A growing population. Thriving industries, including advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and life sciences. The very factors that propelled North Carolina into its position as the top state for economic development are among those that create an imminent challenge: how to generate enough energy to power the future.
Powering the present is challenging enough. The state ranks second in the nation for the average duration of power interruptions per customer, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. There have been 111 major weather-related outages since 2000, according to U.S. Department of Energy data – outages that affected residents, businesses, hospitals, and other critical resources.
The solution to this challenge incentivizes further economic growth. By investing in a diverse energy grid—one that supplements traditional resources like oil and gas with renewables like solar, wind, and battery—North Carolina can improve power reliability, save money, and generate tax revenue. It’s a rare case of win-win-win.
This is why grid diversification has broad support from bipartisan officials, as well as business and community leaders. Though they have different motivations, these groups share a goal: to fuel future growth efficiently.
News headlines demonstrate the volatility of gas and oil prices. That’s because gas and oil are global commodities that become more expensive as demand increases or supply tightens. In contrast, renewable sources are technologies. Like the technologies in your home—televisions, laptops—these sources grow more efficient and powerful over time. Today’s solar farms are more cost-efficient than they were twenty years ago. Twenty years from now, they’ll be even more so. Gas and oil hold no such promise.
Renewables are known for their efficiency, but they’re becoming more appreciated for their economic advantage as well. “Utility-scale solar and onshore wind remain the most cost-effective forms of new-build energy generation,” according to a 2025 Lazard report.
Those savings compound the longer that renewable plants operate. Unlike a gas plant, a renewable energy plant doesn’t require the utility to buy fuel for it to operate. Instead, the wind blows, the sun shines, and the battery collects energy. For the length of the contract, generally about 20 years, it’s a fixed price – as well as a good deal for ratepayers.
When landowners host solar farms on their property, the value of their land can increase dramatically – as can the property taxes, which are typically paid by the owners of the solar facilities and not the landowner. When comparing taxes collected the year before and the year after a solar investment, parcels in Northampton County generated an increase of nearly 2,500% in tax revenue, according to the NC Sustainable Energy Association. The figure was more than 2,000% in Currituck County and 1,500% in Bladen County. Statewide, real estate parcels with solar projects increased annual property tax revenue by $17 million – dollars that can go toward schools, infrastructure, and public safety.
In addition, these projects come at minimal taxpayer expense. When a developer builds a shopping center on an undeveloped site, taxpayers pay for infrastructure like sidewalks and water lines. A solar plant requires none of those expenses.
Just as a grid benefits from diverse sources of energy, farmers benefit from diverse streams of revenue. Solar energy allows farmers to supplement agricultural earnings with an income that’s not susceptible to drought, labor availability, or market fluctuations. This is a both/and solution, not an either/or predicament.
Agrivoltaics is the practice of putting solar farms alongside crops or livestock, allowing landowners to profit from both simultaneously. Landowners typically earn about $450 to $2,500 per acre per year for a solar lease. Such a lease can generate income from fallow land as its nutrients are restored, or it can boost profits from crops that benefit from heat and sun protection. If a landowner chooses to return their land to a solely agricultural use after the solar contract ends, they can do so.
Solar farms also support rural landowners who no longer use their land for agriculture. By devoting those parcels to energy generation, those landowners can once again profit from land that their parents or grandparents may have farmed.
When someone flips a switch, they expect power, no matter the time of year. Yet all energy sources—traditional and renewable—are susceptible to weather. As the risk of extreme weather grows, 100-year storms no longer wait a century to return. Yet it’s not just hurricanes that pose a threat. Many North Carolinians remember the 2022 Christmas Eve blackouts, when equipment froze at coal and gas plants. Half a million people lost power. Solar panels, however, continued to perform. Shortly after, Duke Energy acknowledged that “storage is a huge opportunity for the company,” that would allow solar power to supplement traditional sources during future freezes, even overnight. The following year, the company invested in its largest battery system in the state.
“The diversification option just makes sense,” says Suzanne Sabin, policy and communications manager at Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association (CCEBA). “If you have a diverse power grid, then you’re not risking the grid’s reliability on a single energy source.”
Think of a hybrid car that runs on battery and gas. Each source backs up the other, which nearly doubles the distance that the car can travel on a single tank. Imagine a grid that operates similarly. North Carolina currently runs on about 15% renewable power; by doubling that amount, it could create a similar efficiency. Even if pipes freeze, power lines blow down, the wind calms, or the sun sets, the lights go on at the flip of a switch.
This solution is about long-term sustainability as much as short-term reward, about economics as much as energy. As North Carolina grows in both population and industry, it requires the power to meet the moment – as well as the innovation to embrace a diversified approach to energy that can anticipate what’s next.
The Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association (CCEBA) is an association of independent power producers, suppliers, and customers committed to expanding private sector market access in the Carolinas’ vertically-integrated utility environment.
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