The Town of Carrboro is a small place with big legal ambitions about combatting climate change. It’s been hard at work seeking to reduce its own carbon emissions, and reports adoption of policies it hoped would encourage transitions to renewable energy sources and other positive changes. Yet, in Town of Carrboro v. Duke Energy Corp., 2026 NCBC 13, Carrboro took a much bigger swing at a utility company seeking redress for cracked roads, potholes, erosion, and other harms linked to extreme weather events.

Carrboro’s claims focused on allegations that Duke Energy hid the ball “about the causes and consequences of climate change in order to slow the American public’s transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources.” Id. ¶ 13.

It alleged that since the 1960s, Duke Energy “has known about the potential dangers of greenhouse gases” and instead of sharing underlying data engaged in a “disinformation campaign” that included downplaying the dangers of fossil fuel emissions, opposing plans to restrict such emissions, using “fringe” science to support its efforts, and “[p]ublicly advocating that decarbonization efforts were unnecessary, uneconomical, or otherwise impractical.” Id. ¶¶ 14-15.

Carrboro styled its claims under public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, negligence, and gross negligence. As Judge Mark Davis explained in his opinion dismissing the complaint, the Town sought to connect Duke Energy’s “disinformation” and the delays it allegedly caused in transitioning from fossil fuel reliance to “the ensuing effects of that climate change hav[ing] caused increased storms, including those that damaged Carrboro’s municipal property and infrastructure.” Id. ¶ 38.

The Court cautioned that the case was not analogous to environmental pollution suits where “distinct lines of causation can be discerned from specifically identified polluters to individual victims.” Id. ¶ 59. To the contrary, the Court observed (¶¶ 59, 66):

“climate change is non-linear and is the result of the collective impact of acts by literally billions of unrelated emitters dispersed throughout the globe.

. . .

“The very nature of carbon emissions – existing as gases that are diffused through the atmosphere across the globe – makes any attempt to attribute a specific source of emissions to a specific climate change-related impact a futile endeavor.”

The Business Court held that Carrboro’s wide-reaching complaint sought a policy prescription that a court was poorly suited to provide. It noted that the NC Supreme Court’s distillation of the political question doctrine was the true fit for the dispute as lodged, as it “excludes from judicial review those controversies which revolve around policy choices and value determinations” committed to other governmental branches. Id. ¶ 44 (quoting Bacon v. Lee, 353 N.C. 696, 717 (2001). In Harper v. Hall, 384 N.C. 292, 325 (2023), the Supreme Court recently defined these nonjusticiable political questions to exist when there is (Id. ¶ 45):

“(1) a textually demonstrable commitment of the matter to another branch; (2) a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards; or (3) the impossibility of deciding a case without making a policy determination of a kind clearly suited for nonjudicial discretion.”

Carrboro vacillated in its position about whether everybody in the world was deceived by Duke Energy’s “disinformation” tactics, but settled on merely everybody in the United States. But either way, the Court observed that it would be “simply impossible” to quantify the available information over decades or to determine whether its withholding had “tangibly affected the emission of greenhouse gases or the ensuing acceleration/deceleration of climate change (and its effects).” Indeed, the Court found that to determine whether any of the alleged misinformation could be causally linked in the way Carrboro advocated would “necessarily requir[e] rank speculation as to the internal motivations of hundreds of millions of individuals in the United States and the cumulative effect of their actions on a global phenomenon.” Id. ¶¶ 60-61.

Carrboro’s litigation goal was lofty, of course, but even rare invocations of the political question doctrine themselves often have political resonance. Here, the Court found that “[i]t is undeniable that climate change has occurred as a result of immeasurable sources – both man-made and naturally occurring” and it “is caused by the confluence of emissions that have intermixed and diffused throughout the atmosphere on a global scale with natural weather patterns.” Id. ¶ 64. Yet, key policy makers to which redress is remanded under the doctrine offer widely differing approaches.

At the federal level, President Trump told the United Nations last fall that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” calling it a “green scam.” And just in the last few months: (i) the United States agreed to pay an energy company nearly $1 billion to surrender wind farm leases off the North Carolina and New York coasts and instead invest money in domestic oil and gas projects; and (ii) the EPA overturned its prior “endangerment finding” that served as a legal bulwark for regulating greenhouse cases under the Clean Air Act.

In North Carolina, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 62-110.9 requires the Utilities Commission to “take all reasonable steps” to comply with carbon dioxide emission reduction mandates that would achieve “carbon neutrality” for Duke Energy’s generating fleet by 2050. By statute, that means “for every ton of CO2 emitted in the State from electric generating facilities owned or operated by or on behalf of electric public utilities [a term that includes only Duke Energy and any successors], an equivalent amount of CO2 is reduced, removed, prevented, or offset[.]” It is worth noting, however, that in 2025 the General Assembly amended the statute to remove an “interim target” that would require 70% CO2 emission reductions by 2030 – a change that has potentially significant implications for Duke Energy’s plans to reduce CO2 emissions in the near term.

For a look at how the Commission has addressed this mandate, check out its overview of the 2024 Carbon Plan for Duke Energy that was the result of a robust information-gathering docket that included a nine-day hearing focused on expert testimony. For context, you can check out the Southern Environmental Law Center’s reaction, as well as the views of the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association about why it joined a settlement stipulation with Duke Energy and other parties in the lead-up to the Commission’s approval of the Carbon Plan. A Commission decision on Duke Energy’s updated Carbon Plan is expected by the end of the year.

Worth Noting

  • The Court found Carrboro had standing to sue because the General Assembly granted municipalities the common law rights of property owners, including the “right to be free from unwanted nuisances and intrusions upon their property and to obtain damages for a violation of that right.” Id. ¶¶ 30-32.

Brad Risinger is a partner in the Raleigh office of Fox Rothschild LLP.