Trump is raising Americans’ energy bills, but states can fight back

State leadership on clean energy can address rising electricity costs

Here comes the sun. (Photo by Jeremy Poland/Getty Images)

Donald Trump took office with a promise to cut energy prices in half. Instead, utility bills are up 10% this year while his administration is busy waging war against America’s cheapest sources of new electricity, wind and solar.

Even in this age of post-truth politics, you’d be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of a president promising one thing and delivering the exact opposite. Our electricity grid faces real challenges that are driving up costs for consumers. Those include rising demand from data centers powering artificial intelligence, as well as aging infrastructure, volatile fossil fuel prices, supply chain shortages, increasingly extreme weather events, a lack of transmission, and outdated grid interconnection systems. Building out a larger grid with more clean energy can be a solution to all these problems, yet Trump’s entire energy agenda is aimed at blocking it.

Americans deserve better from their federal government. Fortunately, state and local leaders can step into the breach by speeding up the deployment of cheap renewable power themselves.

Let’s start with the facts: Even without federal subsidies, solar and wind are the least expensive energy resources available today as well as the fastest ways to add power to the grid. Last year across the country, solar, wind, and energy storage made up over 90% of the new capacity. States that added the most clean energy in recent years have also avoided the largest energy cost increases.

Contrast this with the performance of fossil fuel resources: Natural gas prices have increased 40% in one year and the cost of building a new plant has tripled according to industry executives, in part because there is a five-plus year backlog to acquire new gas turbines. In oil-and-gas-rich Texas, planned gas plants are being canceled due to high costs, even though the state is attempting to subsidize them. Meanwhile, renewable energy is booming. Grid operators there credit wind, solar, and storage for keeping the lights on during a heat wave this summer.

Rather than support the growth of affordable solar and wind — which are also driving a U.S. manufacturing renaissance — Trump and his cabinet have launched an all-out assault on them. Doug Burgum, his interior secretary, ordered nearly complete offshore wind projects to be cancelled without due cause. His Transportation Department proposed an unscientific setback rule to restrict onshore wind energy. The Treasury Department gutted long-standing tax credit rules and is now driving major business uncertainty. And the Department of Agriculture pulled its support for solar energy projects that are helping farmers make ends meet.

Most importantly, the massive tax and budget bill Republicans passed this summer rolled back federal tax credits for wind and solar. As a result, analysts project that the United States could install as much as 62% less clean energy over the next decade, and energy bills will increase by $170 per year. In some states annual bill increases could top $600.

A majority of Americans say they’re worried about rising energy costs, and already feel greater financial stress because of them. But Trump seems to be focused on repaying his political benefactors. Last year, he and Secretary Burgum hosted oil and gas executives at Trump’s hotel in Mar-a-Lago, where Trump promised them a gold rush if they would provide cash for his campaign. They delivered just under $100 million, and now he is delivering for their profit margins — trying to crush their clean energy competition so they can gouge customers at will. Everyday Americans are left to foot the bill, and even Chris Wright, Trump’s secretary of energy, has acknowledged that their administration will be blamed for it.

America’s future does not need to look this way. As former governor of Washington state and one of his former advisors, we have seen what a clean energy agenda can deliver. Our state has long been a national leader in renewable energy, and has long enjoyed some of the lowest retail electricity prices in the country. Indeed, in both blue and red states where leaders have promoted the deployment of clean energy, their residents are reaping the benefits of lower costs. Ironically, this once even included Secretary Burgum, who proudly embraced renewable energy as part of an “all of the above” energy strategy when he was governor of North Dakota. That state now gets 40% of its power from renewables, especially wind, and it has some of the lowest electricity prices in the nation.

The good news is that state and local governments still have levers they can pull to better protect their ratepayers.

First, they need to deploy more clean energy, and fast. A number of states are already rushing to help more solar and wind projects break ground before federal tax incentives expire next year thanks to Trump’s megabill, which will in effect raise the costs of these projects by 30-plus percentage points. Going forward, state and local policymakers should streamline siting and permitting processes so that projects get done more quickly. They can also enact their own state-level incentives, and provide low-cost financing through state green banks and energy funds. Red and blue states ranging from Alabama and Virginia to Minnesota and Washington have established and capitalized state energy-financing institutions, and more than 50 state and local green banks now exist throughout the United States.

