Duke Energy wants to build a new gas plant. Regulators said not so fast.

North Carolina regulators on Friday rejected a bid from Duke Energy to build a gas power plant — a rare denial from a panel that frequently defers to the state’s predominant utility.

Duke first proposed the 255-megawatt facility in Richmond County last fall. Designed to produce electricity when the grid is strained, the plant was slated to become the eighth smokestack at a power station near the South Carolina border. The single-cycle combustion turbine is part of the company’s long-term plan to meet skyrocketing energy demand, mostly from data centers.

The state’s Utilities Commission has repeatedly approved Duke’s general plan for a massive buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure. But the panel must also grant permits for specific plants, and its 23-page order said such a license was premature — with data center growth too uncertain and the risk to consumers too great to justify a greenlight now for the half-billion-dollar facility.

“Although [Duke’s] modeling does currently project significant load growth, much of the growth appears to be based upon anticipated data center customer additions,” the order says. ​“Any such anticipated load growth is insufficiently reliable for the Commission to act at this point,” especially, commissioners stressed, on a plant estimated to cost $584 million.

The decision comes amid a growing bipartisan backlash to data centers across the U.S., and as policymakers scramble to ensure household electric bills don’t rise further to meet the computer warehouses’ insatiable demand for power.

The Democratic governor of New York and the Republican governor of Texas have both issued pauses on the facilities. In August, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order laying out strict requirements for data centers that want an easy path to building in the state, and in Virginia, the data center capital of the world, Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger just unveiled a suite of proposals aimed at protecting consumers and the environment in the face of the AI boom.

The Trump administration has also gotten into the act, launching the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March. Signed by Duke and more than 200 other utilities, the document says the cost of powering data centers won’t be passed onto residential customers. That pledge figured directly into the Friday ruling by the commission, where Republican appointees hold a 3-2 majority.

To the extent Duke is seeking a permit to serve new data centers, the order says, the company ​“needs to demonstrate how the addition of such new generating capacity and its costs will be consistent with the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”

The decision stunned clean energy advocates, who’ve watched with dismay in recent years as regulators of both parties have approved multiple fossil-fueled Duke plant proposals, despite a state law requiring the utility to zero out its carbon emissions by midcentury. No environmental or consumer protection groups had contested the Richmond application, even as controversy has swirled around a $10 billion Amazon data center under construction nearby.

“We used to intervene in [permit] proceedings like this, but they generally have been somewhat of a foregone conclusion,” said Will Scott, North Carolina policy director with the Environmental Defense Fund. ​“It was really a surprise to see pushback on this proposal.”

The order, supported by the three Republican appointees on the five-member panel — Chair William Brawley, Tommy Tucker, and Donald Van der Vaart — even notes that an expensive gas turbine may not be the most cost-effective way for Duke to meet nearterm demand while complying with the state’s climate target.

Duke failed to offer ​“sufficient evidence,” the decision says, to allow commissioners to evaluate whether other power sources, including grid modernization, energy storage, and efficiency, ​“would establish or maintain a more cost-effective and reliable generation system.”

Duke is far from alone in pushing gas power to meet projected data center growth. As of August, developers have proposed or begun to build some 380 GW of gas plants nationwide — a roughly 65% increase over current capacity — largely to fuel the AI boom.

Advocates like Scott have long questioned whether all that growth will materialize. But they also maintain that clean energy sources are a quicker and cheaper means to meet rising electricity demand. ​“It’s a 30-year mortgage on a half-billion-dollar plant,” he said. ​“We need to slow down these decisions and make sure that we get it right.”

Still, Scott acknowledges that Friday’s unexpected win may be fleeting. The unusual ruling — with one dissenting and two concurring opinions — was issued ​“without prejudice,” meaning Duke can refile its permit application. Commissioners note that if Duke reapplies, it should do so after the panel has ruled on the company’s latest long-range plan — a decision expected before the year’s end. Another application would also have to make clear how Duke would abide by the Trump Ratepayer Protection Pledge.

In an email, a Duke spokesperson said the company is disappointed in the ruling and is evaluating its next steps.

“We believe we have demonstrated that the [Richmond County plant] 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 company said.