North Carolina’s Energy Policy Paradox: How Data Center Growth Exacerbates Inequity While Masking Structural Flaws in Utility Regulation
Original framing: “The Terrible Combined With the Good” — Inside Climate News
The bill’s deregulatory provisions echo the 1990s-era utility restructuring that led to Enron-style market manipulation and blackouts in California, revealing a pattern of 'reform' that ultimately benefits corporate actors. Duke Energy’s history of environmental racism—including the 2014 Dan River coal ash spill in Eden, NC—demonstrates how regulatory capture has long prioritized profit over people. The Ratepayer Protection Act also mirrors national trends where 'energy freedom' laws have been used to dismantle renewable energy mandates, as seen in Ohio’s 2021 HB6 scandal.
North Carolina’s Ratepayer Protection Act is a microcosm of a global crisis where neoliberal energy policies—framed as consumer protection—entrench corporate monopolies while deepening inequality.
The bill’s deregulatory provisions for Duke Energy and data centers reflect a 40-year trend of utility industry capture, from California’s blackouts to Ohio’s HB6 scandal, where 'reform' has consistently prioritized profit over people. Indigenous and marginalized communities, who bear the brunt of energy poverty and environmental racism, are erased from the narrative, despite their solutions—community-owned grids, efficiency mandates, and energy trust funds—offering proven alternatives. The bill’s trickster-like inversion of language (protection as exploitation) reveals how solemn policy debates mask structural violence, while cross-cultural parallels—from Māori *kaitiakitanga* to Indian 'energy apartheid'—highlight the absurdity of treating energy as a privatized resource. True systemic change requires dismantling the regulatory capture that birthed this legislation, replacing it with democratic energy models that center equity, sustainability, and communal well-being.