Many North Carolina residents were shocked last month by sky-high electric bills from Duke Energy. As families scramble to figure out how to pay — often choosing between putting food on the table and keeping the lights on — Duke has another surprise in store: it wants to make those bills even higher.

Duke’s proposal to raise electric rates could increase monthly bills by $20 to $30 for most residential customers. The request comes at a time when one in five customers served by Duke Energy Carolinas is already behind on their electric bills, and disconnections have jumped 37% since last year.

How can a company get away with ripping off its customers? Because the system is rigged in favor of monopoly utility companies like Duke, and this awards Duke for prioritizing profit over customer interests. At the same time, Duke provides an essential service, and most North Carolina residents can’t choose another electricity provider. That makes customers captive, and it allows Duke to get away with a lot, like proposing to raise electric rates even higher after posting $5 billion in profits in 2025.

After years of steady increases —bills have risen 22% since 2020 — Duke says the rate hikes are needed to improve infrastructure. But Duke’s continued reliance on dirty, expensive fossil fuels and its rush to build new methane gas plants is one reason customer bills are so high. With affordable options like solar and wind available, why does Duke keep doubling down on fossil fuels?

Duke will pass off the costs of its massive methane gas buildout to customers

Utility companies like Duke Energy make big profits from methane gas infrastructure because of how the regulatory system works. Utilities make money from building and maintaining infrastructure, things like pipelines and gas power plants. And the costs of those projects are largely passed on to customers through their electric bills. So the more pipelines and infrastructure a utility builds, the more it can charge customers and the more profit it can make.

This creates a strong financial incentive to favor expensive, large-scale, long-term construction projects over alternatives like renewable energy and energy efficiency. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and data centers is increasing the demand for electricity, but there’s evidence that projections of future data center energy demand are overinflated. Of course, Duke has a financial motive to overbuild power plants, so it’s no surprise that Duke plans to meet this growth by planning the largest methane gas buildout of any utility company in the country, a whopping 9 gigawatts — enough to power several million homes.

And who is going to pay for it? Customers. Duke Energy wants to raise residential rates for Duke Energy Carolinas customers by 16% and for Duke Energy Progress customers by 18%. In addition to raising customer rates, Duke Energy is also asking regulators to approve a 10.95% return on equity — ROE is the level of profit the company is allowed to earn. If approved, that would give Duke Energy the third-highest ROE in the country. 

Duke loves using methane gas because it can charge customers for it

Another way the system raises customer bills and favors polluting energy  is that Duke Energy can pass fuel costs — how much it pays for gas —  directly on to customers, and those costs can be extremely high. Gas prices are expensive and unpredictable because they’re tied to global markets. 

For instance, since the U.S. started its war on Iran at the beginning of March, the price of liquified natural gas has soared. The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas, followed by Qatar, which has stopped exporting LNG due to the war. As countries around the world pay more for methane gas from the U.S., those higher costs could affect what Americans pay, too. So, not only will we see a rise in gasoline prices from the war, we could also see our electric bills go up. 

The more methane gas pipelines, power plants and other gas projects Duke builds, the more fuel it burns — and the more those costs show up on customers’ bills. Adding to the outrage, a North Carolina court recently ruled that Duke overcharged customers about $1 billion for fuel in 2024. (Side note: there are no fuel surcharges for wind and solar.)

As electric bills continue to skyrocket and working families struggle to pay them, you’d think Duke would offer programs to customers to help lower their energy costs. It turns out that Duke could let programs like the Customer Assistance Program lapse when the three-year pilot program expires in 2027. So low-income customers on the program may experience losing the credit towards their bill while seeing their bills increase at the same time from the proposed rate hike!

Speak out at Duke’ rate hike public hearings

Duke Energy is choosing polluting methane gas over affordable clean energy so it can keep making billions — at the expense of our communities and the environment. It’s time to be loud because our health, our air and water,  and our bank accounts can’t continue to suffer due to Duke’s greed. North Carolina state regulators are holding public hearings on Duke’s rate increases. Everyone is allowed to speak at these hearings — state leaders and Duke need to hear from us. 

And even if you are not a direct customer of Duke Energy, your voice on this matters. Duke will eventually ask electric cooperatives to pay more for power, too.