Posted on August 22, 2025
Duke Energy says offshore wind isn’t cost-competitive, halting plans for new projects. Advocates warn the move delays clean energy progress in North Carolina.
Duke Energy has decided not to move forward with offshore wind power off the North Carolina coast after an independent review concluded the projects are not cost-competitive at this time.
An Acquisition Request for Information (ARFI) — a process ordered by regulators to gather confidential pricing and project details from leaseholders off North Carolina’s coast — showed “offshore wind is not cost-competitive at this time, so no RFP will be issued,” Duke Energy said in a statement. “Nonetheless, the evaluation process provided valuable project, cost and schedule data that will inform long-term planning assumptions for the Carolinas Resource Plan being filed later this year.”
The company launched the ARFI in January, gathering confidential bids from three leaseholders: Avangrid, which controls the Kitty Hawk lease area, and TotalEnergies and Cinergy, a Duke Energy subsidiary, for the Carolina Long Bay tract near Wilmington. The ARFI sought up to 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035, enough to power roughly 1.5 million homes.
The results, filed with the North Carolina Utilities Commission on Aug. 11, showed all submissions exceeded the benchmark “reference price,” which was based on solar plus battery storage. An independent evaluator, Power Advisory, confirmed the conclusion.
Critics say decision protects customers
Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power and Life at the John Locke Foundation, celebrated the move.
He argued that costs and reliability should remain the state’s priorities. “Even with the most doctrinaire reading of climate change theory of emissions, because North Carolina is so infinitesimally small on the global scale, nothing that we can do is going to make a dime bit of difference with regard to the climate,” Sanders said. “But we can all end up paying a lot more for electricity while not making a dime’s bit of difference for the environment.”
Sanders said he does not see offshore wind becoming viable in the near future, though he acknowledged technological shifts can change markets quickly. “I can’t discount any possibility of a technological change, but I don’t foresee any,” he said.
Advocates warn of lost opportunities
Some clean energy advocates, including Karly Brownfield with the Southeast Wind Coalition, criticized the decision.
“We’re disappointed to not see Duke Energy move forward with an RFP for offshore wind at this time,” Brownfield said. “This decision, coupled with recent changes to the state’s carbon reduction mandate and uncertainty at the federal level, unnecessarily delays wind and compounds investment uncertainty across the clean energy industry as a whole.”
Brownfield also says the cost comparison with solar plus batteries is misleading. “It’s more of an apples-to-oranges comparison, because offshore wind has the potential to provide so much value to the grid during times of extreme weather or high load demand, when solar isn’t necessarily performing at its maximum,” she said. “We feel like that probably was not captured in this process.”
She added that delaying offshore wind risks North Carolina falling behind neighboring states like Virginia, where Dominion Energy is developing a $9.8 billion offshore project. “In terms of waiting, I think the risk really falls on ratepayers, because the longer that we push off this generation build-out, and the more constrained our resources become, the more that’s going to drive up price,” she said.
Future planning
The 2023 Carolinas Resource Plan had considered offshore wind as one potential part of a diverse energy mix. While no projects will advance immediately, Duke said the data will feed into its next planning cycle, with the 2025 Carolinas Resource Plan due by Oct. 1.
Offshore wind remains a politically charged issue in North Carolina, with supporters touting its potential to create jobs and reduce carbon emissions and critics pointing to cost, reliability and environmental concerns.
For now, the turbines envisioned off Kitty Hawk and Wilmington remain on the drawing board.
