Duke Energy Offshore Wind Initiatives for 2025: Key Projects, Strategies and Partnerships

Duke Energy’s Offshore Wind Journey: A Strategic Retreat from the High Seas

Duke Energy’s engagement with offshore wind power presents a compelling case study in the volatile intersection of ambition, economics, and strategy. A deep dive into the company’s activities reveals a dramatic pivot, moving from a position of confident investment to a calculated retreat in just a few years. This analysis examines the trajectory of Duke’s offshore wind plans, highlighting the critical factors that reshaped its clean energy roadmap.

Industry Adoption: From Flagship Project to Economic Anchor

Between 2021 and 2024, Duke Energy emerged as a key proponent of offshore wind in the Carolinas. The company’s strategy was defined by direct, large-scale project development, epitomized by its May 2022 acquisition of the Carolina Long Bay lease. This move, aligned with North Carolina’s mandate for 2.4 GW of offshore wind, signaled a firm commitment to adopting the technology as a core component of its future energy mix. The commercial application was clear: develop massive wind farms to generate utility-scale power for hundreds of thousands of homes. This initial phase suggested that for a major utility like Duke, offshore wind had crossed the threshold from a novel concept to a commercially viable pursuit.

A significant inflection point occurred in 2025. The year began with continued engagement, including a win with partner TotalEnergies at the Carolina Long Bay auction. However, this momentum was deceptive. By August, Duke announced it was shelving its North Carolina offshore wind projects, citing an independent review that found them “uneconomical.” This decision marks a stark reversal in adoption. The threat of high costs, once a background risk, became the primary driver of strategy. The company’s simultaneous partnership with GE Vernova for natural gas turbines and its pivot to solar investments in Florida reveal that offshore wind could not compete on a purely economic basis within Duke’s portfolio. The technology’s application shifted from active development to a stalled ambition, highlighting that even with policy support, prohibitive costs can halt adoption in its tracks.

Investment: A Pivot in Capital Allocation

Duke Energy’s investment patterns provide a clear narrative of its shifting priorities. Early, direct investment in offshore wind development gave way to broader capital plans funded by asset sales, with proceeds directed toward more cost-effective technologies and debt reduction. The initial $155 million for the Carolina Long Bay lease was a tangible stake in the future of offshore wind. However, the subsequent, much larger financial movements in 2025, such as the $6 billion Brookfield deal and the $521 million investment in Florida solar, demonstrate a clear reallocation of capital away from the capital-intensive offshore sector toward assets with more certain and immediate returns.

Table: Duke Energy’s Evolving Investment Strategy

Partnerships: From Development Alliance to a Diversified Portfolio

Duke Energy’s partnerships evolved from a singular focus on offshore wind development to a more complex and diversified network reflecting its strategic shift. The initial alliance with TotalEnergies was the cornerstone of its offshore ambitions. However, the 2025 landscape reveals a more fragmented approach. While research collaborations on wildlife impact continued, the most significant new partnership was with GE Vernova for natural gas turbines. This arrangement, made just months before shelving the wind projects, signaled a parallel and ultimately competing path for future generation capacity. The partnerships of 2025 illustrate a company hedging its bets and ultimately choosing a more traditional, cost-effective path over its pioneering offshore wind venture.

Table: Duke Energy’s Shifting Partnership Landscape

Geography: A Capital Drift from the Carolinas to Florida

Between 2021 and 2024, Duke Energy’s geographic focus for new clean energy megaprojects was concentrated almost exclusively on the Atlantic coast, specifically the Carolina Long Bay area off Wilmington, North Carolina. This region was primed to be a hub for offshore wind, driven by federal lease sales and the North Carolina Utilities Commission’s (NCUC) clean energy mandates. All strategic actions, from leasing to planning, were centered on this single, high-potential area.

In 2025, while the discussion around the canceled projects remains centered on North Carolina, the geography of Duke’s actual capital deployment has shifted south. The company’s $521 million investment in new solar sites is spread across four counties in Florida: Madison, Sumter, Hernando, and Jefferson. This represents a tangible move of investment dollars from the nascent offshore wind market in the Carolinas to the mature, lower-cost solar market in Florida. This geographic pivot demonstrates that regional economics are a powerful determinant of where clean energy infrastructure gets built. For Duke, Florida currently presents a more favorable and less risky environment for deploying capital than the waters off North Carolina.

