Republican regulators in North Carolina have rejected a natural gas project intended to power a $10 billion Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) data center campus near Charlotte.
The GOP-controlled North Carolina Utilities Commission turned down a half-billion-dollar gas plant proposal submitted by Duke Energy, the state’s largest utility.
The facility was designed to primarily serve a 21-building Amazon complex currently under construction in the Charlotte area.
Republican commissioners William Brawley, Tommy Tucker, and Donald van der Vaart said Duke failed to show how it would protect ordinary ratepayers from bearing the costs of the project.
The three commissioners cited Duke’s failure to explain how it would “adhere to its commitments under the Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” a voluntary agreement brokered by the White House.
The Ratepayer Protection Pledge is a voluntary commitment signed by hundreds of utilities across the country, including Duke Energy, ensuring that tech companies rather than everyday customers absorb costs tied to AI infrastructure upgrades.
The proposed 250-megawatt gas plant was slated for the existing Smith Energy Complex in south-central North Carolina, a site that already houses five other generating units.
The commission indicated that Duke could reapply for the project but would need to present cost recovery mechanisms that align with the White House’s voluntary agreement before any approval could be considered.
Duke spokesperson Craig Wilson said the utility was disappointed and would evaluate its next steps following the ruling.
Wilson stated: “We believe we have demonstrated that the [project] is part of a least-cost path to maintain reliable and affordable service for customers as energy demand continues to grow across North Carolina.”
The decision reflects a broader and intensifying skepticism among state regulators toward large-scale energy projects built to satisfy the enormous electricity demands of data centers and artificial intelligence operations.
The rejection adds to a growing national conversation about who should bear the financial burden of upgrading power grids to accommodate the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure across the United States.
Data centers require vast and consistent power supplies, and utilities have increasingly sought to build new generation capacity to meet those needs, often sparking regulatory and public pushback over cost allocation.
The North Carolina ruling signals that even in Republican-led regulatory bodies, alignment with the Trump administration’s ratepayer protection framework is now a meaningful threshold for approval of large energy projects.
