North Carolina Plan Identifies Strategies for Secure and Reliable Energy Future

On July 11, The Pew Charitable Trusts submitted comments to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s State Energy Office on its draft 2025 Energy Security Plan, which aims to align planners, utilities, policymakers, and emergency responders around energy resiliency. Pew’s comments encouraged the state to strengthen its electric grid by leveraging advanced transmission technologies (ATTs)—hardware and software that can boost transmission infrastructure capacity—and distributed energy resources (DERs), such as battery storage and rooftop solar. Pew also offered examples of how other states are deploying these cost-effective solutions.

With energy demand rapidly increasing throughout the state, ATTs can enable more efficient delivery of electricity, freeing up capacity on the transmission grid to accommodate more power generation. DERs can bring additional energy supply online quickly and cost-effectively while providing consumers with reliable backup power when extreme weather events damage the grid.