RALEIGH – North Carolina environmental regulators issued separate final air permits Aug. 28 for Amazon Data Services’ planned data center in Hamlet and a temporary Duke Energy Progress power operation intended to serve it.
WRAL’s review of the Amazon permit counted 592 emergency generators: 588 critical backup generators and four ancillary generators. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s public announcement summarized the 588 backup engines at the Energy Way Tech Campus on Airport Road. The engines may operate during outages and for limited maintenance, testing and activation.
Duke’s permit covers 57 temporary non-emergency bridge-power engines that would supply the Amazon facility until it connects to the electric grid. DEQ requires Duke to retire the engines within one year after the bridge-power operation starts. WRAL described the limit as less than one year after the engines begin providing power.
The final permits add emissions testing, monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting requirements after public feedback. DEQ said Amazon must follow clarified fuel-use monitoring requirements, while Duke must conduct more initial generator testing and use the bridge power exclusively for Amazon’s facility.
DEQ issued separate permits because Amazon and Duke control different equipment serving different functions and timelines. The agency said the two sets of engines are not expected to run at the same time during normal operation, although WRAL reported they could overlap during limited testing, maintenance and activation.
DEQ reviewed each facility separately using worst-case operating scenarios and said each could comply with applicable standards. Agency spokesperson Shawn Taylor told WRAL that state rules did not require, and neither facility submitted, cumulative modeling of the combined Amazon and Duke emissions. The agency’s findings therefore should not be read as a combined-emissions analysis.
The permits drew significant opposition. WRAL reported that nearly 200 people attended a July public hearing and that residents and environmental groups objected to adding diesel emissions in a predominantly low-wealth community near other industrial facilities.
DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson acknowledged the public concern and said the agency would enforce the permit requirements. DEQ also said its air-quality authority does not extend to project siting, land use or electric-supply decisions.
The permits are part of Amazon’s planned Richmond County expansion, announced by Gov. Josh Stein in June 2025 as a $10 billion cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence infrastructure investment expected to create at least 500 jobs. That broader project announcement is separate from the Aug. 28 air-permit decision.
DEQ did not disclose when the data center or Duke’s bridge-power operation will begin.
Image credit: North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.