The Ratepayer Protection Act, making its way through the North Carolina legislature, conjoins two opposing ideas.
On one side, the bill would rein in data centers and their ravenous power consumption, and shield North Carolinians from paying higher electric bills as a result of data centers’ operations.
On the other, the measure would liberate Duke Energy from limits on fossil fuel, upending key aspects of state energy policy and, in some respects, reversing nearly 20 years of painstaking work on climate change.
“It’s the terrible combined with the good,” a local advocate explained. “They should be two separate bills.”
Lisa, who has been following this legislation, explains how these two ideas got put together in the first place, where the opposing ideas fit in the state’s political landscape, and what’s at stake for North Carolina if the bill passes.
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Reporter, North Carolina
Lisa Sorg is the North Carolina reporter for Inside Climate News. A journalist for 30 years, Sorg covers energy, climate environment and agriculture, as well as the social justice impacts of pollution and corporate malfeasance.
She has won dozens of awards for her news, public service and investigative reporting. In 2022, she received the Stokes Award from the National Press Foundation for her two-part story about the environmental damage from a former missile plant on a Black and Latinx neighborhood in Burlington. Sorg was previously an environmental investigative reporter at NC Newsline, a nonprofit media outlet based in Raleigh. She has also worked at alt-weeklies, dailies and magazines. Originally from rural Indiana, she lives in Durham, N.C.