A majority of North Carolinians, regardless of political affiliation, support a more competitive energy market in the state, a regional free market for energy and new renewable energy resources, according to a statewide poll.
The 2024 North Carolina Energy Poll, conducted for Conservatives for Clean Energy NC and the Clean Energy Buyers Association, surveyed 600 registered likely voters in May.
Among the findings, nearly 80% of voters agree that North Carolina law should open the energy market to competition with regional industry powerhouse Duke Energy “to meet our future energy needs.”
“There is no partisan divide on this issue,” Conservatives for Clean Energy NC said in its analysis of the data.
Slightly more than 77% of respondents said they would support a candidate or lawmaker who wants to change North Carolina’s regulatory policies to allow for more competition and consumer choice. That statistic has remained about the same for nearly a decade, according to annual Clean Energy polls by the organization.
“Voters see the state-sanctioned monopoly system as outdated and needing to be modernized,” the group said. “Nearly 80% of voters agree that laws should be modernized to allow greater competition with Duke Energy. This is almost universal support with no partisan political divide.”
Of those polled, 79.3% agreed that “energy technology is changing daily, and the state needs to modernize our laws to allow greater competition with Duke Energy in how we generate and buy electricity.”
Electric utilities in North Carolina are not required to participate in a regional electricity market. More than 60% of respondents support using market technology to buy and sell power generation when needed and automatically sending lower-cost resources to meet consumer demand and ensure reliability, the poll found.
Still, 76% of respondents said their current electrical service reliability was either good or excellent while 21% said it needed improvement.
Support for renewable energy sources such as offshore wind is growing in North Carolina, the poll shows. More than 60% of respondents support building wind turbines off the North Carolina coast, up from 55% in last year’s survey.
Opposition to offshore wind likewise declined from 31% in 2023 to 29% in this year’s poll. Support grew to nearly 66% when questioners threw in that building wind farms off the coast could inject $4.6 billion into the state’s economy. A final 12.2% either did not know or declined to answer the question.
Support for offshore wind does differ along party lines, somewhat. About 44% of Republicans support wind turbines while 46% oppose building wind farms off the North Carolina coast. Democrats support offshore wind by a larger margin — 77% to 13% opposed.
Distance from the coast also played a role in voters’ support for offshore wind. Support grew to 66% when those opposed learned the wind turbines would be 22 miles or more off the coastline.
“The more voters learn about the potential benefits, the more likely they will continue their support,” Conservatives for Clean Energy said.
Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration has positioned North Carolina, which at more than 301 miles has the seventh longest coastline in the U.S., to be a leader in offshore wind power generation. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in 2023 excluded the state from its final wind energy areas in the Central Atlantic Call Area.
Still, Cooper at the time said North Carolina “is committed to building out the supply chain and workforce necessary to be the nation’s leader in offshore wind energy with more than 232,496 acres already leased off our coast for offshore wind development.”
Cooper in 2021 signed Executive Order 218, which established offshore wind development goals of 2.8 gigawatts (GW) off the North Carolina coast by 2030 and 8 GW by 2040. That amount of offshore wind infrastructure could power 2.3 million homes across the state by 2040 and create thousands of jobs, Cooper said. Those offshore wind goals also are aimed at meeting statutory requirements of 2021’s House Bill 951, which requires a 70% reduction in power sector greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.
Of those surveyed in the 2024 poll, 77% agreed that “North Carolina lawmakers should remove barriers to unleash more renewable energy investment, such as offshore wind, to ensure business and household consumers have reliable, cost-efficient energy options in the future.”
