This Map Should Be on the Mind of Everyone Running for Office Next Year

Recently, an Axios map showing the average change in residential electricity prices in every state over the past year caught my eye.

Across the United States, electricity bills rose 6.5% on average between May 2024 and May 2025—nearly three times the rate of inflation. Only five states saw prices decline. In Maine, electricity prices increased a whopping 36.3%. It’s a story that will undoubtedly be familiar to readers of this newsletter: fueled by the rise of AI, power-hungry data centers are driving up rates and putting stress on the grid with their insatiable demand for electricity. And it’s only going to get worse.

When it came time to defend the IRA tax credits that were driving the industry’s growth, clean energy companies put their faith in the fact that they were making investments in new manufacturing facilities and creating jobs, especially in red states. But with unemployment near historic lows, most Americans are simply not concerned with a few canceled projects and what that means for jobs in the future. After all, the unemployment rate only affects people who are looking for work—but everyone is impacted by rising prices.

For the past few years, rising costs have been the dominant concern of everyday Americans, and between Trump’s tariffs and rising energy prices, there’s no reason to think they won’t be a key issue in 2026. And if you’re a Republican member of Congress, that should worry you.

One Big, Beautiful Bill—Many Big, Expensive Electric Bills

The signature—and potentially only—item on President Trump’s legislative agenda, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), took a hatchet to the IRA tax credits that were in the process of  supercharging the clean energy industry.

And it’s not just the OBBBA. The Department of Interior has effectively halted approval of any new wind and solar projects—including on private land. The Department of Energy (potentially illegally) terminated a loan for the Grain Belt Express, which would have delivered affordable power across the midwest. Anywhere you look, Republicans in Congress and the administration are working to raise Americans’ electric bills in service of a single-minded pro-fossil fuels agenda. Gone are the days of “all-of-the-above” energy. They are picking winners and losers: the winners are the oil and gas industry, the losers are the American people.

Regardless where you rank the importance of mitigating human-caused climate change, tipping the scales in favor of fossil fuels is a losing bet. The price of new gas turbines is shooting up, if you can even get one. Wind and solar, meanwhile, are the fastest and often cheapest way to get electrons on the grid. Anything that raises the price or slows down the construction of renewables, which accounted for 90% of new electric capacity in 2024, is going to raise the price of electricity overall.

According to an analysis by Energy Innovation, a non-partisan energy and climate policy think tank, the OBBBA will slash power generation by 340 gigawatts and increase electricity prices by 9-18% by 2035. And people are noticing: 64 percent of Americans told Navigator Research that the fact that “Electricity prices could increase by an average of $280 a year” was concerning.

Democrats Should Become the Party of Cheap Electricity

Every member of Congress who voted for the OBBBA should spend now until November 2026 answering for the fact that they voted to raise Americans’ electric bills to pay for tax cuts for millionaires. They should also be held accountable for enabling the Trump administration’s all-out assault on renewable energy, from its illegal attempt to claw back grants for solar construction to its laughably thin excuses for attacking wind farms. The ads write themselves. 

Clean energy, especially wind and solar, has become regrettably politicized, but it’s time to realize that there’s nothing partisan about wanting affordable, reliable energy. Perhaps this represents an inflection point, where the old politics of clean-vs.-polluting makes way for a new debate of cheap-vs.-expensive.

Republicans are on their back foot thanks to President Trump’s singleminded obsession with killing renewables. Democrats have a real opportunity to reframe the issue and become the party of cheap, abundant electricity (and if it helps cut emissions, so much the better). I’m glad to see some ads already running, and I hope it’s a drumbeat that continues in the months ahead.

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