For the past three decades, electricity demand in the US grew at a pace best described as glacial. Somewhere between 0% and 0.5% annually. Duke Energy’s CEO Harry Sideris now expects that number to multiply by a factor of ten, and he’s backing that conviction with the largest capital plan in the utility sector’s history.
A $103 billion bet on insatiable demand
Duke Energy has rolled out a five-year capital plan totaling $103 billion, aimed at adding more than 13 gigawatts of generation capacity by 2030.
The plan targets 5% to 7% earnings per share growth through 2030. During a session at Reuters NEXT and separate CNBC appearances, Sideris laid out the case that this demand acceleration is expected to begin in earnest around 2026. The company has already been scaling its commitments to large-load customers. In 2023, those commitments sat at approximately 1.3 GW. By early 2024, Duke planned to push that figure past 3 GW.
Data centers and crypto mining operations alone account for roughly 1.5 GW of that demand.
