Duke Raises Rate Base Growth Forecast For Next Five Years
Duke Energy Corp. executives have beefed up their growth forecast for the utility’s rate base through the end of this decade, saying they have “high confidence” that growth will accelerate from 2028 on as large customers begin to ramp up operations for which they’ve signed energy contracts.
President and CEO Harry Sideris and his team now expect Charlotte-based Duke’s rate base to grow an average of 9.6% from 2025 to 2030. That’s an increase from about 8.5% three months ago and, if realized, will have Duke finish 2030 with a rate base of about $180 billion compared to 2025’s $114 billion. The company’s electric utilities will account for about $164 billion of that figure.
“We enter 2026 with incredible momentum and are poised to deliver,” Sideris said on a Feb. 10 conference call with analysts and investors. “We’re executing our strategy and creating meaningful value for our shareholders and customers.”
As with many other utilities, data centers are helping raise Duke’s growth projections. Since late last year, the company has signed agreements with operators for projects that will require 1.5 gigawatts. That has grown Duke’s data-center pipeline to about 4.5 gigawatts, future demand that will be added to by large projects being planned or built by auto maker BMW, steel company Nucor and pharmaceuticals giant Novo Nordisk.
“They’re turning dirt. They have zoning in hand,” Sideris said. “We don’t anticipate any of those backing out.”
In conjunction with its update on rate base growth, the Duke team also has refined its capital spending plan from 2026 through 2030. After signaling in November that they expected the new plan to be in the range of $95 billion to $105 billion, Sideris and his lieutenants have now pinned that number at $103 billion, the largest in the industry and equivalent to an average of $1.7 billion per month.
Generation projects that will add more than 10 gigawatts account for about 45% of that spending target. Transmission work is slated to get nearly $13.5 billion and distribution projects will receive more than $26.1 billion.
The growth and capex update from Sideris and his team came alongside Duke’s fourth-quarter results, which showed net income of more than $4.9 billion (versus $4.4 billion in late 2024) on total operating revenues of $32.2 billion. The company’s operating profit climbed to more than $8.6 billion compared to $7.9 billion in the last three months of 2024.
Shares of Duke (Ticker: DUK) were up 2% to more than $124 in afternoon trading on Feb. 10. They are essentially flat over the past six months, leaving the company’s market value at about $96.5 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications T&D World, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner and Oil & Gas Journal. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.