Across the country, an enormous number of clean energy developments are currently stuck in what’s known as the “interconnection queue” — a giant traffic jam of projects that are essentially waiting for permission to plug into the grid. When a regional grid operator is taking too long getting new plants online, states should band together to demand reforms, as Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states are doing as part of the PJM Interconnection. In the meantime, they can also help projects get around that backlog by letting them connect through infrastructure that has already been approved for existing power plants but is currently going unused.

We need all the clean electrons we can get, so along with major utility-scale projects, states should also promote rooftop solar as well as other small- and mid-sized installations. And we can get more out of the projects we’ve already paid for; using innovative software models, small projects can be connected together into virtual power plants to cost-effectively meet electricity demand and reduce the need for new large power plants.

States should also make sure families and businesses don’t end up footing the bill for power-hungry data centers by working with tech companies to carefully manage their electricity demand, or make them invest in their own clean energy and storage capacity.

Second, we need to expand the grid: Lack of transmission infrastructure — the high-voltage power lines that move electricity over long distances — is a major challenge to our ability to maintain a low-cost and reliable grid. A 2023 study from the U.S. Department of Energy made this plainly clear, and found that expanding transmission could save Americans hundreds of billions of dollars — with every dollar invested returning $1.60 to $1.80 in savings.

Policy wonks tend to talk about transmission building as an Uncle Sam problem, partly because federal law governs projects that stretch across state lines. And federal policy solutions — especially reforms to permitting and cost allocation — are certainly needed. But states and local officials can help get more power lines built, too, by taking a stronger role in planning and financing, especially if they work together, the way Midwestern states have through the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s Transmission Expansion Plan.

States can also act immediately to squeeze more juice out of our current grid by promoting grid-enhancing technologies. For instance, Montana and others are allowing utilities to recoup the cost of covering power lines with advanced conductors, which could double transmission capacity along existing corridors for less than the cost of building new lines.

Third, hold utilities accountable: State governments have primary authority in the regulation of retail electric utilities that sell power to homes and businesses. And states, through their public utilities commissions, must use every bit of this authority to better protect ratepayers — exercising close scrutiny of their plans to meet load growth and requests for customer rate increases.

If you were one of the many activists who took part in last weekend’s Sun Day, this is one place where you can make a difference. The utility regulatory complex is an opaque beast, but Americans can participate in utility commission proceedings, and voters can hold their commissioners accountable — via direct elections, in ten states, or through the governors and the legislators who install them, in others.

To be sure, not all states are total masters of their own destinies when it comes to electricity costs. Those that participate in wholesale electricity markets, in particular, rely upon regional grid operators to oversee the interconnection of new energy generation, transmission planning, and markets for daily energy demand and future reliability. These regional markets are supposed to deliver the lowest-cost energy for consumers, via competition. But some, like PJM — which includes 13 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest — have been falling down on the job by failing to approve new wind and solar projects, plan adequate transmission infrastructure, or maintain affordable capacity auctions. This has caused massive cost increases for homes and businesses in the region.

But states can take steps to make these markets work. As we mentioned earlier, members of PJM are now demanding reforms. Meanwhile, in other places, states are working together to expand wholesale electricity markets in ways that could help deploy more low-cost energy; recent legislation passed in California is poised to facilitate the creation of an independently governed western energy market, which could deliver billions in savings for ratepayers in the region.

Furthermore, there are of course other steps that states can take to address energy costs, including by offering direct financial relief to consumers, supporting energy efficiency programs, and deploying battery storage and other zero-emission technologies that continue to enjoy federal tax incentives. Electricity bills are on the rise, and Americans are demanding solutions.

The big picture point, however, is that the politics and economics of energy have changed. Renewables are the cheapest power available, the fastest to build, and the surest way to strengthen our grid while bringing down costs for consumers. Wind and solar create good-paying jobs in our communities, keep money in families’ pockets, and give America a competitive edge in the fast-growing global industries of the 21st century. Donald Trump is leading a costly conspiracy against clean energy. But state and local leaders can champion this low-cost energy that’s needed to power America’s future.

Jay Inslee is a lawyer who served from 2013 to 2025 as the 23rd governor of Washington state. Sam Ricketts is co-founder of S2 Strategies, an energy advisory firm that works closely with states.