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Economic Development

Court of Appeals: Duke fuel rider wrongly approved

A bipartisan state Court of Appeals panel says the Utilities Commission erred when it allowed Duke Energy to recover $17 million in excess fuel costs it paid out in 2022 via a surcharge on its 2024 rates. But Judge John Arrowood and his colleagues declined to order Duke to refund...

By Ray Gronberg

February 19, 2026

Labor Department signs safety partnership for tower project

North Carolina’s Labor Department has active safety “partnership” deals in place with the contractors spearheading work on four of the state’s highest-profile construction projects. It recently touted the signing of an agreement with Barnhill Building Group covering the company’s work on The Creamery, a 37-floor mixed use tower that’s going...

By Ray Gronberg

February 18, 2026

Energy task force submits its first report

Data centers account for about 80% of the additional demand Duke Energy is expecting to come its way because of economic-development drives in the Carolinas That’s the word from Gov. Josh Stein’s Energy Policy Task Force, and part of the reason it’s advocating that policymakers make sure data centers pay...

By Ray Gronberg

February 17, 2026

Judge dismisses climate-change suit against Duke

Saying the issue’s too much a political matter, a Business Court judge has dismissed Carrboro’s climate-change lawsuit against Duke Energy. Judge Mark Davis — a former state Supreme Court justice returned to the bench in 2021 by former Gov. Roy Cooper — said a jury could only resort to “utter...

By Ray Gronberg

February 16, 2026

Stein picks engineer for Utilities Commission

Former Duke Energy and Strata Clean Energy engineer John Gajda is joining the N.C. Utilities Commission. Gov. Josh Stein announced on Friday that’d he’d picked Gajda for the slot on the commission that opened up when lawyer and former chair Karen Kemeraitstepped down. Given recent legislatively dictated changes to his...

By Ray Gronberg

February 16, 2026

Lumbee I-95 land deal spurs questions

In December, the Lumbee Tribe’s for-profit arm paid a combined $6.8 million for two tracts of land alongside Interstate 95, where a Native American-owned casino may someday emerge. That was $3.6 million more than the combined properties’ sale price a few days earlier. Deeds recorded with Robeson County show that...

By Ray Gronberg

February 16, 2026

Jackson presses on in rent-fixing lawsuit

State Attorney General Jeff Jackson says North Carolina’s apartment-rent price-fixing lawsuit against RealPage continues, even though the federal government is moving to settle its end of the case. “If I can’t get a fair deal from them, I’ll just take it to trial and let a jury decide,” Jackson said...

By Ray Gronberg

February 15, 2026

NC Chamber supporting push to lower H-2A wage rates

The NC Chamber is backing a Trump administration move to lower the minimum wage rate for migrant farm workers hired under the H-2A visa program. Lawyers representing the Chamber in late January filed a friend-of-the-courtbrief in a California federal-court case, opposing an attempt by the United Farm Workers to get...

By Ray Gronberg

February 11, 2026

NCSU involved in “Golden Dome” anti-missile project

NC State has a chance to participate in a $151 billion federally funded R&D program designed to bolster the country’s defenses against missile attacks. The Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency in December and January qualified 2,440 companies and universities to compete for grants under what it’s calling the “Scalable Homeland...

By Ray Gronberg

February 10, 2026

Growth putting pressure on DOT project rankings

A decade and a half on, some legislators are having second thoughts about the system they and former Gov. Pat McCrory ushered in to take some of the politics out of funding road projects. The state’s prioritization system is shortchanging local-level projects and also pushing “P3” initiatives — toll roads...

By Ray Gronberg

February 6, 2026

DOT favors double-deck plan for I-77 in Charlotte

N.C. Department of Transportation officials say they’re “moving forward” with the idea of building a deck atop part of Interstate 77 in Charlotte to add express toll lanes to the highway. Radical though it may be, DOT says the proposal seems the “least impactful design alternative” for some of the...

By Ray Gronberg

February 6, 2026

Duke avoids setting new power-load record

Following up on yesterday’s item about Duke Energy’s storm-related pollution waivers, the company says the load on its network didn’t set a record during Winter Storms Fern (ice) and Gianna (snow). The January 2025 record load was almost 37.3 gigawatts and this time around, loads “peaked just shy” of that...

By Ray Gronberg

February 5, 2026

Small reactors lack economies of scale, legislators hear

When it comes to building nuclear reactors, a consultant’s advice to legislators is easily summarized: Go big or go home. Elaborating, the Joint Legislative Commission on Energy Policy heard testimony on Tuesday that said small modular reactors can’t match the economic efficiency of the large ones utilities like Duke Energy...

By Ray Gronberg

February 4, 2026

Wolfspeed gets feds’ OK for Japanese investor

Durham-based Wolfspeed says federal regulators have given permission for a Japanese company to take an equity stake in the chipmaker. The decision came from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and stems from Wolfspeed’s Chapter 11 restructuring last year. One of the company’s largest creditors going into...

By Ray Gronberg

February 3, 2026

Lumbee land buy could accommodate casino

The Lumbee tribe has bought land in Robeson County that could someday host eastern North Carolina’s first casino. State Rep. John Lowery, the tribe’s chairman, recently announced that Lumbee Tribe Holdings has acquired 241 acres that “can be utilized for long-term economic development initiatives that benefit our people for generations to...

By Ray Gronberg

January 27, 2026