Duke Executives Say Next Capex Plan Could Top $100B

The next five-year capital plan from Duke Energy Corp. could eclipse $100 billion, executives said recently, setting a new high-water mark among utilities as they seek to address rising demand.

Speaking to investors and analysts after they reported Charlotte-based Duke’s third-quarter results, President and CEO Harry Sideris and CFO Brian Savoy said they estimate that the company’s capital spending from 2026 through 2030 will be in the range of $95 billion to $105 billion. At the midpoint of that range, the plan—more details of which will be announced in February—will be 15% larger than Duke’s $87 billion investment plan covering 2025 to 2029.

“The fundamentals of our business are the strongest they’ve ever been,” Sideris said on a Nov. 7 conference call. “We’re powering tremendous growth across the Southeast and Midwest with solid plans based on concrete projects that provide a durable runway of investment well into the future […] I am confident the tailwinds we see will continue to strengthen.”

Underpinning the larger plan for the rest of this decade is faster load growth: Duke executives think companywide growth will accelerate from 1.5% to 2% in 2026 to between 3% and 4% in the ensuing three years. As with many of Duke’s peers, large-load users are helping drive that step up. Among them are data-center operators that have signed on for about 3 gigawatts of load but Sideris and Savoy also pointed to large investments by auto maker BMW and steel company Nucor.

Mirroring recent announcements by Xcel Energy Inc. and others, adding generation assets is a growing component of Duke’s future spending plans. The company is working to add more than 8.5 gigawatts of capacity by 2030, more than 1 gigawatt of which will upgrade existing assets. But Savoy said investments in some of Duke’s natural-gas subsidiaries and a “bullpen” of transmission and distribution projects will stake claims to the capex dollars being added to the company’s forecast.

In the three months that ended Sept. 30, Duke reported a net profit of $1.4 billion on total revenues of more than $8.5 billion. Those numbers were up from about $1.2 billion and nearly $8.2 billion, respectively, in the same period of last year. The company’s total electric sales ticked up 0.2% year over year, with total retail sales rising 0.8%.

Shares of Duke (Ticker: DUK) ticked down on Nov. 7 but have since recovered that ground and were changing hands near $124 in midday trading on Nov. 11. They’ve risen slightly over the past six months and the company’s market capitalization now tops $96 billion.