• A new report charts two paths — a Renewable Scenario and a Nuclear Scenario — to satisfy a recent state law requiring carbon neutrality in electricity generation by 2050
  • The Renewable Scenario would require a whopping 465 times more wind capacity (mostly onshore) than the state currently has
  • The new onshore wind facilities needed under the Renewable Scenario would consume vast amounts of land and contribute to a need for a jaw-dropping 12,500 miles of new transmission lines, the costs of which would be passed on to consumers

A new report from the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Food, Power, and Life examines two pathways to achieving carbon neutrality in North Carolina’s electricity generation by 2050: either through intermittent renewable sources (solar and wind with battery arrays) or primarily through nuclear power.

As originally sought by Gov. Roy Cooper, the mandate of carbon neutrality by 2050 offered no protection of grid reliability or consumer costs. The General Assembly put that mandate into state law in 2021 by House Bill 951 after including specific safeguards on preserving grid reliability and keeping the costs of this transition as low as possible. (Even so, the least-cost guardrail faces unforeseen limitations, but there is a way for the legislature to fix that problem.)

As part of examining the Renewable Scenario favored by Cooper, the report assesses how much new wind production North Carolina would need — onshore and offshore — to fulfill the carbon-neutrality mandate and discusses the resulting implications.

A Massive Amount of New Wind Capacity — Overbuilding to Account for Intermittency

In the Renewable Scenario, shutting down all 21,343 megawatts (MW) of coal and natural gas capacity in North Carolina would require adding 339,406 MW of solar, wind, and battery capacity. That’s because this scenario would replace reliable power generation (coal and natural gas) with intermittent resources. As discussed in a previous brief, the only way to approximate reliability in such a scenario is with “ridiculous redundancy.”

In this scenario, wind capacity would increase 426 times, from 280 MW in 2022 to 88,643 MW in 2050. Adding another 8,000 MW of offshore wind capacity would bring the Renewable Scenario’s increase in wind capacity to about 465 times the current amount.

The report explains why such a huge amount of new wind would be needed under the Renewable Scenario in addition to a 21-fold increase in solar capacity:

The massive growth in capacity is needed because North Carolina has a winter-peaking system, with the highest electricity demand occurring during nighttime hours when it is coldest. This demand profile necessitates a large buildout of four-hour battery storage and wind because solar does not operate during the periods of the highest electricity demand.

The report offers another way to contextualize the 426-fold increase in onshore wind capacity in North Carolina. It would require well more than double the amount of onshore wind currently installed in the wind power–heavy (and outage-prone) state of Texas.

“Lighting the Path” also gives an indication of the expected wind resources for North Carolina compared with the rest of the nation. One problem is that, while the average hub height of onshore wind turbines in the United States is 98 meters (321 feet) tall, “North Carolina … has some of the lowest wind speeds in the nation at 100 meters.”

Concerning wind speeds at higher elevations (200 meters, or 656 feet), the northeast corner of North Carolina has the highest wind speeds, as do the North Carolina mountains. Wind facilities are highly limited in the mountains, however, because of the Mountain Ridge Protection Act of 1983, or Ridge Law. That law was enacted primarily for “preserving the scenic beauty of the mountains,” according to Robert M. Kessler in the North Carolina Law Review, because the public’s “main concern was spoliation of mountain scenery.”

The Ridge Law was passed because of the feared destruction of scenic views and tourism by mountaintop condominiums and hotels. Offshore wind facilities offer much the same threat to the scenic beauty of the coast. Owing to their enormous tower heights (several times larger than lighthouses), the massive breadth of the facilities, and their flashing lights at night, offshore wind facilities threaten destruction of the scenic views and beach tourism in North Carolina, not to mention harm to the other great coastal industry: fishing.

A Tremendous Footprint by Land or by Sea

Land use is an overlooked environmental concern regarding energy generation. Intermittent renewable sources not only need to overbuild facilities to approximate the reliable output of nuclear, natural gas, and coal facilities, but also require much, much more land per unit of power generated compared to these other more reliable sources.

The report estimates that the amount of new onshore capacity needed under the Renewable Scenario would require more than 42,679 acres (67 square miles) of land. If that were a city, it would be the seventh-biggest city in the state.

What about offshore wind? The report estimates the indirect land usage (i.e., marine acres) of the 8,000 MW of offshore wind required by the Renewable Scenario. The total amount needed would be 193,524 acres (302 square miles), an area bigger than Charlotte, the biggest city in the state.

A reason for such sprawl is that offshore wind requires several dozen acres to produce a single megawatt of electricity — when the wind is blowing.

Thousands upon Thousands of Miles of New Transmission Lines

Because the land footprint of nuclear facilities is so small — nuclear needs only 640 acres (one square mile) to produce the same amount of power (1,000 MW) that takes an onshore wind facility 426 square miles and an offshore wind facility 86 square miles to produce — the report estimates that the Nuclear Scenario would require only about 1,348 miles of new transmission lines (a 7 percent increase).

By contrast, the scattershot, overbuilt, and land-intensive Renewable Scenario “would require a 58 to 76 percent increase in transmission infrastructure.” The report’s midpoint estimate is that North Carolina would need more than 12,500 miles of new transmission lines under the Renewable Scenario.

Along with the costs of all the new facilities, North Carolina law would roll the costs of new transmission infrastructure into customers’ electricity bills. They would receive markedly less reliable service while paying much higher rates for a basic human necessity.

Future research briefs will examine other findings in the “Lighting the Path” report.