Ensure baseload power to secure NC’s energy future

How much electricity we use changes moment by moment. Someone starts a hair dryer, an exasperated parent turns off lights, the air conditioning kicks on, the dryer finishes a load. There are several times during the day when electricity is used more than other times, but there’s never a time when it’s not being used at all. There is always a level of minimum demand for electricity above which uses fluctuate. This always-there demand is called the baseload.

Only the most dependable power plants — nuclear, natural gas, and coal — are capable of supporting the baseload. They can also meet demand levels above the baseload, as can dispatchable power units (especially natural gas and hydropower) supplemented by electricity from renewable sources.

Solar and wind power cannot be relied upon to meet the baseload, however.

Legislation would replace retiring baseload capacity with new nuclear power

On May 21, the North Carolina House revised Senate Bill 730, dubbing it the “Ratepayer Protection Act” and proposing several changes pertaining to data centers and state energy policies.

A new provision in the latest version (third as of this writing) would amend the Carbon Plan law to prevent the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) from authorizing the retirement of a baseload electric generating facility (i.e., a coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plant) without the development of a new nuclear power facility. This provision is to “ensure the adequacy of baseload generation from a clean energy resource.”

If lawmakers keep the Carbon Plan law with its requirement of “carbon neutrality by the year 2050,” then replacing baseload coal and natural gas power with nuclear would be the only way to keep the grid reliable and relatively affordable. During debate over the initial Carbon Plan, the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Food, Power, and Life (CFPL) provided analysis to the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) in 2022. It showed that achieving the law’s mandate for the “least cost path” to carbon neutrality that would “maintain or improve upon the adequacy and reliability of the existing grid” would require transitioning from coal to natural gas and eventually to nuclear. Still, despite resulting in the most reliable and least expensive mix of generation, this “Least Cost Decarbonization” portfolio was projected to raise monthly bills by $84 by 2050.

The Carbon Plan law was passed just prior to the emergence of power-hungry data centers and the political rediscovery that people dislike having to pay more for electricity. It was geared basically to replace baseload power plants with solar, wind, and four-hour battery storage. When Gov. Roy Cooper first proposed it, only 7% of the 166 environmental and other “stakeholder” groups even considered affordability and reliability as “[v]alues to prioritize going forward.” (In passing the Carbon Plan law, legislators at least inserted the “reliability” and “least cost path” provisions.)

Duke’s 2025 filing under the Carbon Plan law seeks to add much more solar capacity (14.2 megawatts, or MW) than natural gas (11.0 MW) and especially nuclear (only 3.5 MW). Tellingly, Duke expects those new solar facilities to be markedly less productive — about half as productive per MW than natural gas and only about one-fourth as productive as nuclear.

Model baseload-for-baseload legislation

Regardless of the Carbon Plan law, baseload power is too critical to the reliability of the power grid for a retiring source of baseload power to be replaced with an intermittent, weather-dependent source of power. For that reason, North Carolina needs a law that places protecting grid reliability and affordability above an arbitrarily set emissions goal. Model legislation for a baseload-for-baseload replacement law would accomplish that.

The bill would not allow the NCUC to approve the retirement of a baseload power plant until there were an equal or greater amount of new baseload capacity on the grid. It would also ensure that the carbon neutrality goal of the Carbon Plan law did not supersede the protection of affordable, reliable, and adequate electricity provision under state utilities law. Finally, it would reiterate that an intermittent source of electricity is not a baseload source.

The Ratepayer Protection Act shows that legislators are thinking ahead about North Carolina’s future energy needs, including replacing baseload power plants with nuclear power. A baseload-for-baseload bill would extend that wisdom by including other baseload generation sources and ensuring that affordable, reliable electricity takes precedence in North Carolina.

“Ensure baseload power to secure NC’s energy future” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.