Carolina, a $500 Million Gas Plant for Amazon Meets the Word ‘Voluntary’ *Regulators cite Trump’s own Ratepayer Protection Pledge in rejecting Duke Energy’s project for a 21-building data campus* By Inez Holloway · September 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/in-north-carolina-a-500-million-gas-plant-for-amazon-meets-t-2ac3b1 ## In brief - North Carolina regulators rejected Duke Energy’s $500m, 250MW gas plant planned for an Amazon data centre near Charlotte - The Republican-controlled commission cited Trump’s voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge on shielding consumers from costs - Duke may reapply but must show cost-recovery mechanisms compliant with the pledge - US gas capacity in development rose 50% since January, to 378 GW, half of it tied to data centres, per Global Energy Monitor - US utility bills have risen faster than inflation this summer, according to a Bank of America report The plant would have cost $500 million. It would have burned natural gas and produced 250 megawatts, and the 250 megawatts would have gone to a single customer: a 21-building Amazon facility rising near Charlotte. Duke Energy, the largest utility in North Carolina, wanted to build it. In September, the North Carolina Utilities Commission — a body controlled by Republicans, in a state that has not lately been famous for turning down power plants — said no. The reason given is worth examining, because of where it comes from. The commissioners cited the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary agreement introduced by the White House, under which companies promised to shield American consumers from price increases driven by the energy and infrastructure demands of data centres. Duke, the commission found, had not adequately demonstrated how its customers would be protected from the construction costs. If the utility reapplies, the commissioners said, it will have to offer cost-recovery mechanisms that comply with the voluntary agreement. A voluntary agreement. Enforced, in this instance, by a Republican-appointed commission, against the state’s dominant utility, on behalf of the ratepayers. The word voluntary is doing a good deal of work in that sentence, and everyone in the proceeding appeared to understand it. The rejection lands in the middle of a boom that the numbers describe plainly enough. Gas power capacity at any stage of development in the United States has risen 50 per cent since January, from 252 gigawatts to 378 — a third of the global total — according to a report from Global Energy Monitor. Under-construction gas projects rose 76 per cent in the first half of the year. The United States is now building roughly twice as much gas-fired capacity as China, and if every project on the books is completed, the American gas fleet would grow by about two-thirds, at a capital cost exceeding $647 billion. Roughly half of the new capacity is tied directly to data centres. The International Energy Agency expects American spending on gas- and coal-fired plants to surpass China’s for the first time in decades. The Energy Information Administration, for its part, revised its forecasts upward in September. It now expects dry gas production of 111.7 billion cubic feet per day in 2026 and 115.9 in 2027, up from a record 107.6 in 2025; domestic demand at 92.2 bcfd this year and 94.3 next; liquefied natural gas exports rising from 15.1 bcfd in 2025 to 17.4 and then 18.6. The Strait of Hormuz remains restricted, and America intends to fill the gap. Every one of these figures is a record, or about to be. > Building all of this gas for AI locks in decades of pollution, and it is also locking in dependence on a volatile fuel cost, which will get passed down to rate payers. That was Jenny Martos, a project manager at Global Energy Monitor. The tech companies have already bought up the most efficient gas turbines, creating a backlog; the companies arriving late to the queue are settling for smaller, less efficient, dirtier machines. The Trump administration, which champions data centre construction and has eliminated environmental reviews to accelerate it ahead of the midterms, has said little about the turbines. What the administration has said, through its pledge, is that consumers should not pay. And consumers have been paying: utility bills have risen significantly since Trump took office, faster than inflation over the summer months, according to a recent Bank of America report. The commission in Raleigh did not invent its concern. It read the same figures everyone else read. It is hard to read the order without noticing that a promise made in Washington — aspirational, unsigned in any binding sense, voluntary — has become, in one state at least, a standard a $500 million project failed to meet. There are other places where the boom meets the ledger. In Texas, [a retiree and a 1999 deed](https://rews.cc/a/the-park-that-became-a-data-centre-b782f2) have become an obstacle to a data centre park. In North Carolina, the obstacle is a pledge. Duke can reapply. Amazon’s 21 buildings are still under construction near Charlotte. The gas will come from somewhere; the EIA’s spreadsheets already assume it. What the commission decided, in September, is merely who would be asked to pay for it first.