Technology Maturity: When Economics Outweigh Technical Readiness

In the 2021–2024 period, offshore wind was treated as a commercially ready technology by Duke Energy. The company’s actions—investing $155 million in a lease and planning for a multi-gigawatt build-out—were not those of a firm testing a demonstration project. They were the actions of a utility planning to integrate a proven, albeit expensive, technology at scale. The parallel research into wildlife impacts (Project WOW) further underscores this point; the focus was on mitigating the effects of deployment, not on proving the core technology could generate power.

The events of 2025 dramatically re-contextualized the technology’s maturity from Duke’s perspective. The issue was not technical but economic. The August 2025 announcement confirmed that, despite being technically feasible, offshore wind was not economically mature enough to compete with alternatives like natural gas and utility-scale solar in the Carolinas market. This represents a critical validation failure for the commercial scaling of offshore wind in the U.S. Southeast. The technology works, but its cost structure remains a prohibitive barrier for a regulated utility that must justify expenses. Duke’s retreat suggests that for this region, offshore wind remains in a pre-commercial phase from a purely economic standpoint, pending significant cost reductions or stronger financial incentives.

Table: SWOT Analysis of Duke Energy’s Offshore Wind Strategy

Forward-Looking Insights: Reading the Signals After the Retreat

Duke Energy’s 2025 withdrawal from its North Carolina offshore wind projects is a powerful signal that will reverberate through the U.S. renewables industry. It suggests that the path to offshore wind adoption is not linear and that economic viability remains the ultimate gatekeeper, even in the face of supportive state policies. For the year ahead, market actors should not expect a reversal of this decision without significant external changes.

The critical signals to watch are twofold. First, the regulatory response from the North Carolina Utilities Commission will be telling. Will the commission adjust its 2.4 GW mandate, seek other developers, or create new incentives to change the economic calculus? Second, the actions of Duke’s partner, TotalEnergies, regarding the Carolina Long Bay lease will indicate broader industry confidence. The momentum within Duke’s own portfolio has clearly shifted to solar and natural gas. Until the cost curve for offshore wind bends significantly, or policy incentives become more robust, we should expect Duke’s capital to continue flowing toward these more economically certain technologies. The signal is clear: for now, the high seas are too high-cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Duke Energy abandon its offshore wind plans in the Carolinas?
Duke Energy shelved its North Carolina offshore wind projects after an independent review in August 2025 concluded they were “uneconomical.” The high costs of development could not compete with more cost-effective alternatives in Duke’s portfolio, such as natural gas and utility-scale solar.

What is Duke Energy investing in instead of offshore wind?
Following its withdrawal from offshore wind, Duke Energy shifted its capital to other areas. This includes a $521 million investment in new solar sites in Florida, a significant partnership with GE Vernova for natural gas turbines, and using funds from a $6 billion asset sale to strengthen its finances and fund other capital projects.

Was Duke Energy’s offshore wind plan a serious investment?
Yes, the commitment was backed by significant investment. In 2022, the company spent $155 million to secure a large lease in the Carolina Long Bay area and partnered with TotalEnergies with the goal of developing up to 1.6 GW of power, making it a cornerstone of their clean energy strategy at the time.

What does Duke’s withdrawal mean for the future of offshore wind in the U.S. Southeast?
It signals that high costs are a major barrier to adoption in the region, even with supportive state policies. According to the analysis, the future of offshore wind in the area now largely depends on the regulatory response from the North Carolina Utilities Commission and whether the project’s economics can be improved through new incentives or lower costs.

Who was Duke Energy’s main partner for its offshore wind projects?
Duke Energy’s primary partner in its offshore wind venture was TotalEnergies. They jointly secured the Carolina Long Bay lease in 2022 and participated together in the offshore wind energy auction for the site in 2025, just before Duke announced it was shelving the project.

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